Exits on the LJ Tollway

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Why I Love My Job
Sent by one of my employees today without the benefit of spell check:

Heads up. Monday at our confrince I plan on bitching, wining, crying, pissing, moaning, throwing a temper tantrum, saying its not fair, holding my breath until I turn blue, and claming that every one is picking on me. Be sure to get plenty of sleep on Sunday so you are rested and chipper on Monday. I need you to be sympathetic and supportive. Because I have no one else who will listen to me vent about all if this @#&%. Then 10 minutes after I leave forget 99% of what I said because again I just need to get it off my chest and take all of my anger and frustration out into the world instead locking it up (see I do listen to you) So all in all, I will bitch cry and wine and your job is going to be to be nice, build me up even if its all lies and bull shit, tell me crap I need to here and act like you care and are listing then forget what I said. Thanks so much I am filling better already just thinking about it. See ya then

Freedom Evolves

Short talk: there was a performance night at DRAM Projects yesterday, with some performing poets from Belfast. I FORGOT TO ATTEND. I THOUGHT IT WAS TONIGHT. I WAS CONFUSED. I am very sorry!

I'm pretty much done with the first few chapters of Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves. The later chapters of his book deal with his predicted consequences for positing his theory of free will being a product of evolution from the perspective of philosophy, science, and ethics. I confess that his discussions in the later chapters are beyond my depth: he is debating with people who have fairly advanced knowledge of philosophical discussion of determinism vs. free will and various theories of evolution, and most of the stuff required to even begin a proper understanding of his ideas are stuff that I don't have at the moment (I am a n00b, I found April's article on Evolution in New Scientist extremely ~*fascinating*~ stuff).

My background to the discussion of free will is theological; specifically Christian theology. In Christianity the big issue is the problem of free will in the question of salvation. Since the basic, simplified and simplistic message of Christianity is that a divine being, Christ, was incarnated in human form to die for human sins and that all who believe this message receive God's pardon for their sins, then the complex question arises: since God is all-knowing, does He choose who He decides to save in the first place? Wouldn't that be uhm, kind of unfair?

The debate has divided the Church into two theological stances: Armenianism and Calvinism. (digress: a lot of people believe that the big split between Christianity is that of Protestants versus Catholics. I can assure you that in terms of theological understanding and belief, there is almost no real argument. The split is purely political, and has to do with traditions of the Catholic Church and how much people agree with them, not with any real theological issue). Calvinism believes that God chooses who He wants to save, Armenianism believes that Free Will exists and salvation is a human choice. Simply put, of course. Calvinism has been considered by many to be a vicious and self-righteous doctrine. As I was more familiar with pro-Calvinism debates in my teenage years, I think that such a brushing off of Calvinism is a bit of a simplified misrepresentation; but then again, the pro-Calvinists I knew did tend to be a bit self-righteous (well! poison!) =/.

None of the last two paragraphs that I had just written about have anything to do with Freedom Evolves. I simply wanted to provide you with the kind of background to free will vs. determinism that I come from. Freedom Evolves does not touch anything close to the Christian theological debate about free will vs. determinism, but it does provide fresh insight -- potential groundwork, in other words -- from a non-partisan perspective that is very interesting for philosophers, theologians, scientists, and artists.

Dennett does not attempt to solve the logical problem caused by the clash of determinism vs. free will; at least, he does not begin his argument from there (he deals with it later in his third or fourth chapter, but even though he phrases it in a more approachable style, it's still beyond my grasp to debate). Rather, Dennett steps away from the clashes and decides to do a little bit of observation and study on his own. The product of it is a theory grounded upon the natural world, stating that free will is the result of something evolved.

( Read more... )

The Emo Me
Today, I realised just how fucked up my life is. Not that it is worse that some folks but frankly, it was all due to me and my choices. A friend once did a single card reading thing and my question was "Do I always have to do things the hard way?" It said "no" immediately but I sure don't do any other way. Oh well, I'll keep on and see where I go next.

Current Mood: depressed

Steephill
Hey roadgeeks,
Have any of you been on this road?

