Remembering liberty

I didn't grow up on this continent. I am part of the generation fortunate enough to have been born between major conflicts and was too old to take part in any of the recent ones. I count myself most fortunate.

However, there are still battles to be fought for today's war is not just with guns and tanks - the battlefield is also in the hearts and minds of our neighbours and friends. We have to fight ignorance from destroying the futures of our children by robbing them of the chance to have a balanced view of the truth (Bill 44). We have to fight prejudice (Bill C-389) from people who blindly condemn anything and anyone different, all in the name of their god. We have to fight the departments who are supposed to help people (Jason and Bonnie Devine).


Bill 44 is just wrong. The fact that the teachers themselves are opposed to it should be an obvious indication that it's wrong. Why would the teachers oppose something that would, in the end, cause less work for them because there's fewer kids to teach? Simple: because they care. They know that they are they primary change agent in the lives of the kids they teach. They prepare them for the real world. They also know just how unprepared the kids are to face the international area. It's not just in Canada either - do go and watch Waiting for Superman if you can find it. I volunteer as a science teacher in the local classrooms not because I have delusions of grandeur that I can turn around the educational system. No, I go and teach in the ardent hope that I can inspire one - just one - student to go into the sciences. If I can do that, then all the hours will be worth it. One. I'm not asking for more than one.

Bill C-389 is a little tougher. On the surface, you might think that this bill covers a tiny minority who are psychologically disturbed. However, when you dig deeper past the fear and lies the religious right have thrown over it, you'll find that the thrust of this bill is to provide legal protection for this minority who are simply trying to heal. They're not interested in your kids. They're not interested in your washrooms. They're not interested in you or yours at all. They merely want to live and to have the protection that you and I enjoy. Right now, they have no legal protection: if they get beaten up, the perpetrators may or may not be charged. I ask you this: have we as a society sunk so low that we have to debate whether to provide protection to an often medically-challenged minority so that they have legal recourse should they be physically assaulted? So it's all right for a fellow Canadian to get beaten up because he or she is different from you?

Jason Devine is an anti-racism activist in Alberta. Racists broke into his home and beat him up for daring to take a stand against them. Alberta Child Services then swooped in and took his kids away because they figured it was an unsafe environment for the children. Yes, you can look at it that way. ACS, while you're at it, why don't you swoop in and take away the children of all the policemen who work in the anti-corruption departments? Or the anti-organized crime officers? Or the children of abortion doctors? Oh, because there's an incident for Mr. Devine whereas the others haven't? I see...so...colour me naive but wouldn't the right course of action here would be to perhaps provide police protection so that Mr. Devine doesn't get beaten up? Yes, the kids have since been returned to their parents but come on, how screwed up and incompetent can you be to come between a parent who is a victim of assault and his kids? Do note that this is not an isolated incident where ACS have acted in a manner more reminiscent of jackbooted thugs tearing kids away from good parents, all in the name of protecting the children. Unless if the kids are in clear and present danger from their parents (and there are those situations, as heartbreaking as it may be), kids should be with their parents. Not in the hands of strangers. This appears to be something that ACS doesn't understand.

Do note that I do not in any way intend to diminish the sacrifices of our veterans. They paid the ultimate price for our freedom today. However, I am ashamed as a Canadian and an Albertan to see how we have taken their sacrifices and started upon the path to becoming the very society they laid down their lives to prevent.

I'm going to go cry now. Then I'm going to have a chat with my MP, who has a dismal record on human rights in the off chance that he actually has any sense of right and wrong somewhere on him these days.

Spin-off

FYI, I've created another blog strictly for ballet and will be spending some time getting it up and running. I'm still posting to this blog so there will be posts in the future. I haven't been posting here consistently anyway, so nothing will really change except that you won't be hearing much about dance here.

Growth

The past year and a half has been this long marathon through life with many dark valleys and hazards. I've finally gotten to a spot where I can catch a breather and take stock.

Of course, life decides to start teaching me again in the only way it knows how: challenges, crises and change. I think the fact that I've begun dancing ballet again has helped in my outlook in life quite a bit. It's very vigorous physical exercise and I can feel my stamina slowly increasing. It's also motivated me to treat myself better, something I've been neglecting quite a bit.

On the emotional front, I've had the chance to reflect on my life somewhat. I'm trying to learn from the past and while I have difficult times ahead, I think I can almost see a clear path forward now. It's going to take a lot of effort and there will be many changes to come, not just for me but also for my family. There was a major turning point in my life several years ago when I chose to stop running away from trouble. I feel that another such juncture is coming up once more, except that I'm a little older, sadder and wiser this time.

Staying positive is hard. I used to think that people who have a continually positive outlook in life as being slightly touched in the head. I don't believe people should be as hyperactively positive like a squirrel on crack but some optimism is needed to carry on through the dreary stretches, methinks.

I had an argument with a good friend tonight. It saddens me that there will need to be some distance between us now but that's the way the cookie crumbles. On the bright side, it's helped me realize a few lessons on the nature of friendship and how it applies to me. Acceptance is important; without it, there can be no friendship. Growth can hurt sometimes but I'll make sure that this lesson is learnt swiftly so it doesn't hurt as much next time.

Body and soul

In addition to my two dance classes a week, I've also begun a pointe self-study course. No, I'm not under any illusions that I'll ever dance pointe, nor is that the goal. I'm trying to improve my turnout and general form, which this course also does.

The course begins with exploring how the body feels when performing certain steps. I've always had good proprioception, an observation previously made by several other people in the past. Pilates had always been easier for me than the norm - when the instructor says, "Use this to do ", I've always been able to do it with a minimum of fuss mostly because I know which muscle group to activate. Now, I'm learning things on a far deeper level with this pointe course.

It's fun. It's painful, labourious and slow. I have to be careful not to overdo it and incur injury so I'm proceeding on a slower pace than normal. I do hope it's all worth it in the end. I'd be rather cross if it didn't help me at all.

Varifocals

I went to the opticians to pick up my first pair of progressive lenses tonight. They're like bifocals except that the change in prescription between distance and near vision graduates slowly instead of having two sharp distinct areas. There is a channel of sharp vision right down the centre of both lenses with areas of distortion ("swim") on either side.

There is a period of adjustment with them and some people just can't adapt to varifocals so they have to return to single-vision lenses.

I hate carrying around reading glasses. They're really annoying. I'm afraid of breaking or losing them, both of which I've done in the past two months. I'm also paranoid about accidentally stabbing myself in the eye as I'm putting them on. The risk of that happening increases with frequency - it's the law of averages at work.

I rather like my progressives. The salesperson suggested I tried the Essilor Ovation lenses but that didn't work so well for me as the channel was way too narrow and the prescription was too weak. So, after a trip back to the optometrist for a slightly stronger prescription, I was back at the opticians for a new pair. This time, I opted for the Varilux Comfort and boy, does it ever make a big difference! The previous lenses had a very narrow lane through which vision was clear. The Comforts, despite being an older lens had a wider and more comfortable channel. I understand now why people say that once they've tried a Varilux, they'll never go back to another lens.

Inside, I'm a little depressed that I'm in old lady glasses now. *sigh* Aging sucks.

Blown cover

It has been quite a while since I was last at ballet. I have not danced for several months, partly due to my work schedule but mostly because of my cataract surgery. The thing with ballet is that if you miss even one practice, you will feel the difference the next time you dance. It is a very exacting art form that requires regular and vigorous practice. The tolerances are very low in ballet. You can either execute a move or not, very Boolean solution set-ish.

This past Friday night, I attended a performance of Sleeping Beauty by the Alberta Ballet at the invitation of a friend from work who had an extra ticket. This was a first for me as I did not need a pair of binoculars to see the stage. For the first time in decades, I was able to soak in the beauty of a live performance with just my own eyes. Words cannot even begin to express the joy I felt that I could do this. I am very aware that a Sword of Damocles hangs over my vision and that I could lose my sight at any time. In the past I would have obsessed about it and although I still do fret these days, I no longer forget to enjoy the present and take it to build new memories that I can cherish for when I do go into the darkness alone.

Seeing the dancers on stage made me realise that I had lost track of my dream to be able to dance ballet well. Of course, the fact that I was seated in the midst of staff from that ballet company probably factored into my feelings of sudden inadequacy. The staff are given complimentary tickets to performances sometimes; the unfortunate fact is that if you were a dancer, you probably would not be able to afford the tickets to see a performance, not without some sacrifice on your part for later. Ballet is expensive. It's not expensive because it has history, tradition and prestige although those probably are factors for high ticket prices. It is expensive because the performers have to be very highly trained to be able to dance so precisely. I should know for it is not without some regret and bitterness that I will never be able to dance as well in this lifetime. Age catches up quickly to ballerinas; the fact that there is a foundation in Ottawa to assist ballet dancers to retrain for other positions when they wash out in their early 20s struck me as bizarre at first and sadness later. Nonetheless, I intend to persevere and attempt to pass the first level Cecchetti examination at some point in my lifetime. I am painfully aware that the longer it takes for me to get to that level, the less likely it will be that I am physically capable of passing the test even though the first level exam is meant for young children. Remember how kids can do amazing bendy things with their bodies when they're young? That's why it's hard for us older folks to pass that test. It's not a matter of just proper technique - all the technique in the world won't matter if you're just not able to make your old, decrepit body do a particular move.

