To Da Paolo Gastronomia for making possible 30-minute home-cooked pasta that actually tastes decent! The magic's all in the sauce.

Salmon cream	Seafood marinara

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While last year was a year of challenging my limits and stretching boundaries (and I still intend to continue doing so), things have seemingly reversed themselves this year as I find myself being delivered healthy doses of humility, in the realization that outside my strength in academic studies, I am merely average or below average in many other aspects of human capability - physically, in leadership etc. And I've been forced to accept that for some of these things there is absolutely *nothing* I can do! Yet I find this extremely liberating, because it focuses the mind on what can actually be done, and insecurity fades into self-acceptance.

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None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
- Johann Wolfgang van Goethe

Does anyone know the context of this quote?

If one accepts the theories of modern science - that for all our human complexity in cognition and emotion, we are merely medium-sized aggregations of matter, slowly organised by natural evolutionary processes to look and function as we do and interact with other similar lumps of matter.

Then one faces the consequence of not having any pre-defined meaning to one's existence, and is left with the burden of defining one's very own purpose. What a heavy responsibity to shoulder!

How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

- Kierkegaard, Repetition

And then dawns the fact that one is an impossibly minute entity insignificant to the greater scheme of things. Except the fact that maybe there isn't such a scheme after all, because it's left to us to create.

And then what comes next. How do you pick choices in life when what is right and wrong is so subjective, and Kant's moral imperatives just don't seem to cut it?

Sigh. Too much to read and too little time to understand. Should one even bother? I don't know whether to pick the red or blue pill.

I would have sworn that I saw it in your eyes. Perhaps I was wrong. And the rest is a rock and roll cliché, so I'll skip that.

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It's hard to be despondent after good food, so I suppose that's the reason for the absence of emo-ness now. Despite being described as a "culinary wilderness", Biopolis actually has a few restaurants serving good food. The plus point about the whole wilderness thing is that the places there are so deserted that one can actually have a quiet dinner in peace without screaming kids, loud family gatherings, or noisy traffic outside. But they're strictly drag-your-parents-there-to-pay-the-bill sort of outlets, unless you go to the food court, that is -.-

Tried this Indian vegetarian restaurant called Raj today. Surprisingly, even with a complete lack of meat, the food was rather tasty and filling. The spices used in Indian cooking brought lots of flavour to the food and kept it tasting like authentic Indian food, I think. (It serves both North and South Indian food.) I can't remember the names of the dishes, so I'll try my best. Started with some fried flour with vegetable starter. I think it's most similar to Ngoh Hiang - fried and longish in shape, except the meat is replaced with vegetables (not the leafy type; some kind of lentils or beans I think) That was good. That was followed by garlic naan and Kashmiri naan (the one with sweet dried fruits - the nicest type of naan, IMO), with palak paneer and mushroom masala dip. Palak paneer is basically a curry of spinach (palak) ground into a gravy, with cottage cheese (paneer) cubes inside. Despite its greenish glow, it turned out to be rather appetising - you don't get any raw vegetable or cheesy taste, but something quite rich, especially with the moderate spices inside. The mushroom masala was also good: lots of button mushrooms cooked with masala gravy. Arg, I dunno how to describe the taste, but if you've tasted chicken masala gravy before, then it's like that la. Except with mushroom; the chicken doesn't really contribute much to the taste of masala I think. And lastly there was some thosai filled with potatoes and the mandatory spices. Which was really filling, and which my parents didn't really like. Lol. So despite the nice tasting food at the start they were left feeling sick of the food in the end =p

There's also this place called Infuzi over at Biopolis. I think the food is described as fusion, but the food was pretty much Western. Ooops I can't really remember much of the dishes except that they were small, so don't let the set dinner menu (choose 6 courses out of 8) scare you. Oh, there was a rather sinful duck liver (not goose liver; though it tastes rather similar) that was fantastic. And the steak was quite juicy and tender. One of the courses was listed as lobster, but it turned out to just have one measly piece that you can eat in one bite hahaha. Yeah, that's what I mean by small. Lots of emphasis on presenting the food daintily on oversized plates, so definitely not the place to eat like a pig =D Much more ex than Raj though - not my type of place. Hrmph. Given my shallow pockets, give me Adam Road nasi lemak anytime hahaha.

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I'm curious. General question to anyone reading: what drives you in life? Love (romantic, familial, religious, etc)? Lust? Material wealth? Recognition? Intellectual stimulation? Altruism? Don't know quite how to phrase the last 2, and there's probably stuff I've missed out.