A friend introduced me to this from her photos of a recent trip to Kings Canyon National Park here in California.

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: Road Trippin' - RHCP

Sassy
I thought putting my 10 year old girl on an airplane, with no attendant adult, to fly off for camp was weird. But this morning I got up, dressed, showered, and kissed my girl goodbye to report for jury duty - leaving her home. Alone.

Beyond weird.

When did this girl grow up?

She is so beautiful I ache.

Tuning off

But first: Jerng called up his old teacher, who then requested him to write a short skit. The result is an untitled little piece that I call The Computer and St. Paul. He rarely writes creative things, but when he does, they're always very bizarre, yet somehow very fun (the last time he wrote something creative was years ago, and it involved a family living under a colony of mushrooms).

In the days prior to the general elections I wrote a fair bit about politics, or rather, my feeling being oppressed under politics. After the elections, I stopped. This does not mean that the situation has gotten better. This only means that the situation has gotten so overwhelming that I have simply tuned off.

Not a day passes by without some kind of stunning news of chaos on the political front in the country. From controversies resulting from increasing awareness of East Malaysians regarding their economic conditions (all of which involve a fair amount of death threat) to actual murder and naming of new witnesses (involving some very high-ranking people) to the (very likely false) accusation of a key figure in the opposition parties of sodomy and his subsequent taking refuge in an embassy ala Zimbabwe (death threats and such), well. We're still dealing with petrol prices, to say the least.

I am writing this simply to inform you, especially readers not from Malaysia, that these are the conditions that I am living in right now: situations of great political and economic uncertainty. They have immediate and non-immediate impact on my life. But at this point I do not consider them worth sweating over -- not because of their lack of importance, but because of my inability to handle all these things at one go -- and I have simply tuned off.

Normal life, or some semblance of it, and normal blogging will resume in a few more hours (I was actually planning to write about turning thirty; I suppose that will have to wait until later).

Poetry Slam 3
Well, I was kicked out in the first round of the poetry slam. This was unsurprising (in the karmic way); you only get what you give (most of the time), after all.

(made long entry, decided to scrap it and write something more succinct)

I guess there's nothing else to do but continue practising.

I'm not upset; more or less, I'm uncertain as to how I should feel and react. I'm not sure as to how I should respond emotionally. I know what my response is intellectually, though: I think that there will be some solidifying going on as I start to grow more comfortable with the stage on the kind of style that suits me best (whether I win or lose with it). I've already developed a pattern for the kind of poetry I choose to perform; along with having developed a technique in writing poetry. Now the question is communicating it and public acceptance.

Here's the thing: rules of the game is data. Audience reaction, favourable or not, is data. Currently I am processing data by making comparisons between different audiences and different stages; there is very little emotional attachment to it.

Things Considered:

1. Proscenium stages (note: I need to be corrected if I am wrong; the Pentas 1 space isn't exactly the proscenium I was taught about) are extremely harsh environments for poetry slams. There is a strong division between the audience and the performer because there is a division of space, and the audience can hide in the darkness. Pubs and bars are still the best, followed by box theatres, streets the third best, cafes (depending on the time of the day) not so good (comatose audience).

Edit: It's proscenium. And the stage rule seems to be true; Def Jam has a thrust stage.

2. Virgin crowds are the toughest because they are the most arbitrary. Seasoned slam/reading patrons will know what to expect and know what they like. People coming in just to check things out for the first time are hard to predict; in fact, it's likely that they will develop their taste along with the slam session. Mean (in the mathematical sense) marks were significantly higher at the end of the slam than in the beginning.

Battlestar does it again
I know that I am one of many that eagerly anticipate the next episode of Battlestar Galactica. Well two weeks ago, they finally made it to Earth, and what a surprise that was. They dragged it out to 10 episodes, after making us all wait from May 2007 to April 2008 just to resume the search. Furthermore, they still have not revealed the final Cylon model...

Well they have done it again! I looked at IMDB to see when Episode 11 will air, and now it says January 2009!?! Are you kidding me, they are making us wait another six months after only giving us a half season, most of which dragged (esp. episodes 2-7!). What a disappointing development, SCIFI's stock with me has gone down with this...

