Potential

Man. This sudden influx of kids into the gym. All 16-ish, 15-ish. If I had those few years more on me too, I’d have worn the Singapore crest more than once by now. I’ve got ah-neh who’s like 17 this year ahead of me on the numbers board. These kids brimming with youth behind me. The only edge I’ve got over them is possibly my technique, which is due to my constant self-scrutiny. I note what I do right, wrong, what is optimal. I’m playing a brains over brawn. I don’t have the freakish strength of ah-neh. Nor do I have the time to spare like the kids. But what I do have is that I’ve been through enough of life to know that to succeed, you have to learn. Fast.

I’ll medal before they do.

Perso-eval 310309

I still seek solace online. I don’t write nor organise my thoughts and plans properly enough. I should analyse, but not till I paralyse myself. Everytime I get home, I flip on the switch, hook up and log on. Its like a daily ritual, it’s this need to be connected even when the time should be better spent. This habit must go and it must go now. The time around dinner or for the first 15-20 minutes when I’m home should be leisure time, time to unwind. After that it should be back to business. Limited time and energy, unlimited issues to address.

It’s making the best of each day, ensuring none passes with regret.

Third time’s the charm. Lets make it happen.

Trying one more time.

我。Me. Thats the only thing that when you invest in, the returns go directly to you. It represents the “I” in investment.

自我返醒。Self evaluation. Righting my wrongs.

random quick post to clear my head.

I need to sleep earlier. I really really must. I also have to stop wasting time just wandering around cyberspace. Especially youtube. Like holy shit. The shit of shits. LOL.

Today was good I guess. Woke up, read some, went to meet the lovely VP for dinner whilst bearing flowers. I’ve read so much recently and I can safely conclude that my current nootropic rotation is good. Whilst being able to absorb information quicker and better isn’t the be-all or end-all of anything in life, it does help.

Like cancer, success is a multi-factorial process. You need the c-Sis gene to be outta control, the PDGFR, ras gene and the like for cancer to manifest itself. Just one mutation or one oncogene won’t give you cancer. Like wise, one factor against you won’t hold you back. Neither will a singular factor favouring you help you. Something only swings things your way when there are already a number of favourable factors or aligned circumstances that the last one just tips it your way. It wasn’t the determining factor–there isnt one. But there are determining factors. It’s not in the I or me, its in the we… in a rather abstract sense.

Somehow, I feel closer, confide, trust and understand someone better than any of my previous girlfriends. Like even in my last tumulus relationship, the first person I though of wasn’t my girlfriend at the time. I mean rather than looking at it from the usual everyone-getting-attached point of view, I was more in search of someone to fill an emotional void. I just was looking for a familial association. Looking back, it was just being emotionally dumb. Very. So much so, I’ve seemed to acquire a tendency to blog about this same damn topic in several posts. Perhaps its a subconscious way for me to remind myself not to make the same mistake.

Turning to my training recently, like rather, yesterday, I really need to focus and zone in. When I’m at the platform with the barbell, I’m there to get better, not to regress. Not to fret over what will I do in NS, will I lose my strength, will my pubes fall off, will I get a chance to read, will I get fat from inactivity and constant feeding… Everything is irrelevant, except for what I’m to do at that single moment in time. Everything that occurs outside that period of time is irrelevant.

On a different front, maybe I’ve been searching for what’s always been infront of me. Like my settling on pursuing medicine after considering other career options. It was my first choice when I was a kid. Perhaps its the same now after seeing some and realising what is and isn’t for me.

random poem // shamboo feat. darkness

The few good moments stay,

I wish too they would go away.

I can’t let myself be caught in this fray,

No I can’t.

I can’t let my heart be hers to play.

I don’t want to be her rag doll again,

beat-up and torn just like yesterday.

I thought it was over, but now lost in a fall,

it’s like wading through broken glass,

on my knees in a bleeding, bloody crawl.

Turning point.

Its the first time in two years I’m actually spending my January single. Haha. It’s a strange feeling. I think I’m enjoying it as it is.

I’ve gotten back to reading, hardcore. Between now and my University, I plan to finish studying my Microbiology and Organic Chem texts, my Anatomy texts, guides and everything I can get my hands on. I’ve spent so much time on this already, I am passionate about spending more time so I will spend more time.