After the performance, I received an invite to join a few of the other dancers for a bite to eat at a local pizzeria. As I was starving by then, I gratefully accepted and we all went to a family-owned restaurant nearby. It was not without some trepidation that I went along with them. You see, one of the group was my balletmistress, a very experienced and sweet elderly lady who is one of Canada's foremost ballet teachers. She's served her art for longer than I've been alive and has danced as the prima ballerina for one of the nation's premier ballet troupes. She's a sweet lady - outside of the dance studio. Simply put, I'm terrified of her when I'm in her studio. Drill sergeants have nothing on her when it comes to command presence. She doesn't have to yell to get her point across. She merely has to look at you squarely in the face to make you obey. I have only met less than a handful of people in my life who have that effect on me. It's an authority that draws its strength from formidable experience and competence. When she tells us to do something, it's because she knows we can do it. There isn't much we can hide from her because she's seen it all. Fortunately, she was in a happy mood after attending the good performance earlier. So, I had a surprisingly good time at the pizza joint and had an opportunity for a rare glimpse into the lives of professional dancers.

I admire their dedication and tenacity in pursuing their art; I would as well but only if the pay was better. Much much better. I don't mean to sound as if money were all that mattered to me in this life. Money matters, it matters a lot. While I may take a lower paying job for a variety of reasons, I recognise that at least I have those choices for now anyway. For them, dance is their livelihood and that does not pay well despite it being a very tough discipline to be in.

They were a friendly lot and a very tight-knit group. Nonetheless, they made me feel welcome even though I was a virtual unknown to them. I was a friend to a friend of theirs and that was good enough. I walked away with two things: an invitation to join them at their casual practice class on Sundays and the realisation that my balletmistress now knows my name. She singles out people she knows in class to provide more personal instruction. Among my classmates, this is seen as a rather dubious privilege at best. A part of me was quite happy with the prospect of receiving closer instruction but I know it will be a case of tough love as she is not shy about calmly speaking her mind in excruciating detail about what she thinks of your deficiencies as she sees it. The thing is, she's surprisingly accurate most of the time. I can generally see a poleaxed look on the faces of those she's focused on. So, Monday night should be an interesting time for me. I'm beginning to wonder if it's worthwhile for me to start practicing my poleaxed expression as I expect to be wearing it for most of Monday night. Oh, and the fact that I'm taking both the beginners' and 1st level classes back to back for a total of nearly 3 hours is mostly going to reduce me to a pile of quivering jelly even without added attention.

May the gods have mercy upon my soul and my poor, poor sore feet.

Musings on adult education

I graduated from the University of Calgary with a B.Sc. a long time ago. I swotted for years and even went through their internship program. I can remember my thoughts after I finished my last exam there in the Gold Gym of the then-Phys. Ed. building: I'm done, I'll never have to write another bleeping exam again!

That, of course, was wishful thinking.

Over the intervening years, I've gone back to school and did graduate courses, wrote more exams, researched more papers and learnt more about astrophysics than I expected. It was rewarding, even though I've suspended my M.Sc. due to financial considerations. Astrophysics wasn't something I expected to fall in love with but there you go. Of course, this was a distance learning online program, albeit from a reputable university - no one was more surprised than I was to find out that that particular university ranked in the top 10 centers for computational astrophysics (simulations, etc). It seriously reset my views and expectations of what distance learning could offer. Mind you, I'm being careful here - I said distance learning, not "online university". There's quite a few online universities out there. They're not brick-and-mortar institutions but exists purely as a virtual learning center. I'm sure there are quite a few online universities that are genuinely good. Unfortunately, it's a bit hard to determine how good they are when the instructors' credentials can't be verified. Likewise, I'd be concerned about accreditation concerns if that virtual institution that the degree came out of suddenly disappeared - websites disappear all the time, e-mail accounts can be closed out at a click of a button. Without someone or something to attest to the authenticity of an accreditation, it's no longer an accreditation but merely an unsupported assertion. Not the best thing to take to a job interview. Likewise, if a virtual university disappeared, anyone can claim that they've graduated from there. If they're good, experienced people, great. Otherwise, you'll find that degree's value depreciated by charlatans who don't have the training to do what they claim to be able to do.

Of the three post-secondary institutions I've learnt from, all of them are brick-and-mortar institutions officially recognized by its provincial education ministry as having the right to issue degrees and other accreditations. Over the years, I've also had to take courses paid for by my employers and given by learning institutions that are really companies whose goal is to promote one methodology or another. I'm not sure what the experience is for the online-only universities though. I do shake my head when they offer "Learn how to get in just !!!" programs. I'm very skeptical about both the methods and the results of trying to pack a full 4-year degree into just 6 months. I've seen advertisements that claim they can pack a full degree in just 3 months. I can believe them if they offer certificates instead of a degree though, as the requirements and burden of knowledge is much lower in those cases. Still, it makes one wonder.

I'm going for my PMP accreditation next year, which was why I was away this past week. It's a graduate certificate program in project management geared towards people who want to get their PMP certification. I could take the exam on my own without going through this program but now that I'm in it, I'm very glad I enrolled as there's a lot more to it than I expected. Yes, I probably could have passed the exam on my own but I wouldn't actually have learnt much from that. Here, in this program, I'm learning project management done right, sometimes in excruciating detail. The PMP exam only focuses on the methodology; it tests people on whether they know the processes and the steps, documents and end results of all those processes as per their specifications. There's nothing wrong with the processes as they were originally designed by people who knew what they were doing. Unfortunately, what the PMI can't test for is whether people know why those processes are needed and why they're done that specific way. To use a cooking analogy, it's the difference between adding salt to a dish because a book told you so vs. knowing what the dish is supposed to taste like and adding salt if and only if it's needed. Project management gets a bad rap because people learn it from a book, usually minus the context and reasoning behind those processes.

This past week was a full immersion experience - classes began early in the morning and ran through the entire day, after which we went back to our dorm and studied some more either quietly in our rooms or as a group in the kitchen/lounge. We were taught the material that is needed for the PMP exam but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that their focus was on interpersonal skills and people management. As what the instructor said, project managers don't really manage projects, they manage the people who will make the project either a success or a failure. In short, this past week was a crash course on leadership and people management. Now that were in the distance learning component of the program, we're expected to take what we've learnt and apply it to managing the teams that we were assigned to. If we hadn't had that face-to-face time and the leadership training, I can see teams coming apart easily during the online component. Indeed, even with that face time some teams are already coming apart. I don't envy the instructors, who have to ensure that these teams stay on track over the next half year.

Now that I've had some time to decompress after that full immersion experience, I'm realizing that there are many areas at work that I could do a lot better in so I'm kind of looking forward to Monday as well. To reuse my analogy, it's a little humbling when you have an Aha! moment that you've been robotically salting a dish for years that didn't need salt because you never understood what the dish was supposed to taste like. Of course, I have to deal with some cultural issues at work, where project management isn't very well regarded even though it's desperately needed.

Skool Daze (days 4 & 5)

I'm home. It's been one long, exhausting week of project management studies where it became very evident to me that while I did some things right, there were a lot more others that I either wasn't aware needed to be done or I had done them incorrectly. It's been a very humbling experience...but I've learnt a lot.

We're grouped into teams of 5-6 students each and it's these other folks that I'll be spending the next 6 months working together on team assignments. I'm fortunate as I have a pretty good team of driven people but who also get along with one another. Some of the other teams weren't so fortunate.

The amount of homework will be crippling. I'm scheduled to read three major chapters of one of my textbooks plus a thick stack of articles in the next two weeks and the workload increases from there. Funny thing is, I'm really excited about it as opposed to dreading it. I think this is because this past week has been such an eyeopener that I'm looking forward to learning more.

Skool Daze (days 2 and 3)

Yesterday was a jam-packed day that we spent learning about stakeholder management. I've been working on projects for decades now and I never realized just how much there was to this topic alone. We went deep and I was quite glad for it. At the end, I was so exhausted that I pretty much collapsed into bed and didn't have the energy to even get up, so no posting yesterday.

Today was spent on brain theory and communications models. This isn't a part of PMI's curriculum, or at least it isn't to the best of my knowledge. It was quite interesting and although I don't buy all of it, there's certainly quite a few points worth looking at. What I wasn't expecting and realized with a start halfway through today is that we're being taught not just the PMP curriculum but also how to lead. Not just lead a homogeneous group of people but how to motivate and lead a diverse group of people, which is what we'd find in our workplace anyway.

I grew up in a very traditional lead-from-the-front paradigm and have been doing that for most of my life. Today, I'm starting to learn how to lead my team effectively from any configuration. It'll take some getting used to as there's a lot of variance but I think I'm starting to understand the difference between an ineffective leader vs an effective one. It's...a little mindbending to say the least. We're also starting to get into leadership ethics, which I think should be taught in all management classes.

All in all, I'm really glad I took this route instead of learning on my own off a book or via one of those cram-everything-in-a-week courses. The university's heritage of having being a naval academy is coming through really clearly and it's resonating strongly with me. I wrote in my personal statement that the university required for admission into any of their postgraduate programs that I didn't just want an accreditation, I wanted to learn how to lead and manage project teams well. Looks like I chose wisely.

Skool Daze (day 1)

Hectic day. Lots of info crammed into a very very VERY full day. I got my student ID today, gods do I look old.

Also got sorted into our houses teams today: 4 women + 2 men, all from very diverse backgrounds.

More later, have to cram for finals at the end of this week.