It's not accurate to say for myself right now, at such an impressionable age. But one thing I'm sure of is that I'm not driven by money. Which is why I'll never be a successful entrepreneur, no matter how many entrepreneurship programmes the gahmen throws at me =p Maybe it's to do with my pretty comfortable childhood, material-wise. And no, by that I don't mean that I live in opulence. And I think I'd pick love over recognition and intellectual stimulation: given a strictly either/or choice between a happy family and a Nobel Prize (not that I actually have any chance of winning one lol), I'd pick family in a heartbeat. Although seriously that may change over time I don't know.

Also can you truly consider altruism to be selfless? Without intending to demean their actions I suspect altruistic people are just wired in their brains to feel satisfaction from helping others, just as businessmen must have brains that feel high after making $$$. Read the wiki article, which differentiates altruistic behaviour from altruistic motivations - people can behave altruistically (seem to help others without benefit to themselves) but their desire to help others ultimately derives from selfish reasons (feeling good). The wiki article is interesting but too brief. Sigh. I guess it depends on definition - if altruism is charity without desire for material reward only, then the personal satisfaction bit doesn't detract from it. My bigger question: is it ever possible to have altruistic motivations?

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In less relevant news I changed my dp. It's now the head (well, a picture of the head) of some hilarious camel doll/dude that my mom got back from Dubai. The camel has such improbably long and fat legs that it can't fit into a square pic for the dp. But it's the only soft toy I think I'll ever think is cute. Damn. I feel bimbo >.<

And I miss my ipod. Argh. It refuses to work most likely because the hard disk failed. Stupid Apple will only repair / replace ipods spoilt within their 1-year warranty period. After that they won't repair it even if you try to stuff money up their mouths to get them to do it. All they'll do is sell you a replacement at slightly more than half-price. Might have to go Sim Lim to see if any shops can fix it.

Crap, I'm still stuck on econs. Good luck, dear math, bio and chem :) :| :(

Last saturday's dinner played out chillingly like the prologue of a House episode, which typically sets the scenario for the medical case featured that week by showing the patient fainting / seizing / collapsing. In the end after a hospital checkup, it turned out that my dad did not have any kind of heart attack and was passed a clean bill of health, but those few minutes of uncertainty were terrifying, especially because my HP batt was dying and 995 didn't seem to work, and I'd have been helpless without my mom around. The final conclusion was some kind food poisoning, although the symptoms seemed disturbingly like a case of angina pectoris, which can be a precursor and risk factor for heart failure. (Doctors probably complain that every patient wants to be their own doctor, with so much info on the Internet, but hey, we're just worried and concerned.)

Whatever it is, I'm actually glad that we have this incident as a reminder and warning sign. It's far better than getting a full-blown, lethal heart attack the first time round and not being able to do anything about it. I felt marginally closer to my parents after this incident; not quite as dramatic as I'd hoped for, but my reluctance to open up to them is at least partly to blame. Is it as they say - that it takes the loss or prolonged absence of a family member to draw the rest into an emotional reunion thingy?

I am deeply and intrinsically flawed, because I am human.

And Tennyson was right.

It's all too easy to say that you'll never give up when you've tasted even the slightest tinge of sweet success or seen its light, but it's another story altogether when the bitter burden of persistent, repeated failure is all you've ever faced. I think I can finally emphatise with those who say that they just want to give up.

I'll count my blessings and be grateful for what I have thus far :)

Am profoundly afraid of passing this year without having accomplished anything significant, whether academically or otherwise. I realise I've lost much of the motivation and drive I had last year; it comes only in bursts and spurts. It's mostly a result of losing my focus and long-term career goal in game development. Dreams of entering the IGF have more or less vaporised, and gamedev doesn't seem to be as certain a career path as before. When I put my soul into gamedev last year, I knew I was setting myself up for this crash of disappointment if I ever turned back on that choice. More and more, it looks like I'm just going to be developing games as a hobbyist, which on second thought is really quite alright.
I'm not really depressed, just lost. Which is why I've been fumbling around for these 4 months or so in JC. On the upside, at least I've gained a better understanding of myself, and looking back, I've learnt plenty in the process of failure and understood how to recreate that burning desire within myself. All that remains is to practice how to consistently maintain the motivational drive within myself. In case anyone is interested, I found this to be immensely helpful early on.

Hm, what a load of crap. As Mr. Ross would quote, "a paucity of ideas floating in a sea of waffle". My life has been so freaking boring these few months that there hasn't really been anything to blog about. I did begin another game development project over the March hols, but there isn't anything groundbreaking / innovative to talk about. And I'd prefer to disclose details at a later date, especially because progress has been stalled since the start of Term 2 (i.e. no progress).

Random musing: we should aim to fail as much and as often as is humanly possible in our schooling years, while failure does not hurt as much and we're still not afraid. In essence, to confront and eliminate our fear of failure.