Aha! Long time since I last posted. That’s because I had 2 very crazy assignments. I finished the last one in less than 12 hours, when most people take a month to do. Hah, beat that folks.

Anyways, I’ve long wanted to write on this topic, since the last incarnation of my blog actually, but never got round to writing it. But since Hangmen so graciously rickroll’d me in one of my previous posts, I thought I’d sit down and write an article about this.

Well, I’ll start off with a question a blog commenter once asked me: what do I think about love?

Nothing much really. I admit its an important part of my life. Very, but I don’t think very much of it. What is love to me then?

Personally, I don’t think my idea of love is the same as most people’s. Then again, with each unique intepretation of the concept of love, I doubt if anyone’s is the same. I think when you love a person, you don’t want that person to go thru bad things, and you try as much as possible to prevent bad things from happening to that person. You want the best for that person, you want that person to be genuinely happy. There is no reason, no motive for it, except that care for that person.

There is a girl I really really love. Let’s call her PS for now. We went through a very great time together, PS and I. Then there was a fall out. She and I had different concepts of what it means to care for her. She requested I leave and denied to herself that we ever had anything. And so I did. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love her. I gave her what she wanted - if my presence or memory of me makes her unhappy, best leave her to make her happy. But any time she ever needs me, I’ll always be there for her. It can be 100 years into the future, but I’ll still be there.

At this point, people usually go ‘dude… move on‘. Well, thats where most people got it wrong I suppose. I moved on :). My rule is simple: I am there only when she wants me. A word, and I’m there by her side. Otherwise, I go along doing my stuff.

It’s that simple. Love is without attachment. Only when you can let someone go, and yet you still sincerely care about the person’s well being, can you say you’re in love without attachment. Otherwise, its just tainted with selfish attachment.

To me, love is incorruptible. It can be mixed with feelings of attachment (you know, the “I so want xxx to be here right now” or the “I miss xxx…” ), but it cannot be corrupted. True love always prevails. It’s like a marathon, not a hundren metre sprint. You can’t corrupt that feeling of love for a person - the feeling that you want that person to be happy, even if it means its to your own disadvantage. That feeling that says “I want xxx to feel the best of her life, be the happiest she can be”. Even if it kills you to make her happy, you’d do it on your own. That’s true love, and that’s incorruptible. That’s how I feel about some peoples in my life (think my family members, PS, Xingyi, etc).

Personally, I think that many people’s idea of love is somewhat distorted by their sense of personal want (for a lack of batter words). Open your hearts and open your minds. And this is looking at you, guy-living-upstairs. Give her space.

I won’t admit that I haven’t been through phases of attachment to PS. I did. Way too many times. But after a series of introspection (I do that quite a lot), I realized that my attachment to her will not give her peace of mind, neither will it give her happiness, so I took off. Yes, even I am susceptible to that occasional attachment (which quite often leads to a few impulse purchases - one of which I will talk about in the next blog post). But yes. I still love PS, and my stance is as stated as above - as soon as she needs me and voices it, I’ll be there. Otherwise, I stay away.

Ah well, move along now - I’ve gotta pack some stuff. Tell me what you think about love ya?

HOLY SHIT! I saw Indiana Jones last night and I loved every moment of it. Its a very different Indiana Jones, but it’s still him all right.

spoiler warning: From hereonin, there will be a lot of spoilers. Continue Reading »

In effort to pop back from the horrible horrible writer’s block I am facing now, I’m going to write on my favourite cooking utensils. No, I’m not mad, just need to get back in the habit of writing. Ugh.

So, I’ll begin a countdown.