Skool Daze (day 0)

After a night of frantic packing, I finally arrived at my dormitories this morning after a short flight and a green taxi driver who got lost. The room is pretty large with many windows; one whole wall is pretty much glass paneled windows. It's nice. :)

It's been a pretty long day. I hiked (slowly) to the local grocery store which is quite a bit away and bought some groceries to help with the food costs. Got my reading list and also a nifty vest as it's surprisingly cold here.

I had pipers and drummers march under my dorm window this afternoon - that was nifty. Oh, and peacocks sound like Jurassic Park velociraptors when they're calling. That was...unnerving.

I'm tired and looking forward to tomorrow.

World deformation activities

As children, we rarely planned our days. Most of the time, our days were planned by our caretakers, be they our parents or teachers. During the moments when we had free time, we filled it with play, laughter and joy most of the time. As we get older and begin to be loaded down by responsibilities and duties, our free time starts shrinking to the point where if we had any free time, it'd be spent doing something "useful". Oh, I'm not saying that us grown-ups don't have any fun but that fun takes a secondary or even tertiary prioritization to the Things We Have To Do Or Civilization Crumbles (tm).

I spend a lot of my time surfing. Sometimes, it's purpose-driven (read: not an utter waste of time) but oftentimes it's random surfing. A thought occurred to me this morning: if there were no Internet, what would I be doing? Simple, I thought - I'd be reading a book. However, I know that there are times when I don't want to be reading so what would I be doing then? Probably something else, something tangible that will have some impression on the real world that shows that I've Been There and Done That.

Instead, I spend my time shuffling electrons from one place to another.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that surfing (a.k.a. self-directed impulse-based educational activity) has some value. However, for a knowledge worker like myself, I'm not really leaving much of an impact on this world we live in. If I shuffled off the mortal coil right now, what will I really be leaving behind? Not a lot, I can tell you that.

So, I resolve to do more things in this real, tangible world of ours. Exactly what, I'm not sure quite yet but I think I'll pollute brighten my family's day with some bleating music from my chanter.

Typos

If you're finding any typos in my recent entries, it's because I'm using MacSpeech Dictate to write my blog entries now and it's still not properly trained yet. Apologies.

The politics of clothing

Two posts in one day - wow, I must be really bored today! :)

Before I started going to school, I used to pay a lot of attention to clothes. But then again, I was also a very bored child as I had no siblings close to my age to play with. So I played dress up a lot, looting the laundry basket and the wardrobes for material. I remember dressing up in the most outlandish outfits, often eliciting an amused chuckle from my mother. I loved hats; I still do, as matter of fact. Then I started attending school, where I had to wear uniforms. As my mother was overprotective and never let me leave the house to play with the neighbourhood children, coupled with a very heavy load of homework, opportunities to explore fashion ended rather abruptly.

By the time I arrived in Canada, my sense of fashion (such that it is) had been so deeply suppressed that I dressed most frugally. Looking back, I think that I had a very hard time adjusting to my high school experiences in Canada as I started dressing subconsciously to avoid attention. In retrospect, I suppose I could have made dressing well a priority of some kind back then. However, dire admonitions from my father to watch my dwindling funds made me extremely paranoid so I bought the cheapest clothes I could find. After I graduated, I did dress better but it still wasn't a priority. Of course, I was a different person back then. It wasn't until I had a life-changing experience a few years back that I started paying attention to how I looked again.

I shifted from being just a software developer to a lead and then on to a manager in just the last few years. It's fine to dress casually if you just deal with developers and managers everyday. I started having to deal with senior executives, board members and customers directly, which meant that I had to dress more appropriately. It's easier for guys - you can just wear polo shirts, dress slacks and dress shoes to work everyday and no one would think it odd. I could wear the same thing to work everyday… actually, no I can't. How I dress has a direct impact on how people respond to me. It's not a decisive factor by any means but it is a factor nonetheless, as any woman in the IT business will tell you.

So why am I blogging about something as mundane as this? Well, I went from manager to senior architect in my current position because I saw most of my friends who were in junior to middle management lose their jobs left, right and centre in the current economy. I'd rather go back to working in the trenches as a developer than get shot as a manager.

I hated it. Simply coding to someone else's tune just wasn't interesting enough any longer. Don't get me wrong, a great developer is part artist, part scientist. There is beauty and elegance in good code. Unfortunately, after doing it for so long, I was thoroughly sick of it. Nowadays, I love working with people, nurturing a product from inception to delivery, watching it grow from the seed of an idea into something that brought in seven or eight figures to the company's bottom line.

What has all this got to do with clothing? Simple: I now dressed like a manager and that made me stick out like a sore thumb among the other developers. Yes, I could go back to dressing casually but… I don't want to. Here's the funny thing: people started treating me like a manager because I dressed like one. I was worried about resentment from the managers but to my surprise, they welcomed me as one of their own probably because they desperately needed my help in managing things. So, I evolved my role into one with managerial responsibilities partly due to how I dressed. Of course, that wasn't all of it but again, it was a factor.

This is interesting to me from an anthropological perspective. It brings to mind the protective camouflage of moths or the brilliant plumage of peacocks. Yes, these are things that nature has bestowed upon the males of those species for the purposes of attraction and intimidation; remember that the IT industry is still very much a male-dominated sector and being excessively feminine gets me into trouble faster than you can stick a “Kick Me” sign on my back. We often hear the saying, “dress for success” but that's usually in the context of dressing snappier to give a good first impression. This wasn't just a first impression in my case; this was a sustained campaign on my part, albeit an unplanned one.

What does all this mean? Well, nothing really. I'm not really going to change anything in my work life as I don't need to. Mind you, doesn't the first time this has happened either - I'm blogging this because that's what I wanted to talk about right now, nothing more. I am, however, going to tweak my non-work wardrobe somewhat in the next few months as I have a corollary to test out. Should be interesting, I think - assuming I don't get shot or worse, that is. :)

Smells of a distant past

Every now and then, I get some very vivid dreams about growing up in my birth country (not Canada). A little over a decade ago, I went back to that country but this time as an adult. It's interesting what you observe as a grown-up that you miss being immersed in that culture as a child. One of my personal favourites is when we went out grocery shopping. As mundane as that chore may be, I've always loved it even when I was a wee child.

You see, the grocers in their country aren't the tidy little supermarkets that we find in North America. No, these are mom and pop shops scattered all over the neighbourhoods. As you entered the store, you will find yourself confronted by a bewildering montage of ordinary household items, stacked away in ordered chaos into every nook and cranny that merchandise can be crammed into. About the only way you can ever find anything in this glorious mess is to either know where it is because you've found it once before to ask the proprietor (or more commonly, his wife) where things are. Going to the grocers has a full spectrum experience where your senses are bombarded not just by clashing colours but by remarkable scents. Even now when I close my eyes, I can smell the very odd mixture of spices and detergent, of dried fish and deodorant, smells that float above the background smell of years of mixed storage.

When I do groceries here, it's often an in and out affair. We don't really chat with anyone any more, we just go in and get our things then head out as quickly as we can because that's our culture nowadays. We just don't take time to chat with the proprietor any more, to catch up on the goings-on in our neighbourhood. For most supermarkets, there's simply no such person as a proprietor any more as they are all chainstores with managers and employees instead of an owner, his wife and children. I don't know about you but I think that's a little sad. Oh, don't get me wrong-I'm fully cognisant of the economic realities these days that brought about such changes. As a working parent I'm subject to the same monetary pressures as everyone else. But still, I think that we as a culture have died a little when we lost these mom and pop shops. You see, what we call customer service these days was simply good manners and sociability back then. These days, we have to teach people how to be polite and nice to customers.

Yes, I think that we have truly lost a part of our souls when we stopped being nice to each other because we should instead of being told to do so.

Stellar cartography

We've all seen or read science fiction tales of ships "warping" through space, of being instantaneously transported to somewhere very far away through some kind of wormhole or tunnel in space. It's pretty far-fetched and unless if someone can definitively find such a method of traversing vast distances in a blink of an eye, I'll put my money on good old-fashioned sublight travel.

But what if there were traversable wormholes? Hypothetically, if you were in a sublight ship that somehow entered one end of the wormhole at just the right vector and managed to survive the stresses of passing through that bridge, how would you know where you were? Science fiction writers typically get around that prickly problem by sidestepping it with powerful computers that could calculate position based on the stars.

You know what? That's not that easy. You see, in order to triangulate positioning using the stars, we'd need to know several things:

1. How far the star is from Earth (or some other known reference point)
2. How to identify the star from all the other stars out there

We have an idea of how far the stars are from Earth but we don't know for sure, especially for the really distant stars. We can measure distances to the stars using the parallax method for the nearer stars but as things get farther away, our measurements get progressively wobblier in precision. In fact, our distances could be out by as much as several orders of magnitude. So, if we don't know how far things are, we can't really triangulate at all. That, and in order to use the parallax method, that starship will have to take a measurement, travel a great distance, take another measurement and then it can do its calculations. In short, it takes time and even then, there's no guarantee it'll work.

We can identify stars here on Earth primarily by where it is on the celestial sphere. You can't really do that if you're somewhere else, especially if it's somewhere else very far away. But what if we can identify individual stars based not on their positioning as seen on Earth but by some other intrinsic property, perhaps through spectrographic analysis of the known stars? Well, that does have some merit...except for one tiny problem: here on Earth, we don't really see the stars as they are right now. What we are seeing is the light from the stars as they arrive here on Earth, which means that the farther away the star is, the larger the time delay will be. In other words, we're seeing what the star was, not what it currently is and that time delay is directly dependent on how far away the star is, as light travels. That's a bit of a problem because any spectrograph we have of the star will be wrong because as the star ages, its composition changes as it burns through its nuclear fuel. We can extrapolate what its current composition will be...but then we'd need to know how far away it was from Earth. Oops.

