iphoting's Sink

Some time back while having coffee with a couple of friends, one of them happened to put the following words together into a sentence, “Thio Li-Ann”, “Teach” and “Human Rights”. We laughed.

Till now, I still can’t help but snigger at the thought.

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate,

but that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,

gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking

so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.

It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine,

we consciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our fear,

our presence automatically liberates others.

Sometimes when I feel like giving up, throwing in the towel, or kicking the bucket, I’ll always read this beautiful prose by Marianne Williamson and be reminded that we’re born to manifest the glory of God within us.

As I’ve have been listening to dance remixes, I always wondered how DJs transition and mix between each track, while maintaining the tempo at a constant. Obviously, with technology these days, it isn’t that difficult but still requires some bit of skill. Imagine the days of turntables and a mixer board only.

I guess DJs are a spontaneous bunch of skilful sound engineers.

One of the things I’m trying very hard to improve is my expression through written and verbal methods. I find it troubling and difficult to express what and how I feel in accurate and concise terms. Unintentionally, it leaves people with an inaccurate impression of what I originally intend to mean. The implications aren’t so bad when the subject-matter is largely technical, but when it comes to things that matter to the heart and soul, unintentional problems and misunderstandings can arise.

Although I’m an INTJ according to some personality tests, I have great passion in trying to empower people I meet to be able to do “meta-learning”. Rather than knowing as much data as possible to be knowledgeable, why not know as many possible methods of seeking out information and solutions instead? That way, whatever problems that you come across, you’ll have the tools and skills to discover the solutions and answers yourself.

As I hand over my work in the current organisation, I’d spent almost all available time trying to impart thinking ability rather than rote-memorisation abilities. The nature of my work is largely ad-hoc problem solving and fire fighting; being able to know how to come up with solutions when you’re out of ideas is the key to surviving comfortably.

Little did I expect however, in the words of Henry Ford, “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it”. I can only resign and sigh, wishing them all the best.

One of my good friends once asked how I seem to be able to have access to timely intelligence information pertaining to everyday life and happenings in the organisation. I’ve always maintained that it’s the result of a robust “Int[elligence] Network”. The concept is extremely simple—people volunteer interesting information of what they see and experience during casual conversations. As long as you do more listening than talking, you’ll be able to gain a wealth of information. It sounds awfully like gossip but it isn’t as long as you don’t volunteer nor listen to unreliable information about other people behind their back.

With a little bit of induction-deduction and a lot of listening, you’ll be able to obtain a lot more information than most people. A plus if you are observant as there’s as much information volunteered as restrained; double-plus if you ask the right questions; triple-plus if you know the right people for the right type information. With a good memory and pleasant working relationships, you’ll be powerfully connected.

So really, these are the little things in office that keep me mentally entertained in an alternative way; true to Apple, Inc’s philosophy—Think Different.

I was glad.

Having been in Australia for 3 weeks, I haven’t been doing much physical training as the conditions, i.e. dust, sand and all, are extremely bad for my asthma. Upon touch down, I must take my IPPT before ORD-ing in just 7 days.

Today is the day I cleared it finally in the far west; To God be the Glory.

Today, something rather bizarre happened. While I was ordering coffee, I felt like having a hot coffee as the environment was rather cold there and drinking something warm would feel good. Little did I realise, I made an order for an iced version instead, without even realising the thought inconsistency. I was offered a packet of sugar which I promptly refused as my drink to come is cold.

It was only when my coffee arrived that I realised that the coffee is cold and that I actually wanted hot coffee instead in the beginning. All these happened within the span of 20 minutes.

This is really bad; I’m severely sleep deprived and still jet lagged. I shall have a sleeping pill tonight and hope that I don’t wake up at 4 am tomorrow morning again, as it has been the last 4 days.

If this still doesn’t help, I need to find a way to reset my Circadian rhythm, fast.

I’m freaking myself out these days as I realised that I can hardly conduct a coherent conversation without pausing too much to think of the appropriate word to use for expression. This is kind of strange as I always believed that my train of thought is based on any language that I have access to. I have thus discovered that it is not entirely so. I can actually think of an idea or concept and not have the words or language to express it without intensive thought.

This isn’t a good ORD present.

Not to mention, I seem to be losing control of my thoughts as they speed past so fast that I hardly know what I just thought about. Not to mention the absentmindedness and really short linguistic memory. It also seems to have a side-effect of causing insomnia. Feels like the mental degradation that I’ve started experiencing since Sec 2. Could it have been OM training that once stretched my mind and that the lack of it now which is causing this mental dystrophy?