I’ll take this time like a cocoon. I’ll bide my time and ready myself. These 2 years. 2 years could take me through JC again. Through a relationship again. I will spend these two years making myself the best I can possibly be at my endeavour of choice.

I need to decide.

Once again, it’s still the weaning period of coming off a relationship. Whining is a major constituent.

I really have to decide which is really me. Whether I’m coming off fine, realising that this just means I get to meet someone better, that I’m not trapped in an unhealthy relationship. Alternatively, I could decide upon feeling I’ve got my guts vacuumed out and I feel hollow inside. Decisions, decisions.

Lets put it this way, I’m thinking of things in the manner for the former, however I feel the latter. My frontal cortex tells me its good to be set free. No more messy arguments over nothing and reach no real conclusion. My limbic lobe makes it feel like I’ve lost a family member. Someone who used to care and share(care as in her grades and complexion; share how one moment she hated her mum and the next blamed me for bad mouthing her(mum) when all I did was listen).

Writing it out and stashing it here keeps more from deciding to let these negative emotions overwhelm me, driving my to put on black eye liner and paint my nails black. Sooner or later, this has to go. There has to be more than this. I’ll take it as her loss, not mine. She’ll always rationalise about what kind of housing you have and which school’s uniform you wear in determining if you’re good or bad. I hope that leads her to what satisfies her.

Munkehluurve.+ 2008 YIR(year in review)

I simply love Robert M. Sapolsky’s work. Nothing short of brilliant. Its not just breath-taking, it’s vacuum-cleaner-in-your-mouth breath-taking.

I intend to finish reading all his works before I enlist.

I also intend to get a new pair of specs with my first paycheque. I’m really looking forward to this. This year has started off much better than the last. It really does mark a New Year in every sense.

2008 was an awful year. It was like 2007 part 2. 2007 was good until the 9th of January where I totally threw my better judgment out the window. After a rocky start to 06 and a much stronger finish, I was ready to take on 07. Then a chain of events starting with E(vil) and ending with E just took me through the darkest period of my life. When I needed her the most in November 08, she was my light. I gave it all I had for those 3 long weeks.

I pray it’d be enough.

2 days after the last paper, we parted ways. Perhaps, god kept her in my life for the period I would need her the most.

I tried my hand at returning to Kendo, which ended the same way my first time did, with my ankle flaring up. LOL. That was awful. I spent a lot of time soul searching, wondering what do I really want to do. In the end I realised that what I wanted to do in life, was the very first thing I wanted to be. That all my life, I was building up to it. Maybe not now, but soon, I intend to be on my way, god willing.

I don’t believe the 10000 hour rule is the great equaliser, however, if you put 10000 hours into something, you sure as hell won’t suck. 1 hour every day of a year is only 365 hours. At that rate, you’d have to work for approximately 27.4 years to meet your requirement. Assuming you start at 13, you’d be over 40. Spend 2 hours a day, and that time is halved to about 13.7 years. Spend 4 hours a day and it’d be halved to about 6.8 years. How far and fast you progress can be affected by how much you put into it. I’ve realised over 08, how I feel naked and helpless without a book in my hands. Reading, learning, knowing gives me a sense of control over my destiny. Constantly being dragged out of bookstores, being told if I failed one test I should expect to fail the rest, being told I should just do any degree at any university. Just being told to be less, being told to settle for less. It was poisonous. Now I just want to get back on my feet. I want to meet with my friends, old and new. I don’t want to be held only to one person. Especially when that one person wasn’t the sum of the others.

It’s not about becoming disillusioned, it’s about realisation (as I’ve reused “I realised” several times) about what should and shouldn’t be.

Now to 2009. I mightn’t reach my eventual goal the fastest, but I sure as hell intend to stay the best the longest when I do. Jon and Derrick seem to have more faith in me than I do. Even jet-lagged and somewhat muffled under fatigue, Jon still told me with absolute exuberance and sincerity that I’d be very good at what I hope to do in the future. It’s amazing how as E(leeez) eased her way out of my life(well not really eased per se) so many other positive catalysts returned to my life or came into it. Naddy, Rish, V.P., Jon, Derrick, the “Y”, Joelle, A. Ching, the Lord, in all honesty, the list goes on and on. Also, that my old man’s been supporting me all the way thus far, I wonder how on Earth can I repay that much favour.