It's a bit more complex than that, actually. You see, in theory, wormholes don't just link two points in space - they might link two points in space and time. What that means is that when you pop out the other end of the wormhole, you will not only be somewhere else, you might be somewhen else too. Which tosses yet another wrinkle on the whole "figure out where you are by watching the stars" method.

Don't get me wrong. You can figure out where you are...roughly. Depending on the density of visible stars, you can probably figure out where you are in terms of being above or below the galactic plane. Likewise, you can probably figure out where you are in terms of distance to the galactic center, which is a pretty good reference point. Heck, if you had enough data, you can probably figure out which arm of the galaxy you're in. All of that gives you a decent picture of where you might be. Well, except for one small thing: this all presupposes you pop out in the same galaxy. If you popped out in another galaxy...all bets are off. Oops.

Stellar navigation is tricky because there's so much space (sic) out there. More than that, once you toss in wormholes, you now potentially have all of time to play in too. Which means that if you get lost, you're really lost. Does this mean we can never ever figure out where we are? Yes...and no. Given what we currently have, the short answer is no. What might be our saving grace is if we manage to figure out faster-than-light (FTL) communications, perhaps via communications devices that use quantum entanglement to provide a bearing to a beacon. We need FTL beacons because otherwise, you'd die waiting for the signal to reach you as it may take a very very VERY long time before it gets to you even if the signal travels at the speed of light. The first ship through the wormhole will have a really tough time of it but once you have a series of beacons scattered through space, triangulation becomes easier. Heck, you can even figure out when you are if you know when the beacons came online. Of course, if you jumped to a time before the beacons were deployed...you're still hooped.

Interesting problem. Sometimes, I think that being grounded on Earth due to physical frailty isn't such a bad thing.

Superstition

I don't think any of us have progressed completely beyond our fear of the unknown. In everyone that I have known, there exists some form of superstition that they follow. I think it's part of human nature for us to have rituals, albeit very private ones when we run into things that are beyond our control. I, for example, don't like to talk about jobs have applied for for fear that I might “jinx” it.

I'm a planner by nature so it's rather ironic that when I run into the really big life challenges, I have a great deal of the reluctance to plan for it for fear of, you guessed it-jinxing it.

For most of my life, my environment wasn't something I had much control over, nor was my living conditions. For a while there, I had a pretty decent illusion that I had control. It lasted less than a decade as life took a very strange turn and brought me, eventually, to where I am now.

I like where I am. I like me, which is a big improvement from how I felt before.

Every choice I made had a cost, and one of the costs was to give up a very large chunk of my life. I never thought that that was a fair choice but that was the price society imposed upon me. I can live with that. What is truly unfair is when life throws you a curveball, one that results in nothing but bad choices. My health, for example. Most of my difficulties did not arise from choices I've made but rather things that happened nonconsensually to me. That's the way it is for everyone. Nobody chooses to be sick or to be handicapped.

I never did used to subscribe to the idea that life is suffering. I do now. Most adherants to that view work towards escaping that suffering. Buddhism pushes the concept of “do no harm”. Other religions and beliefs push other concepts ranging from the benign to the downright parasitic. I can't escape that suffering. I don't believe in reincarnation so this life is all I've got and by extension, all the ailments I have things I had to deal with, now, in this life. What I intend to do a slightly different from the norm. If I can alleviate some of my suffering, of course I'd definitely pursue that option. However, what I also intend to do is to bring joy, and love, and laughter, and delight into the lives of those I care about.

I can focus on all the bad things that are happening to me and I'm going to have to because of I don't, they'll never go away. That's not all I'm going to focus on though. I intend to help my kids learn about the world that surrounds us, to discover the amazing beauty in everyday life if only we knew where to look. I intend to support my sister realise her dreams, to surprise her with new positive experiences. I intend to be a sympathetic ear, strong shoulder and an active helper to my friends as best I can. I intend to do what I can to bring the light of knowledge into our schools, to help nurture that ember of curiosity within every child that teachers try so very hard to keep alive.

I'm no saint. I'll probably fail, and fail horribly in most of these things. But I'll try anyway because the alternative is to be all alone in the dark with my pain. If I can transmute their pain into something positive, then perhaps my life, however short in might be, will not have been an utter waste.

Switching gears

I've always had trouble with abstract concepts. Mathematics was especially challenging for me, except when I could understand the problem in real-world concrete terms. When I decided on computer science as a career, it was something I understood, and understood well. So, it really was a no-brainer for me to work in this industry. Unfortunately, after two decades working as a developer I find myself stuck in the role of a senior architect. More than that, phrases like “too senior for this position” are starting to show up with disturbing regularity whenever I consider changing jobs.

Therefore I had decided to switch not only my job but also my career path, from software development over to business management. I'm not entirely comfortable with the switch mostly because like math, I don't completely get it. Don't get me wrong, I've seen enough businesses to know what makes them tick. If nothing else, my recent application to business school made me realise just how ready I am for the switch.

So why am I so unsettled with this decision?

I suspect it has partly to do with my motivation for the switch. Which computer sciences, I knew what I was getting myself into–solving complex problems, which gave me a warm glow. With businesses… my only motivation appears to be strictly monetary. In fact, I know very few business managers who take great joy at what they do at work, unless if they are the owners of the business itself. I don't have the courage to own my own business nor do I expect to ever do so in this lifetime. So why make the switch what do I have to look forward to? The honest answer is… I don't know. More money, which enables me to do other fun things. But what does this mean for the better part of my day? I spend the majority of my life at work, eight hours a day, five days a week, 12 months in the year. If I don't love what I'm doing, what kind of life could that be?

So what are the alternatives? I can stay where I am and continue developing software until they kick me out, which will be very soon because I simply cannot keep up in terms of competitiveness with the younger folk. They know far less than I do, true. However, they are also paid far less than I do. Companies nowadays are more worried about the bottom line and so they hire the younger, cheaper workers. I have seen so many of my friends get drummed out of the industry this way. I fear that this shall be my fate too. I think I'm a pretty good developer and a great architect. I don't say that with pride; I've earned that by dint of hard work over many decades. But money seems to trump everything out there in the business world. Perhaps it is wiser to pick a career where joy and satisfaction are to be found outside of working hours.

It doesn't matter, really. I've already decided to go to business school and to pursue a career in management. I hope they're making the right choice, and that I will still be able to look myself in the mirror in the morning afterwards.

Can you hear me now?

This is my first attempt at blogging completely by voice. I took the plunge and bought MacSpeech Dictate this afternoon. I'm hoping to blog this entire entry using just my voice.

Nifty, eh? :-)

It's taking a little getting used to just speak instead of just typing. However, as I'm not really a developer any more and as I'm writing more reports than anything else, perhaps dictating this the right way to go. I'm not sure if this is any faster than typing. It is interesting to just keep talking and have it type everything for me. I needed to train it quite a bit. It's been a mixed experience. Sometimes it transcribes flawlessly but other times it really messes things up.

I do getting get used to this. It certainly saves me having to look at the screen all the time, which means I have less eyestrain. I'm at the point where reducing eyestrain is a major deal for me. It started with the Kindle actually. Up until then I've been using computer screens or some other backlit screen for years. It wasn't until I started reading on the Kindle that I realised how tired I got from reading off backlit screens. The Kindle is a joy to read on; I can read off that thing for days on end. As my eyestrain reduced, I found my stress levels dropping a little. It wasn't much but every bit counts.

It takes a little bit more care when I'm dictating but I think that in the end, once I've got this completely trained, that it will be worth it. It seems to do far better on longer sentences than short ones. I've done it to the point where it is reasonably accurate. I've had to restrain myself from picking at it, what with me being a details person and all. I'm not sure that I'm at the point where I will trust it completely with a business report but the results seem promising so far.

Blogging via speech is indeed slower than typing, mostly because I had to go back and correct its mistakes. They are getting fewer and fewer now though; yay for training! I had to go through the voice training bit several times before it got used to me. it's slowly adjusting though. I'm not sure how much it's really learning or if it's really training me to be accepting of its flaws. I suspect a little of both is happening right now, which is fine by me.

It doesn't seem to like the blogging window very much because when I do AutoCorrect, the cursor goes back one space too far. It doesn't matter I guess as I intend to be using this with Microsoft Word anyway.

I wish I had the eyesight to not have to dictate but life is what it is; I wish it were different. I wish all things were different.

Back in the pot

Near the end of April during the mid-1990s, I wrote my last exam and thought to myself, "That'll be the last time I have do this horrid activity!" Of course, that's not the case as a decade later, I started my M.Sc. in astrophysics through distance learning. That venture ended shortly after I returned to Calgary as economic demands accelerated after the purchase of the house. Still, all that distance learning stuff didn't seem real. I mean, it's missing all that classroom dynamic of listening to the lecturer drone on, or glaring at the people who talk amongst themselves as I'm trying to take notes, or watching the clock slooooooowly tick its way second by slow second towards the end of the class. Distance learning changed all that as I get to work at my own pace. It's good.