Another costly by-product of NS.

With my logical reasoning out-of-control at time, emotional management goes haywire. Things that I don’t have to consciously deal with starts to come in and pile up. Then, my mood gets awfully affected. I’m glad I don’t have the urge to drowning myself in alcohol as it’s an unfortunate positive feedback loop. Imagine feeling depressed and one keeps consuming depressants?

Drives me nuts.

Maybe all the above are just side-effects of my trip to Australia. We had really poor sleep cycles as we were subjected to 26-hour shifts to maintain 24-hour manning of the place. In addition, during the off-shift periods, the only time when it is possible to sleep is during sun-down timings. Coupled with a horrible, narrow and short cot bed, sleep quality is no make-up to the deprived sleep.

Back in Singapore, I still have “Jetlag”, wanting to sleep at 8 pm (10 pm), waking at 4 am (6 am) the next day. I’m trying my best to readjust my sleeping hours by sleeping later, hoping to wake up later, but so far it isn’t successful. I still wake up at ~4 am. I believe that I’m sleep deprived to some extent.

Mental service injuries?

I think my action plan for the next few months immediately after my ORD would be to engage more in thinking conversations or witty games (which I missed since school ended). Maybe (re)learn a language? German or Japanese looks easy enough. I’ve got all the necessary reference materials in my shelf already. In addition, I think musical (re)development would help in some obscure way — I shall give my piano and guitar some good tickles.

Then I was wondering, would rearranging a new bookshelf for my overflowing pile of books help? It sounds pretty fun and would make things a magnitude neater. Hopefully driving some order back into my subconsciousness.

Emotionally, running back into the embrace of our Heavenly Father works all the time. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.

I’ve been doing a comparison between the iPhone and Android platform for quite sometime and have come to an interesting conclusion that not many people seem to have seen.

Before I begin, I shall list some of the key differences between the two platforms and then proceed to demonstrate some parallels to formerly failed or failing platforms.

iPhone is best known by its 100, 000 application strong App Store, closed and managed eco-system, but balanced by very powerful and easy to use SDK. Interface-wise, it’s the first to pioneer large-scale finger only screen manipulations, with a very polished and unified UI. Flicking the screen to scroll a list were rare when the iPhone was first introduced and it brought a revolutionary change in smartphone UIs, and so did pinching. It has a seamless sync capability powered by iTunes, only seen previously on iPods, and formally inspired by Palm’s very own HotSync.

Android on the other hand is like the dialectic twin to the smartphone solution. It also has an app store but it’s open for listing quite freely. Applications are not signed nor controlled — a user can choose to install anything he wants with no restrictions. That’s where the similarities end, if any. The platform offered by Google is rather generic, leaving much of the integration work to the hardware makers. There’s no out-of-the-box sync solution provided by Google’s Android, leaving each hardware maker to come up with their own, and possibly incompatible sync solutions. Also, they are forced to create UIs for their phones for better hardware integration. This leaves each hardware maker to come up with their own set of UI design and philosophy, diluting the visual identity of the Android platform.

Another side-effect for having hardware makers integrate the OS into the phone is that new Android versions from Google cannot be pushed down to consumers immediately, compared to the iPhone OS updates. Individual hardware makers have to reintegrate the OS with their hardware before they can, if they choose to, release to their customers.

With that, the iPhone eco-system reminds me of the formerly glorious PalmOS platform (v4), albeit with tighter application quality requirements, but better development SDK. Unified interface across all applications, large developer community, and that every piece of software written for the PalmOS works on all PalmOS devices. It’s like a Mac, in a handheld form-factor.

Android however, reminds me of the now fractured and declining Symbian platform. With S60 and UIQ3 interfaces as the main branches, applications are largely split between the two due to different display UI philosophies and input capabilities. Although the Android claims to have a JavaVM as a base component, the varying types of input methods and screen capabilities increases the coding complexity for any piece of software. Without direct vertical integration from the OS maker, Google, customers will have a hard time getting the OS in their phones upgraded should the hardware makers choose to give up on them. It reminds me of the Windows Mobile OS and the PalmOS with no upgradability, requiring the purchase of new hardware to stay current in software — it puts customers off.

From the way the two platforms are positioned, I can tell that Apple is marketing the iPhone as a full-fledged miniature computer, while Google is positioning the Android as a software development platform for hobbyists and hackers to tinker around with.

The future I believe thus would lie in the iPhone platform.