5. The Pot
   The pot is good for cooking large amounts of liquids, such as soups. I use the pot to cook curries mostly. Because of its deep walls, you can fry things (which are mostly requisites of making curries) without them sputtering out. Also, the pot is useful when cooking large amounts of things, like rice. I’ve used the soup pot to make rice (for 10 people), curries, and soup.
4. The rice cooker
   The rice cooker does what it says - cooks rice. It cooks rice by means of steaming your rice. This also means that its an excellent steamer for those who need one. Most rice cookers come with steaming legs. You add water, lay down the steaming legs, and put your platter on top of the steaming legs, and steam your food. In my house, we have a basic rice cooker/steamer, but you can get really really fancy ones (ahem, Japan), with options like fuzzy logic (to control how moist you want your rice to be, etc).
3. The Saucepan
   The saucepan is often mistaken for a small pot. Well, basically, a saucepan is the bastard child of a pot and a normal pan/skillet. I use the saucepan a lot since I cook instant noodles quite often. But also, the saucepan is a very useful utensil to say, boil eggs, or cook small portions of liquids (like your Campbell soup). Here’s a protip: when you want to cook things quickly, put the lid down. Why? You’ll basically create a pressure system inside the pot, and while not as powerful as a proper pressure cooker, cooks things faster. I’ve used the saucepan to cook rice in it too.
2. The Non-stick Pan.
   All props go to DuPont for inventing Teflon. The non-stick pan is a life-saver. I fry my eggs, and basically anything that can be fried in it. Bacon sticks to the pan? No problems. With the teflon coating, it also means less oil is used to fry things, and also means healthier food. The non-stick pan is my second most used cookware.
1. The Wok
   Anyone who cooks would have to agree with me that the wok is amongst if not the most flexible cookware ever. It’s like a frying pan, but with a higher wall. The wall is high, but not steep, which allows a lot of breathing space for the foods in the wok, and also, because it has a high wall, oil will not sputter when you fry things. Also, the wok has many uses. Because of its large capacity, you can cook a lot in it. I’ve cooked curries with a wok, stir-fried vegetables as well as steamed things in a wok. Yes, I’ve basically described all the functionalities of the above cookware, and they can all be done using a wok. So why don’t I use it all the time? For one, there is only one wok in the house, and I don’t cook only one dish. So, go figure.

Now, tell me, whats your favourite cookware?

This article started as a review of Iron Man, but I had a writer’s block midway through, and couldn’t complete the review. So I’m gonna talk about a few things as well. Continue Reading »

Dear Readers,

This is what I think you’re made of:

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I like telling stories. I can imagine telling them to my kids in the future (the wife would probably have heard most of them when I was courting her).

Here’s a retelling of a koan:

Once upon a time, there was a man, who sauntered up to a jacaranda tree. He sat underneath it, and contemplated life, the universe and everything else. He meditated on the subtle emptiness of things.

It was winter, and the scenery was dead-looking. After some time, out of a sudden, the man beneath the tree is sprinkled with a shower of purple flowers. He was surprised, as there wouldn’t be flowers at this time of the year. He looked up and saw a few gods above him, sprinkling flowers at him.

He said: Thank you!

The gods say: No, thank you, for giving us such a great lesson about emptiness! (These were polite and humble gods, unlike the typical image of an arrogant god)

He said: I said nothing. I gave no discourse on emptiness.

They said: You said nothing, we heard nothing. There was no discourse on emptiness. That was true emptiness that we experienced. That was the teaching of what experience of emptiness is. That is true emptiness. For that we thank you.

And the gods zoomed back into their heavens, leaving the man amused and in a rain of flowers.

And thus ends the story. BRB. I’m going to sit under the jacaranda trees in front of my house. See you guys later!

Economics people like to think at the margin. Yoram Bauman even made a joke out of this - “I’m going to buy an orange, I’m going to buy another orange, I’m going to buy another orange - ”

So do I. Of course, I don’t buy one orange at a time; my margin unit for fruits is usually the mass of it (1/2 kg of oranges is at the margin already) . Ah, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about.

A few days ago, I got an email saying that a department in uni had wanted to get rid of some furniture, including some very comfy chairs. Most people on MSN know that I’ve been complaining about my chair, and my intention to go to OfficeWorks to get a new one. So when such an opportunity arose, why not just go grab a free chair?

So yesterday, a few friends and I went to grab some furniture. There were many (more than 20) identical chairs that were up for grabs. And so we each took 2. I took… 4.

The reasoning is simple - assuming that carrying the chairs back is like a production, carrying two chairs back isn’t marginal. You don’t really incur an extra cost carrying more chairs, but you do lose out on opportunity costs (i.e. more chairs in this case). But with 4 chairs, its at the bottom of of the U curve. Carrying one extra chair would incur an extra cost (in time and effort - the chairs are free anyways).

Here’s a marginal cost curve:

As you can rightly see, the cost of ‘producing’ chairs decreases as the number of chairs ‘produced’ per person approaches 4. ‘Produce’ any more than 4 chairs, and the cost will significantly increase. Okay, perhaps this graph isn’t useful in this case. The MR-MC graph would be more useful… but I’ll talk about that later.

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