So why in the name of all that's holy did I apply for business school? Yep, late last week I got my confirmation that I've been accepted into the project management program at a Canadian university that's not local. So, I have to fly out to where it is early next month to go attend my first course, after which the distance learning aspect kicks in for the next 6 months. What do I get out of it? Essentially 4 years of an undergrad degree packed into 6 months, after which I get to sit for my PMP certification for a double accreditation. Why bother with this rigmarole when I can just sit for my PMP? Well, my formal business skills need some brushing up and all of the credit I earn for this program is directly transferable to my MBA when I decide to take it, so I'll be able to get it half a year sooner when I can scrounge up the hefty tuition fee for it.

I've been a developer for practically my entire career. Those of you in the industry, please take a look around you and tell me how many female developers are in your team that are in their mid-forties or older? Dollars to doughnuts, the answer is zero unless if you're living somewhere in the Silicon Valley. Fact is, I'm far too senior for most of the developer positions these days. My love is product development first, program management second and project management third. I like working with people these days. Sitting down and hammering out code is simply not as fun as it was before. Seeing a complicated project to a gentle landing? Now, *that* takes skill.

I'm still in a developer position, senior architect to be precise. It's not that I'm not happy with my duties, I'm just...bored. It's the same thing I've been doing for ages, except that now I have to deal with the idiosyncrasies for whatever the language of the month is. It's just not as fun anymore.

So, I'm going back to school. Not sure if this is a bright idea or not.

Cracks in reality

I understand from some folks like my sister that I've been shifting away from many of my former traits to something new. Honestly speaking, I've felt somewhat like Bilbo Baggins lately, like butter scraped over too much bread. I don't know what I'm turning into or whether it's really the right thing for me. I've had to make some very hard choices lately, all of which have taken me down a path never trodden.

You see, I've always been a cautious planner, one who looks before she leaps. These days, I still do that except that I land on new ground. It...makes me uncomfortable to have endured so much change in so little time. In a very real sense, I'm breaking new ground because I'm trying not to repeat the mistakes of the past. However, I get the distinct feeling that I'm "losing my edge". It's hard letting go of control when it's been the sword and shield of my existence for so long.

A part of me thinks I'm being idiotically naive to do so, like petal-tossing pacifists standing in the way of a very real and solid tank that will crush me without a second thought. Life is inherently brutal. Due to medical concerns, I doubt I'll live to retirement age - if I get to see the kids off to university, I'll be content. So, what really remains is what I choose to fill the rest of my life with. In fact, that's a question that we all have to answer except that this time, I'm consciously choosing.

Not too long ago, a conversation arose about reincarnation. Yes, I have odd friends. No, I don't believe in reincarnation. The discussion eventually wended its way to the question of what we'd choose to be if we had a new life to live. In the not-to-distant past, I'd have chosen to have been born to the "right" family with a tradition of political office and a decent inheritance to boot. It's very much centred around power and the application thereof. Note that money isn't a goal, whereas most people, like my friends in that discussion would have chosen to be born into a rich family. Here's the odd thing - my answer in that discussion was remarkably unremarkable: I said I would have chosen a life where I had a chance to be a successful soprano. My friends, who aren't blind to my ambition and drive thought I was pulling their leg. I wasn't. Yes, I would choose a life of uncertainty and perhaps desperation over safety and security. It did make me pause afterwards. Why did I choose that?

I believe I'm starting to crack. Not in terms of my sanity, which my closest friends already know has been in doubt for a long time already. :) No, I think I'm starting to crack under the weight of my past choices. Case in point: I chose to take really boring specializations back in university like business computing over more interesting courses like graphics. Why? Well, it made me more marketable and indeed, it boosted my career somewhat in the early days. The cost of it is that now, I no longer find myself living an authentic life. I do boring things because I have to. I have to because I have a history of doing so and therefore have commitments to maintain.

In the meantime, I feel the grains of time slipping past the point of no return with every breath I take. This is not the life I want to live anymore. I'd like to bring beauty into the world, not make more money. I'd like to bring a smile unto people's faces, not control their lives. None of these is going to be taken well by real life, of course. I'm fully expecting life to smack me upside the head really soon now.

But you know what? With the choices I've made lately, I see more smiles and laughter on the children's faces. I feel like I'm supporting my sister a lot better these days. I do feel trapped in my career choices but here's the thing: in spite of everything, I have hope it will end well. The alternative is to face the bleakness of life, where the majority of possibilities brings suffering and pain.

Beauty is worth it. Laughter is worth it. Joy is worth it. Kindness is worth it. Compassion is definitely worth it.

Watch me try. Watch me burn this life as brightly as I can and remember that even if I should fail, I will have tried.

Random ramblings: Kushiel's Legacy

I was introduced to the three books by Jacqueline Carey that made up Kushiel's Legacy (Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen and Kushiel's Avatar) by my sister about two years ago. I was in Michigan on a conference and she asked me to pick up the first book for her. Ironically, she never did quite get around to reading it even today.

I started reading Kushiel's Dart because I was bored. The prose felt too heavy and the subject matter made me squeamish so I stopped reading it. Fast forward a few months, I heard some friends speaking avidly about it so I gave it another shot. This time, I was hooked and it has now become one of my favourite trilogies.

I have a tendency to do that, where I didn't like a book only to return to it later to find that I loved it. James Clavell's Shogun is a good example. I've always regarded myself to be a creature of habit and consistency and this bothers me. I guess my reception to ideas these days is heavily coloured by the circumstances and attitude preceding it. I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I don't like that I'm dependent on semi-random wetware states to make decisions. On the other hand, I feel a lot more these days and the world is brighter and more vibrant as a result. Emotional detachment and logic does come with a cost, one where I'm not certain if it's worth paying.

Mmm...pardon? Oh, right - Kushiel's Legacy. I was listening to the audiobook of Kushiel's Avatar during a long drive out of town today and it felt like as if I'm hearing it for the first time. I've read the books many many times and I've certainly listened to this audiobook before but I'm still discovering details and layers that I had missed in the past. It's one of those stories that defy close classification. Set in an alternative reality during the mid- to late-Renaissance period, it is a tale told from a first person perspective of a courtesan marked by an angel to suffer for the sake of universal balance. Jacqueline Carey does an amazing job of filling that world with characters that feel real. There are no superheroes here, no glorious charge against all odds. The characters do take risks and a lot of them die. Even the protagonist and her consort harbour no illusions about their chances for survival in quite a few situations. They put their lives on the line for love and duty, not honour and glory. That in of itself is a very unique portrayal in fiction but it works remarkably well.

There is a strong element of...alternative lifestyles in the series, something I was unprepared for when I first read it and it took me some time to adjust to it. It does put a unique spin on things and certainly crucial to the plotline. Most authors toss in things like this to spice up their stories but Ms. Carey appears to have seamlessly built this into the heart of the tale in a very honest and human context, sometimes gut-wrenchingly so. I'm not going to focus on it but if you're squeamish about blood or have strong Puritanical religious beliefs, this is not the series for you.

Guys, this can loosely be classified as romance in some ways. If you're not into romance novels, you might not enjoy this very much. Gals, this is a series with rich descriptions of the world and a very intricate plotline. I'd recommend that you try it out but if you are put off by the first book, you won't like the rest as it will get more descriptively terrifying.

(Un)happiness

I have been desperately unhappy for the past few months and I'm still not entirely sure what brought that about. Even my boss at work has set me the task to "find happiness". I think I do know why I'm unhappy, beyond the "perfect storm" of stress I've been going through lately.

As trivial as it seems, I think I'm unhappy because I can no longer sing, or at least sing publicly in a choir. All throughout my life, music has been an integral part of living. Whole sections of my life are catalogued by a specific "theme" song for that time period. Until it all went silent about half a year back. I'm not sure what happened but right now, there is silence in my history and it's very unnerving. My sis suggested that I may not need it anymore but I don't think that's true. I have experienced moments like this in the past when I am under intense stress but never for quite this long.

Those of you who know me well also know that I'm pretty paranoid about the possibility of losing my eyesight. Well, that silence in my history is akin to losing that visual sense, only in an aural manner. I need music. These days, I'm happiest when I'm bleating on my practice chanter.

Remember when you were a child and you got asked what you wanted to be when you grew up? Mine has always been "soprano" which changed slightly to "successful soprano" as I grew older. Obviously, this can never come true for me, not in this lifetime anyway. It does show, however, just how vital music, and in particular singing is to me.

I can't sing well anymore, at least not in a choir. I can learn to play instruments well but it's not the same. To me, singing is one of the most vibrant forms of expressing one's soul. I can't do that anymore and I think part of me is dying because of that. I'm not entirely sure what to do. I need a voice teacher - that's a no-brainer but it'll take years for me to get back to a level where I can sing contralto. I think it's time and effort well spent except that I can't do that right now.

All I have left is but the dream of that which never was. A bitter feeling, that truly is. :(

Connectedness

I've been feeling as if I didn't really fit into this world for some time now. I used to feel like that all the time before I underwent treatment for the Condition so it was with quite some surprise that I found myself that depressed again. After such a radical life-shift, it's not surprising that I would feel some disorientation but it's been 2 years now. Having said that, it's been a very dark couple of years on the family front and while we're still getting things sorted out, I think we're heading in the right direction.

Meanwhile, I didn't know what to do with myself. Stuff I used to be interested in became dull and boring. This wasn't my doing - when neural remapping occurs at the scale that it did for me, things just shift in unexpected directions. Trust me, it's been a very weird couple of years in several areas.