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: laptop cooling fan hum

Data processing / Business consultancy; international commodity
Good morning / noontime! I am still unprepared for my poetry slam tonight!

Last night I went for a mamak session with Jerng, who was with Joanna (Shakespeare) and several other people whom I was meeting for the first time. All of them are high academic achievers from top ranking US universities, and all of them are either working in, interning, or considering work in consultancy.

The premise for business consultancy is really dodgy-sounding: you get a bunch of young top achievers in academia and hire them as advisors for a business or a project run by a particular business. Dodgy-sounding premise for a business turns out to have churned really big bucks. Really big international bucks, actually. Naturally questions arise as to whether certain projects even need any of these consultants. Jerng mentioned that sometime ago there was a scandal involving a particular project that paid its consultants RM 20,000 per month, per head. Response by someone else: this is an average rate for a consultant (you have to consider the exchange rate).

So here's the picture that I get. Project A is planned by Government of Country X. Government of Country X does not have the expertise, or does not have the resources to scour for the expertise, in order to run Project A. Government of Country X hires Firm B to advise on how to run Project A. Project A is completed. Hence, money from Government of Country X goes to Firm B, Firm B completes the project, and so although it may seem as if Government of Country X has completed the project in reality it is just Firm B completing Project A on the physical boundaries of Country X.

Sounds like a lot of skyscraper projects in Kuala Lumpur, yeh?

The question is purely nationalistic. At what point can Country X stake a claim on any part of the reality of the process in Project A? Where is containment? Of course we can go the usual way and talk about porous and permeable imaginary boundaries and nations as pure mythmaking, but the reality is that there certain things which we consider 'property of Country X' and some which we do not; our physical activities demand that. We know that when Country X holds physical commodities that are for manufacturing, the process is fairly linear; either Country X is the source of raw material that is sold in bulk and cheaply, or Country X is the manufacturer of material that is sold in lesser quantities (relatively) and for a very high price. When it comes to that new-jangley fangley Nineties catchword, K-economy, the process is less linear. Firm B may or may not employ citizens of Country X in order to aid Project A. When Country X pays Firm B, it pays for the knowledge of its employees.

Lesson learned: knowledge is an international commodity, and unlike oil palm plantations or petroleum, highly fluid.

Question: how expensive / valuable is this commodity? Is it valuable enough to shake entire structures of society / notions of country?

Question: If so, how can a government control and gain ownership of this commodity?

See: Professor Wang Gungwu's lectures and notes on what a country needs to provide its people with.

Current Mood: lol lol

Why pay for health care when you can pay for a war instead??
U.S. Senate rejects Medicare bill, physician reimbursement rate cut to go into effect July 1
Published by Rhonda under BRIEFLY

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate rejected bipartisan legislation on Thursday that would have halted a physician fee decrease as well as improvements to Medicare benefits for lower-income patients.

By a vote of 58 to 40, the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (HR 6331) was two votes shy of the required amount to proceed to the Senate floor for final enactment. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) voted in favor of the legislation.

Provisions in the bill included access to affordable prescription drugs for low-income older adults, adjustments to co-payments for mental health patients and better drug coverage for mental illnesses, cancer, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, auto-immune diseases and transplant patients, according to Smith’s Web site.

As a result of the Senate’s decision, a 10.6 percent pay cut for doctors who serve Medicare patients will go into effect on July 1. More than 1.5 million elderly adults and people with disabilities risk being dropped from programs that aid in helping them pay their premiums and prescription drugs, according to the Medicare Rights Center, a New York-based consumer service group.

Oregon physicians may be faced with the decision to release current Medicare patients or choose not to take on additional individuals as a result of the reimbursement rate cut, according to Oregon’s Congressional delegation.

“I am extremely disappointed that Republicans and Democrats were unable to come together to pass a bill vital to the health and welfare of America’s seniors,” according to a prepared statement from Smith. “I hope a compromise can be reached swiftly so seniors will not lose access to their doctors.”