All I can do is to pray as hard as I can that I do as well as I can so that I can take the next step.

Outliers, which set of data ought to be thrown out? Part 2

Malcolm Caldwell. Now I know his name. I used to remember him as the Spaghetti sauce man with the ‘fro. He wrote this book, outliers. That great people, were not born with exceptional gift, but reached their final destinations through meaningful work(finding your passion).

I personally think his take on outliers is a continuation of mine. That for instance you could be the bio geek who’s into weightlifting and if you disregard being outside the societal norm, along with meaningful work, you could become something never before achieved. He brings up this 10000 hour rule, that’s what seperates the good from the great and the good from the average.

Now people online, tend to take the 10000 hour rule as an absolute. For instance, lets say you’re an Olympic Weightlifter. You’ve gotta make 10000 hours. So… 10000 hours in what? Competition? Training? Preventive Physiotherapy? Studying of Russian training texts? It shouldn’t be taken at face value. 10000 hours of accumulated work over a variety of factors contributing towards a singular final goal. I got into strength and resistance training pretty late, when I was 13. Kids in China literally start as kids, at 7 or 8. I didn’t start dabbling in Olympic Lifting till I was 17/18 and only started receiving guidance when I’m 19. Now during that time, I’ve done other things that contribute to my singular goal, let say, medalling at the Singapore Open(The Nationals for Weightlifting). These would include hours upon hours of reading and study basic biology, microbiology, biochemistry, anatomy, physiology. Books, Textbooks, Research papers–I’ve read every kind. So my knowledge in that area contributes to my goal, from a different avenue. Yes, it’s true, a lone individual can never beat a state run institutionalised training programme. However, no one knows your body better than you do, what more if you’re armed with the knowledge of how it works.

The above illustration was purely hypothetical and has very little relation to me in reality.
Now let’s talk about Science, in this case biology. Again.

The case study: “Fickle mice highlight test problems”

Assuming that you replicate the exact environment, timing and genes in mice and when the results are not what you’d expect, you throw the outliers out. In a sense, experiments are done not to find out why, but to support a hypothesis. Its like blowing into a vacuum cleaner. It’s like trying to work towards fulfilling a self fulfilling prophecy, when you find out it ain’t true, you think you did something wrong. Instead, you should have realised the prophecy was all bullshit, as is blowing into a vacuum cleaner to make it suck more. No pun intended. The scientists all thought that having similar genes were the be all end all and having a similar environment. However, when life(Biology) shows you it’s more complex, you pretend it’s a simple algorithm of factors. That there’s more to environment and genetic influence. Its more complex. That a 5% deviation from test to test would be acceptable, but when the deviance is like running 3 different tests on a kangaroo, a cow and psyduck, the interaction of genetic and environmental factors might have more to do with who we are than we thought. Assuming some tests were at a higher altitude, that would have made a difference. Or the differing effect of gravity over different parts of the United States. These slight changes are enough to make things completely different. Which is why, if we are 98% genetically identical to chimps yet are so different from each other(as in human and chimps and between two different people), doesn’t the answer now poke its head out of the daisy patch:

The complex interaction of environment on genetic factors and the genetic response to different environments moulds us.

Stay tuned for part 3. Sleep calls.

I’m just trying to sort my head out. Still.

Its strange how unproductive I can get. I need to make reading a habit again. I need to stop thinking about writing emails because I’ve had something sweet to say. LOL.

Multiple things about readjusting. Previously I was throwing things out of my life. Now I’m putting them back in. Things I won’t give up a second time will be my nucleus of close friends and my books. I have never let go of my training, because in a sense, the pain is a release. Like doug said, if I wasn’t into sports, I would probably cut my wrists all day and savour the pain. To me, especially in my chosen sport of weightlifting, the pain is a privilege. If you’re a pussy, you’re not going to enjoy it. If you’re weak, it’s a reminder. If you keep coming back for more, welcome to the club.

Monkeyluv is a good book. Its the money. Clinical Examination by Talley&Connor was a brilliant read. Will go back to the library to read more. Sadly though, its in the reference section.