To put things succinctly, I was bored out of my skull. Ballet helped and is something I intend to keep going. What I really wanted to do was sing and I can't do that anymore, not without extensive retraining.

Then came the opportunity to learn the bagpipes. On the advice of the gentleman who's tutoring me, I got myself a practice chanter and an instruction book used by generations of pipers. The first nights were awkward and then I relaxed...and things just snapped into place.

As I'm typing this, my chanter's by my side. He's a beautiful instrument to me, a joy to hold and a wonder to play. I've taken to practicing inside my car over the lunch hour and my tutor's taught me a trick to muffle the sound. I feel alive when I am practicing on the chanter, similar to but not quite the same flavour as when I'm dancing ballet.

I'm still shaking my head that after all these years, I'm taking on the arts with a vengeance fueled by years of suppressed creativity. I dance, I play and I am trying to retrain my voice as a contralto. My house is a very noisy place these days but I feel joy once more.

Art. Who would have thought that it would hold joy for me?

Creativity

It's been a very rough time lately as can be seen from my last few posts. I'm realizing just how fragile my life is and how little it takes to overwhelm it. Actually, that's not entirely true. I'm easily overwhelmed not because I'm fragile but because I've simply been hit - repeatedly and without pause - with one high-stress crisis after the other. There's always something coming up that I have to deal with. We're not talking about run-of-the-mill stressors here, which I can typically handle. Not anymore though.

It's been a particularly bad week in that I've never reached this level of stress in my life before, which for me is saying something. I'm not eating all that well nor getting enough sleep nor getting any time in for ballet. There is one small spark in my life though. I found out the other day that there's a bagpiper at work who's moving into the building next to mine. We'd talked once before and he agreed to give me some pointers on how to learn to play the bagpipes. So, on his suggestion, I headed off to the local Scottish store and got myself a practice chanter and the Green Book.

When I got home, I tried the chanter out but all I could do was a decent imitation of a duck being strangled. It's a pretty big chanter and I'm having difficulty as my fingers are short and small. Still, I persisted and now I'm able to play the scales. The next day, I went to work and got hit with several stressful situations. When it finally came time for lunch, I got into my car and very odd thought popped into my head: wouldn't it be great if I could practice the chanter right now?

You have to understand, this isn't the same kind of short-term obsession I get from say, playing a computer game and wanting to get back to it. No, this is far deeper than that and it confused the heck out of me. The feeling passed rather quickly and the rest of my day was depressingly normal with a series of meetings that went nowhere. As I got into my car to drive home, that urge came back: wouldn't it be great if I could practice the chanter right now?

Now I'm getting worried. I knew this wasn't a short-term fixation so what on earth was it? I really dislike cases where my thoughts go somewhere unexpected; it's bad enough that the chaos inherent with the mere act of living can't be constrained into something tidier but I'll be darned if I couldn't control my thoughts. Later that night, I mentioned it to my dear sister who nodded sagely and remarked that that's common for creative people, where thoughts like that aren't really thoughts at all but an imperative to be creative.

You know, she's right. Looking back, there's only been three others cases where it's happened: when I'm a part of a choir, when I'm keeping a regular journal and when I'm dancing ballet. In all these cases, the need to practice singing or to make a journal entry or to practice ballet is unbelievably strong.

Wow, I'm apparently creative now. A few years back, I'd have seen it as an insult. These days...I don't know. Singing makes me sad because I don't fit in a choir anymore. I still journal every now and then but my priorities are different. Ballet is my touchstone. The world seems a little more bearable when I can dance. Now, I've got something else to enrich my life.

All isn't bad, I guess. It's a very dark time but I'm also growing. Time will tell, I guess.

Innocence Gone

*** WARNING: irrational emotional ramblings ahead, please turn OFF your logic circuits before proceeding. ***

Lately, I have been playing this online game that I bought into several years ago. The account is still active as they never shut it off. It serves as a decent distraction from the depressing nights.

There's a part of the game where you earn in-game points for watching ads. That's not a half bad way of generating a revenue stream for the makers of the game - it's a pretty smart idea, really. Unfortunately, some of those ads make me sad.

As ads will do, they try to persuade you to buy things. There's a few that's presented with such innocence so you get the feeling that everything will be all right if you just bought this and that for in-game use. I can see that if you're really into that online game, that might actually be true but it would also mean you don't really have a real-life type life if you spent that much time on the game.

No, what makes me sad is that I haven't felt as if anything was going to be all right for a long time now. I miss that innocence, that feeling that if I worked hard enough, or if I did things right that everything will be fine in the end. Sometime in the last two years, something has changed inside of me where I have realized that no matter what I do, life can intervene and radically shift things from good to bad in a heartbeat. It doesn't matter if I've tried to do things as right as I can with the best of intentions - it all goes pear-shaped in the end.

When I was a child, I was beaten everyday for years and years. These days, they call it child abuse. Back when I was growing up, it was par for the course. When I say beaten, I don't mean "beaten with cause" - I mean "beaten because someone had a bad day". I believe the term used for that is "anger transference". When I say everyday, I meant every single day. For years. I used to run and hide from my family, crying soundlessly lest they hear me and drag me out for more beatings. I had a comfort object that was all mine which I still have and hold dear to this day. You know what the irony is? I felt more safe then, hiding behind the shelves or under the table clutching my comfort object than today, lying in my bed in my own home blogging.

You see, back then my world was a lot smaller. No matter what happened to me, I knew that at mealtime, there would be food on the table, that there would be cartoons to watch (quietly!) on the TV and my imaginary friends (as kids normally would have) would be there to play with me and tell me that everything was all right even as I nursed my bruises. I now know as an adult just how close we came to running out of money back then and just how much my Dad finagled to keep food on the table and our house in our possession.

These days, the kids depend on me to put food on the table. I'm the adult who has to keep them safe which I will gladly do. Heck, I would gladly lay down my life for the kids if needed. No, what scares me is the fact that regardless of what I do, something can happen that will royally screw not just me over but also my family too. On a smaller scale, I'm always fully aware that no matter how nicely I treat people, some of them will turn around and take full advantage of me to my detriment if it suited their needs.

There was a time when I could lie to myself that what I did mattered. You know what? What I do really doesn't matter. I could take care of my family but still have a family member go deathly ill on me. Or some urgent house repair would happen that will require a massive amount of money that I simply cannot cover regardless of me being employed and have savings.

It doesn't matter in the end. It really doesn't. I will continue to go to work and care for my family as always. But I really don't believe that life is really worth much anymore because nothing I do will matter in the end. I can do the best job I can for my team at work and still get stabbed in the back. I can care for my family members and bring joy to them as best I can but still have them run away when I needed them the most.

I miss the days when I believed in what I do. When, like in those in-game ads, I still believed that if I did this and this and that, that good things will happen. I know it doesn't anymore. Oh, I've always known that this chain of causality was merely an illusion, a lie that lets me sleep at night. However, life has hit me so hard, so fast and so often lately that it's shredded this comfortable little lie that lets me keep going. As with all illusions, once it's gone, it's *gone*.

I had to take my nephews over to the local toy megamart during a weekend recently to do a recce on potential birthday presents. We had to walk through the plush toys to enter the store proper and as we did, I felt a strong wave of sadness palpably hit me in the gut. For most kids, a plush toy is their comfort object. It's what they hold at night when they go to bed. It's their friend, albeit an imaginary one. What I saw were plush toys all over the floor, where they had been knocked off their shelves. Some were damaged and will probably be binned when the staff came around to tidy up. This really upset me. As irrationally as it may sound, a plush toys' ultimate calling is to be a companion to a child, to bring joy to that child. The damaged ones that will be binned will never be able to do that. Even the ones that do end up with a child will eventually land in a garbage dump somewhere when the children are done with them. Yes, I know that they're not alive, that there's no "calling" or "reward" for them. Yes, I'm being irrational, probably because of my abusive childhood when all I had was my stuffed companion comfort object to hold as I cried. It just kicks me hard in my sense of what is "fair". Again, I used to believe that if one does one's best, that everything will be all right, that there is a fair and just ending to those who work at it.

There isn't one. There never will be. There are no guarantees in life. Whether you are good or bad, the rain still falls on you when you least expect it. What has been core to my identity and remained unchanged since childhood has been the idea of fairness. However, the world simply isn't fair.

I'm not sure anymore if I have a place in this world or what the value of remaining in it is. The simple act of just living hurts so much these days.

Look Ma, no laptop!

I'm blogging this directly off my Android Nexus One phone, using my Swype soft keyboard. I have to admit, I can't help but be rather impressed by the accuracy of this swipe keyboard. It takes some getting used to but it's doing remarkably well at figuring out what exactly I'm trying to type. Very nifty.

Wow, I guess I've finally joined the generation of the unwired social media junkies.

Still...blogging directly off my phone AND using a swipe keyboard? Quite extraordinary in of itself or at least that's how I feel anyway. I'm also looking into doing some development for the phone. Me developing again - who woulda thunk it?

Okay, time to try and get some sleep. Good night, everyone!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.3.8

Jumping through the Nexus

Our cellphones are both slowly dying. My sister's Treo 680 lasted for about two years before it started glitching. My Blackberry Bold is less than two years old but it's starting to reboot several times a day which is incredibly annoying. So it's time to switch our phones.

I gave my sis my old HTC Touch Enhanced as a replacement but the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS is driving her nuts. She didn't like the WM 6.5 OS either, so I guess that phone's simply a no-go.