Smith recommended that the Senate pass a short-term extension to head off the impending Medicare cut.

Meanwhile, Wyden, who “strongly supports” the Medicare act, expects the measure will return to the Senate after legislators return from their July 4th recess.

“Sen. Wyden believes we need to pass this act [after the recess] or we are going to run the risk that without adequate compensation some providers may stop seeing Medicare patients,” said Tom Towslee, state communications director for Sen. Wyden.

The measure needed 60 votes to pass the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) – realizing the vote was going to fail on Thursday evening – switched his vote to “No” so that he could call the bill up at a later date. Therefore, the measure was one vote short of being adopted. On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the same bill by a vote of 355 to 59.

Link here: http://www.brieflynews.org/

This is the only time

muffybolding.

It's a bit blurry but you can still see my silver wing of hair. And the wall out my office window.

I much prefer this:

And this:

Time? what is time?
IRONY OF LIVEJOURNAL:
Writer's block - "Talk about a habit you just cannot break"

I have a poetry slam tomorrow! I have no poetry prepared! I wanna go for Readings in the afternoon!

And Jerng just called me and asked if I want to hang out, and I haven't seen him in a while, so I'm off!

I will miraculously cook up my poetry in the eleventh hour before the slam, as usual!

Edit: Meet-up was good! Met many new strangers. Didn't catch their names, but caught a lot of information by listening to their conversation. Everyone around the table is a consultant. I am my natural self: I am a bum.

~~Not going to do any poetry or rehearsing tonight. Good night!~~ I can't even keep a promise of being lazy to myself! Guess what I am doing? I just completed a new poem, and I am rehearsing!

Current Mood: headdesk

Danny and

lastwater leave with their merry pack of kiddles on Friday while my own bit of kiddle won't return until Saturday. They return a day after mine leaves for California. But in a desperate attempt to get my own fair share of Roo-time, I am stealing their middle child and fleeing to Redlands, CA for a week near the end of July. I am already dreaming of soaking in the hot tub while the twins splash and crash in and out of the pool, dancing and whirling through the wonderland that is my parent's yard.

Tomorrow I am having 12 inches taken off my head. And it will still be at my shoulder blades. I had 8 taken off 6 months ago; all 8 grew back with a vengeance.

DC & Boston, here i come
Work has determined that I will indeed be going to Boston from August 10-12th for the Affiliate Summit. I will be arriving in the early afternoon on the 9th, so hopefully that will give me enough time to visit my aunt and grandparents, AND Wellesley before heading over to the invitational dinner that evening. (If only I could squeeze in a Red Sox game!)

I'm also 90% sure I'm going to DC the first weekend in August for Swing Fling, where I will be competing in Jack & Jill and Pro-Am Strictly.

I had more to say, but I can't remember. I blame the lack of Coke. (By the way, this is DAY 30 without ANY Coke whatsoever!)

Current Mood: hungry

Stuff.
Currently Reading:

Freedom Evolves, Daniel C. Dennett
The Cleft, Doris Lessing

conrad_zaar, do you mind that I steal your feature? Let me know if you want to keep it a signature of your journal. Thanks.

Clothing my Livejournal; other things
People of the Friends List:

I paid* to force you to see swirly green patterns every time you make a comment on my LJ. Now my LJ looks like an actual blog (oh, so grown-up looking!). I also now have thirty icon slots, but I think I’ll just stick to the regular six.

Two people on my friends’ list are upset because a comedian has passed away. I try to think of comedians in Malaysia and think of whether anyone will cry for them. I remember that fat Chinese guy from Spanar Jaya and a couple of other shows – Rambo Chin or something – he was the most recent guy. I don’t think Malaysians really care for their celebrities that much. If they are lucky, they might find themselves enshrined as part of the national cultural narrative, their mugs stuck in obscure museums and their shows put on re-run on government channels for eternity. Their children shouldn’t expect too much from royalties, though.

But then I remember the big fuss when Loga, the lead singer from Alleycats, died to lung cancer. The Alleycats hadn’t had a hit in decades, but with the way people talked about how he went, you’d think he was some kind of rock-n-roll god of this country. And to die from lung cancer after he’d already quit, that was a true Malaysian rock-n-roll death.

A friend of mine took a drive with his girlfriend to Loga’s house to pay his respects to this Malaysian rocker king. He’d gotten the address from a friend and when his girlfriend asked him how-the-hell-are-we-supposed-to-know-which-house-is-it he replied, with all the faith of a true rock devotee: “his house will be the one with a lot of flowers, candles and wreaths”.

Eventually they found his house, but there were no wreaths, no flowers, no cards, no candles and no fond farewells from devoted fans. His house was very quiet. The yard was empty save for a dog that was sitting in the car porch and a lone white dhoti on the laundry line flapping in the afternoon breeze.

* two-month cycle. It’s the most money-manageable option, even if not the cheapest (what, pay for a year, poor for a month, save RM 20?)

I waved Sassy onto a plane with ten other kids aged 10 to 13 with no accompanying adult at 9am this morning. She will hopefully be spewed off a plane next Saturday after a week of kicking theoretical bad-guy ass in Oakland of the California.

I spent most of my day lounging in Luke and Melissa's back yard nursing a beer and an ice coffee alternately while watching a swarm of 8 year old's celebrate a birthday by fighting over the pinata candy. Then Roo and I made some Shrinky Dinks (I'd forgotten how damned cool Shrinky Dinks are), D and I drank some coffee, and Sweet Eyes serenaded me while

lastwater gave Roo a painting lesson on the front lawn. The day was glorious - just ask the several thousand bicyclists who rode past on the Summer Bike Something or Other.

How come I am never off work when my girl is out of town? Hmmmm?

You are DONE. Rot.
I want to highlight three words in the first line of the following report. begin the process. What the FUCK do you mean "BEGIN THE PROCESS"??? He BRANDED a student. I don't care if it was a cross, the devils sign, or the name of the student's girlfriend. A TEACHER burnt a student and you are beginning the process???? There is no process here. Buh-bye. See ya. Do not collect unemployment, do not pass within 200 feet of a child care facility. No process. You are done.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/20/teacher.cross/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

(CNN) -- School administrators in Ohio voted Friday to begin the process of firing a middle school teacher accused of burning a cross into a student's arm and refusing to keep his religious beliefs out of the classroom.

A middle school student in Ohio says his teacher branded a cross on his arm.

The Mount Vernon School Board passed a resolution to terminate the employment of John Freshwater, an eighth-grade science teacher for the past 21 years.

Freshwater, according to an independent report, used an electrostatic device to mark a cross on the arm of one of his students, causing pain to the student the night of the incident and leaving a mark that lasted for approximately three weeks.

According to the Ohio Department of Education, the student's family has filed a lawsuit.

Freshwater was also reprimanded several times for refusing to move his Bible from his classroom desk and teaching creationism alongside evolution, according to the 15-page independent report. The report also cites evidence that Mr. Freshwater told his students that "science is wrong because the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin and so anyone who is gay chooses to be gay and is therefore a sinner."

The Board of Education of the Mount Vernon City School District met in special session Friday to address the case.

Freshwater has the option to contest the process by requesting a formal hearing before the Board of Education. Neither Freshwater nor his attorney could be reached by CNN for comment.

Breaking Down
One of my employees had a breakdown Wednesday. I mean... break. down. Complete with tangential thought that verged on the thought version of word salad, accompanied by a classic panic attack.

With my 20/20 hindsight goggles I can totally see all the signs that I missed. But since I not only wasn't wearing my hindsight goggles back then, I've also been out of town more than in for the past few months, I completely missed the signs and now have an employee on an unplanned leave of abscence and mandated employee assistance.

Know what? It sucks pretty damn bad. Raw egg bad. As an educator I should have seen it coming as the base of the problem is cognitive. As a manager I should have seen it coming because she has asked for help on at least 3 seperate occasions. In her own way.