I purchased a Google Nexus One as a replacement phone. As we are going into times of financial constricture, I figured I'd better get a decent one as it has to last the next 2.5 years. My gut feel is that it won't but that's true of any phone I get these days - they just don't build them like the used to. Now that I have it (and a new provider to boot), I have to do some fancy talking to switch the plans with my old provider so that we can afford it. We can, if my numbers are correct. We just have to be careful.

My Blackberry's going to my sister. I'm going to hard reset the phone before giving it to her and hopefully that'll fix matters. She's not as heavy a user as I am nor does she use the phone for anything other than voice, SMS and the occasional game or two. I, on the other hand, have it loaded with apps that manage my social networking, to-do lists, call management...you get the idea. With a clean phone, my sis should be fine. It'd drive me nuts though, not having those apps.

I admit that I was torn between getting the iPhone 4 vs. an Android phone. The deciding factor for me was the mobile hotspot capability on Android 2.2 (FroYo). With it, I can go online with any WiFi-eanbled device like my aging first-generation iPod Touch that still has a lot of my PIM and productivity apps on it. I've had my Nexus One for a couple of days now and I have to admit, I'm kind of impressed by it. It's extremely responsive and I don't think I've run into any real lag yet. Browsing on it is a pleasure again - I don't get misclicks that plague me when I use Mobile Safari on my iPod Touch. It's pretty obvious that Android is a mature product and I would even say that it's quite polished. Case in point: when I talk on the phone, the screen goes blank but when I take it off my ear to look at something, it senses that and turns on the display again. I'm not sure if the iPhone has that feature too but wow, that's a pretty good design decision.

Also floating at the back of my mind is the fact that I can easily develop for it. I *hate* XCode with a passion so while I've fiddled with iPhone development, I've never really done much with it. Realistically though, I probably won't be a developer for very long given my current career goals but it's still nice to have that capability.

I've rarely just clicked with a phone before. I think the last one was with a Sony Ericsson T637 or perhaps my Nokia E61. I loved the form factor of the T637 and mobile browsing only became comfortable when I had my E61. For both these phones, I was really excited to get them and I think that enthusiasm covered a multitude of sins. In this case with the Nexus One, my choice was an uncharacteristically cold-blooded and practical choice. So I'm a little surprised that I'm really starting not just like it but love it.

I hope it'll last for the 2.5 years. There's some lean times ahead.

Self-care

I've been pushing myself pretty hard lately, where "lately" equates to "last couple of decades". Now that I'm older, I just don't have the same endurance as I did pulling those all-nighters when I was just a young one. Of course, by the same token now that I'm older, it's unseemly for me to be pulling those all-nighters. Something about keeping a stiff upper lip and not frightening the women and children now that I'm firmly ensconced in the command structure at work. I'm not sure if the Powers That Be necessarily figured out that I qualify to be under the "women and children not to be frightened" segment myself.

Regardless, I've now been told by several different sources that I need to take better care of myself, which involves getting enough sleep (ack!), eating well (ack!), regular exercise (urk!) and managing my stress (ack...wait, what?)

Of course, this is easier said than done. The first three I can manage. The last one I don't have a clue what to do about. Perhaps I should finally get that aquarium I got as a birthday gift filled and populated. Or join a nunnery. Something like that anyway.

So, in a few months, I hope not to be as much of a stresspuppy. Or I'll transmorgify into a gelatinous cube. I'm fine either way although I suspect that the requirement for eating well will be much simplified in the transmorgification case.

Art

Art is very hard to define. What may be priceless art to me might be nothing but pure drivel to you. Oftentimes, this is harmless - you and I may perhaps disagree on the work of an up-and-coming artist where one of us likes the work while the other doesn't. Sometimes, this takes on a darker tint like the book-burnings of old, when oppressive governments willfully destroy knowledge to maintain power. Or the destruction of the places of worship when there is a religious regime change, where whole temples with their amazing artwork and sculpture are burnt and torn down, never to be appreciated by later generations.

However you put it, I believe that each and every one of us has a specific artform that speaks most directly to us. In my case, it's music, food and stories. Music has always spoken to me but if and only if there is the human voice at its core. Pure instrumentals do nothing for me. I can't explain why this is any more than I can explain our purpose for existence; it simply is. The right singer with the right song will evoke strong emotions in me every time. This does not mean that everyone who sings has this power over me; there's a lot of drivel out there.

Gods, I miss being able to sing. :(

Paintings, sketches, still drawings of any form evoke zero responses from me. Nothing. I can look and look but I simply can't relate. Believe me, I've tried - I once spent the better part of the afternoon at the Victoria and Albert museum in London and came away completely unmoved. Sculptures twig my interest meter a tiny fractional amount. I've been at the Louvre and British Museum and found them somewhat interesting. Nothing to write home about in my case though.

I dance but for me that is a very personal expression of who I am and how I feel. I don't expect anyone else to understand this nor have I been able to understand it in others. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate a good dance performance when I attend on. I just can't emotionally connect to it unless if I'm the one dancing. Odd.

I can relate to food. I can relate to the artistry not just in the food itself but also in the presentation and pairing of the foods to wine, even the order in which the dishes are served. This I can understand and it feeds the soul as well as the body.

Stories are core to me though. Music stirs my emotions but stories pique my imagination. I love curling up with a good book regardless of whether it's fiction or not. Strangely, I can't really connect to movies - I'm part of that dying generation of book readers who prefers the story seen through the age-old lens of imagination than that of a movie camera. In fact, I prefer radio serials to movies. I guess I'm not a visual person in that regard.

What sparked this line of thought? I'm working through Torchlight, a computer game that I picked up very recently. This is the first game I've seriously played in a long time, as in years. It's not a memorable game although it's quite fun. While I was playing it this morning, I realized that I was playing on the easiest setting unlike most of my other friends, who crank up the difficulty to maximum every time. I guess I'm more interested in getting to the end of the game and finishing the storyline than the game itself. My sis has a similar outlook even though she doesn't play computer games herself. We used to follow Valkyrie Profile together, where I'd be playing and she'd be watching with one eye while she did her art. The thing that bound us both together was the storyline behind the characters.

In the end, I think we'll find that art, amusements, stories, song, dance and all the millions of expressions lead ultimately to one thing: communication. I think we reach out and want be reached out to. All this allows us to try to understand something that someone else has done, so that we can forget that we are all in the end very much alone in our heads.

Value

I love my Kindle. I've read quite a bit lately and that has lowered my stress levels overall. However, I started thinking about why we have such an interest in fiction and why the real world seems quite bland overall.

If you think about it, our current existence is quite marvelous. We can communicate with each other across great instances. We can get food without having to go out there and kill it ourselves. We can pop food into the microwave and get it cooked within minutes. The level of literacy in developed nations is astoundingly high. We can travel from one side of the world to the other in a little over a day. We know more about the universe than ever before, including what shape it is (toroidal), how old it is (13.7 billion years old) and how will it end (in darkness). Consider then, what our world would look like to someone from, say, the Victorian era. This would be a magical world! So why do we need fiction? Why do we escape from this reality by reading about things that don't exist?

I've pondered this for most of today and it's giving me a headache, so I'm calling it quits with this shallow (less than 72 hours processing time) solution: we need fiction because we crave excitement.

You see, it's not the fact that things are wonderful or magical in the stories we read. It's the fact that things happen that draw us in. It's not limited to just the medium of the printed word either - movies and radio serials have the same effect too. Case in point, my current fascination with the British scifi TV series, Doctor Who - every week, the Doctor and his Companions jump from one dire situation to the next of which the price of failure can range from a bunch of people dying to the entire universe collapsing. I mean, imagine the stress the poor Doctor must be under. He screws up, people die. Lots of people. And I want to escape into that world? What manner of insanity is this? Don't I have enough stress as-is in my current job without seeking more stress in a different universe-depends-on-you position?

Here's the funny part: I do. I do want to escape into these dire situations. If not the Doctor Who universe then some other one. Anything but here. Why? Simple - the stress level is stupidly high but if you do your job correctly, the payoffs are magnificent. Let's face it, if I do my best at my job, I'll get promoted into more of the same. I'm trying to do so, actually. However, if a TARDIS materialized in my room and I get whisked away as a Companion, I'd do it in a heartbeat? Why? Even though it's always a matter of life-and-death, there's excitement and value in doing those heroic things. Here we come to the heart of the matter: it's not the adrenaline rush that we look for, it's the fact that our lives would have meaning.

That's the crux of it: all these stories, the protagonists all live meaningful lives. Most of us don't. We go to our jobs and for most of us, we do it well. But at the end of the day, we go home, most of us to an empty apartment. How does that convey any value in one's existence.

My life has value. I know that. I just need to feel the love from my family to believe that. Is it enough? Well, I'm still reading on my Kindle...

Identity Anchors

*** WARNING: Moody self-discovery entry follows. Liberal use of coffee to fend boredom may be needed. You have been duly warned. ***

I've been feeling adrift in life lately. I've tried to pull out of it by reasserting previous career goals but the world is still bland and gray. However, while driving home on Friday, I realized that this depressive mood has been around for some time now, months and possibly a year or so.