*sigh*

Feminism Revisited
Over at the newly-formed

women_academics community, someone asked a friends-locked question to kick off some discussion: do you consider yourself a feminist? This elicited some responses from members, some of whom said yes, and some of whom said no. Shortly after, someone raised another friends-locked discussion:

"What is Feminism? When asked if we are feminists, we all invariably qualify the term--is that a methodology? activism? existence? So, I'd be interested in hearing what you all think."

This was my response to the second question:

"I've once argued that the term 'feminism' itself is meaningless, because if it merely stands for gender equality (at least within the male-female dichotomy), then you can bet that a lot of people will say that they agree to it; even people whom you will classify as misogynist or chauvinist. Placing it in very simple terms: I'm quite sure that someone like Snoop Dogg would say that he is all for equal job opportunities for women, but he makes no apologies for the misogynistic slant of his music and his videos. A number of people argued with me over the validity of the word, but I still can't help but feel that the term is becoming increasingly porous/permeable and thus, increasingly meaningless.

This is why my previous answer to the question of 'do you consider yourself a feminist?' was "I don't call myself anything, and I am apathetic to what people call me". If people feel more comfortable with calling me a feminist because I do certain things that benefit or empower women and/or break gender moulds, then I am all right with it. On the other hand, even if nobody calls me a feminist for it, I'm not particularly bothered by it, because a lack of a label doesn't negate what I already do.

There's another issue that one raises: most of the people who chose not to call themselves feminist responded because they do not subscribe to Feminist Theory. I think that's a fair answer; and clearly shows that for some people, there is a genuine split between practised feminism and academic feminism. I believe that one can be subject to feminist concerns without being conscious of it in daily practice -- for an example, when we deal with sexual harrassment in the workplace -- without subscribing to academic feminism. Of course, those in favour of academic feminism could argue that this split is artificial and that an awareness of feminist theory (whether applied to one's field of research or not) is merely a heightened awareness of the structures and patterns of gender construct in our existence."

This is another observation I made about the responses gathered from both questions raised, unrelated to my answer:

A number of people who identified with the term 'feminist' stated that even if one is uncomfortable with certain ideas that lie in the extreme fringe, it does not jeopardize the worth of feminism as a whole. Since the discussion is friends-locked, I can't link to any examples, but I'll quote a statement made by one of the respondents:

"There's a range of Feminisms with capital Fs which one may or may not subscribe to. But I think it's a dangerous and retrograde step to abandon the term and the principle just because we feel squeamish about the outer edges of the philosophy (or because we feel guilty if we're not 100% engaged and busy making placards)."

This is a very standard and diplomatic statement that usually comes up with a discussion like this, but I am beginning to wonder if it really addresses the issue. I find it very difficult to believe that the average Malaysian middle-income woman even recognizes Mary Daly, let alone capable of being squeamish about her ideas. In fact, I find it very difficult to believe that the average American middle-income woman is capable of recognizing her name.

The latest "I'm Alive" post
Yep, still here. Still working at Walmart.
Oh that reminds me... Why must men tear open the packages of undershirts? They kinda all feel the same and they tend to be the same sizes too. And if you do like what you open, why aren't you buying that package instead of grabbing an unopened one? Same with the man pantie...why, why, why? Finally, really, there is no need also to hide it behind something else. Gee, you already got away with opening it, who is going to know you did it if you just leave it there?
Then again, why do people hide stuff from other departments behind the jeans and under the folded shirts? It really is odd if you think about it. Not to mention, hard to find and return to where it belongs.
I am really starting to think I would like to join a nudist camp after working there.

Other news, my sister had 10 teeth taken out this last week. She is going the route of "Screw this, I am going to get rid of them all and no more dentist!" Can't say I really blame her but I myself have decided that if I win the lotto ever that I would check into getting implants. Along with something like lasik for my eyes. Oh I forgot, the doc requires appointment so I had to make one. It is next friday. Yep, gonna try to help my thyroid out again. Stupid gland.

Well, time to go to bed now. I is tired. *whines*

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: nothing but the buzz in my head from being awake too long

Awesome stat of the month.
"Comments: Posted: 3,442 - Received: 46"