When I got my second chance at life, I made a decision to change a few things about me that I really didn't like, calling my harder edges if you like. In the intervening year and a bit, I've realized that there are some things about me that are core attributes, traits I simply can't eliminate no matter how hard I tried. Having a love for solving tactical and strategic puzzles is an example of something I shall never lose, despite the fact that it's less conformist given my current role. So is my love of science. You would not believe how many requests I get to go speak to various youth organizations about inspiring the young ones with my story of growing up with a focus on science. As some of you know, I didn't grow up that way and requests like that make me very uncomfortable. So, I've declined all these requests, feeling very badly for doing so.

I'm still trying to find my place in the universe. Sometimes, things fit. Most of the time, I'm still a square peg in a round hole.

Knowing one's core attributes isn't quite enough. Attributes don't translate into action, merely the potential for action. Action is needed for Moments to happen. Moments of joy. Moments of sadness. Moments of delight. Little markers of both good and bad we carry with us that mark our life's path through the landscape of this reality and ultimately defines us for who we are through those experiences. No, attributes aren't enough. One also needs identity anchors to direct those attributes.

I've lost the majority of my identity anchors over the past year and half. Some by design and others by circumstance. I'm still an aunt, a parent, a sister, a daughter, a worker, a volunteer teacher and a friend. I've lost my identity as a gamer (stopped playing D&D half a year ago), a dancer (stopped going to ballet class 4 months ago due to health issues), a stargazer (stopped doing amateur astronomy 3 years ago due to sight issues) and a foodie (stopped making dishes after my main surgery almost 2 years ago). In short, I can define my identity by what I do and how I relate to others but I have lost practically all my anchors that define my own identity that reflects joy unto myself. The only thing I haven't really lost is my identity as an avid reader, a joy I have rediscovered with my trusty Kindle.

So, I'm going to kickstart two identity anchors: dancer (resuming my ballet classes immediately) and foodie (going to start making good food again for my family). I'll be resuming these today, beginning with making a hopefully-delicious Bourbon Pecan Baked Brie for my family for breakfast. I'm also going to clear out my room so I can dance at home again. Identity anchors translate Attributes into Action, which results in the creation of Moments. Why do I wish to create Moments?

Moments are always associated with a feeling. Joy. Hope. Inspiration. I do not wish to go into the long night with regrets that I have not experienced life in all its awesome, terrible majesty. I was tightly closed when it came to emotions once. I do not wish to again. Why? I'll put explain it this way: scarcely two years ago, my nephews would have never, ever come by, ka-plonked themselves onto my lap without so much as a by-your-leave and started nattering on about an imaginary creature I've never heard of. Little moments of love and security - these were the fruits I have hoping to taste when I started on that long, dark road to being Cured all those years ago. I have those now, from my family. All I have to do is not lose myself now.

Review: Kindle (Global Wireless)

Well, I've had my Kindle for a number of weeks now and I can definitively say that I made a good call in purchasing it. Currently, I have 200+ books stored on it and I've still got about 80% free space left, so I expect I shall run out of e-books before I reach its storage capacity.

I had my reservations about the black-on-grey e-ink screen. I am partially visually impaired so a high-contrast screen is a matter of necessity. Fortunately, the contrast is fantastic! Yes, the grey background took some getting used to but I think I actually prefer it now to the stark whiteness of fresh paper. Now that I've had my Kindle for a while, I find reading on white paper tiring, a case of having too much contrast.

I've been using e-readers for well over a decade now, pretty much when they first came out. I can remember when I first encountered a brand-new e-reader called Mobipocket on my Palm PDA. :) One thing that surprised me was just how comfortable a non-backlit screen was for reading. I can read for far longer with less eyestrain on my Kindle than on any of my backlit PDAs. I have heard that that was the case before my purchase but even so...wow! Radical difference here. Of course, this also means I can't read in bed with my lights turned off, so I purchased an e-Luminator2 booklight which allows me to read in the dark again. My first one was a dud (the parts kept separating) but when I called their customer service, they sent me another one with no fuss at all. So, two thumbs up for M-Edge - a company has good customer service is a company that cares for their customers and I shall definitely put them at the top of the list should I ever need products like that again.

Oh, I also bought a Latitude jacket for my Kindle which does its job of protecting my Kindle marvelously. I especially like the fact that they've got good, heavy-duty zippers on the thing. Zippers appear to be the first point of failure for most of my items, so it's one worry off my mind. The Latitude won't help if you drop your Kindle or hit it with anything pointy but it does prevent incidental damage from tossing it into your handbag. I don't know about you but I have tons of odd bits in my bag, ranging from harmless items like Pokemon books for the kids to sharp, poky hairpins for ballet. So, having some decent protection does matter in my case.

Back to the Kindle: the battery life on it is amazing. The caveat is that I have to keep my wireless turned off if I want that kind of battery life. I've had it for about half a week now and it's still on the 75% charge marker although I think it'll drop to 50% charge soon. For my usage patterns, I will probably be able to go a full week without charging and I'm a fast, heavy reader. There are many cases on the forums of other folks going nearly a full month without charging. I think that's a bit extreme and probably works for people who read slowly and infrequently. The Kindle draws power when either indexing books, using the wireless or changing pages. I read very fast and I read for long periods of time now, at least an hour a day, easily 3-4 hours on the weekends. Therefore, I draw more power from my Kindle than your average user. A week between recharges is very acceptable for me.

Being a Canadian resident, this means that many features of Whispernet (Amazon's wireless delivery service) aren't available to me. Things like the web browser and blogs, for example. The web browser is terribly slow, if accessing Wikipedia is any indication (yes, Canadians still do have access to the Wiki) so I can't say it's a major loss. Not being able to subscribe to blogs does hurt a bit though - I'm a heavy blog reader, which I use as colour commentary to supplement my daily morning scan of the newsfeeds. Amazon has a $2 surcharge for non-US residents when purchasing any books from their Kindle store. There's no way around it, even if you choose to download the purchase via your desktop Kindle. I just purchase the books and send them wirelessly to my Kindle as I might as well enjoy the convenience if I'm paying for it. I'm a bit miffed with Amazon over this. $2 per purchase seems a bit high even with wireless charges. I don't mind paying a yearly subscription fee for wireless Whispernet service for my Kindle though, should they ever change over to that scheme. Fair's fair - someone's got to pay for the wireless charges and I don't mind doing so if it's fair. Still...$2 per book (about 20% of the typical paperback price) is on the high side and I'm definitely not a fan of this surcharge.

The main thing I'm miffed about is the fact that US and Canadian publishers license their products differently. Finding an older book in Kindle format is tough enough. Unfortunately, there are many books on the Amazon store that are restricted for sale only in the US. I'd say that 3 out of 4 times I actually manage to find a book that I like in Kindle format gets stopped abruptly when I get the "not available in Canada" message. This is why I buy heavily from publishers like Baen books who are smarter than these ones who prefer that their product not be bought than to reform their policies. Let me be clear here: Amazon isn't the issue, it's the publishers of the titles themselves.

Insofar as I know, almost all Kindle purchases are DRM-protected, so they'll work on your Kindle and nowhere else. Should Amazon go belly-up and your Kindle dies, so do all your purchases. This is the major drawback between protected e-books and normal dead-tree books. There are apparently ways around that DRM but I will not comment on that rather contentious issue.

When you first drop books on Kindle either via the USB link or Whispernet, the Kindle will sense a new book and begin indexing it. When you drop a lot of books on it the first time (like I did, about 200+ books), the Kindle's responsiveness drops. I'd recommend loading all your books on it and then leaving it connected to external power for a couple of hours the first time you do so. After that initial indexing, everything is great.

The Kindle does have some weight to it but I got accustomed to it very quickly. The buttons get too loose too fast - most of my buttons already have some wobble to them and it's been less than a month. The buttons depress with a satisfying but quiet thunk sound. The screen flickers black when it refreshes but you get used to it. The 5-way thumbstick controller is responsive and very usable. The UI is decent but takes some getting used to. In short, the Kindle is functional with a very small learning curve, perfect for a consumer device.

Text-to-speech (for the books that have it not disabled) is decent albeit robotic. It comes in handy as the Kindle keeps pace with the vocal output. This means that I can read a book, switch it over to TTS then switch back to reading without losing my spot. Whoever designed this put some thought into it - well done, Amazon!

Bookmarking and locating sections in the books is...odd. The Kindle uses some kind of indexing system that uses two numbers. It's a bit confusing but as long as you remember the first number, you'll get close to where you left off. You can definitely bookmark pages and that's pretty easy to use.

In addition to books, you can also get magazines from the Amazon store. I have been less than impressed by the content. Not all magazines contain the entire print-version of the magazine, only selected articles. You don't get ads...but you also don't get any graphics at all. No charts, no pictures, no diagrams, which makes some content hard to follow. This may not be the case for all magazines but is true for what I've seen. Buyer beware.

Lastly, I'd like to call your attention to two things, dear readers: calibre and Baen books. If you haven't been to either, please do check them out as it'll be worth your time. Calibre is the best e-book management system that I've found so far. Baen is an excellent science-fiction/fantasy publisher that treats their readers with respect and doesn't price-gouge. Plus, they offer their books in multiple formats, all DRM-free. I love that...and I buy a disproportionate number of books from them. If you're an author, especially a new author, please take note: there are many who think as I do. If you want to gain a following quickly, go with a publisher who's smart enough to have an open policy like Baen. I, for one, will take a chance on a new, unknown author on Baen simply because I trust them more than others. If their customer policies respect me enough not to slap DRM or regional restrictions on their books, it stands to reason that they care enough about their customers to only publish the best. So, I buy...from Baen. And I have never regretted even a single purchase after all these years.