glibberish.

I just found out, a day too late, that March 14 is Pi Day 2008. It is also Talk Like a Physicist Day.

Having said that, I now conclude this statement of empirical data by enciting rudimentary particles in order to produce output that is relevantly parallelized with the value – albeit always approximate – on hand.

Pi to (I didn’t bother counting) decimal places:

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679
8214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196
4428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273
7245870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094
3305727036575959195309218611738193261179310511854807446237996274956735188575272489122793818301194912

(Thank you, Dr. Evil)

I am a very slow writer, and usually it takes me more than an hour to write a decent-length blog post. For this one, I’ll time myself and see if I can finish in 10 minutes.

In the bus on my way to school yesterday, I was listening to Sufjan Stevens’ “Casimir Pulaski Day” (from the VERY EPIC Illinoise! album). It was one of those rare experiences when a song, on account of its words, incites some strong emotion from me. I managed to control it with a couple of chokes and some funny expressions, which made me feel quite stupid. Fortunately, there were few occupants to witness this.

I recently found myself reviewing artifacts from the past, particularly old Friendster testimonials and videos – short films and what nots – that I have been able to contribute in in some way. In those, I saw old friends, and also saw a little bit of myself (or what I must be like back then) through their eyes.

One that I particularly enjoyed seeing again was the short documentary/interview my friend made, with my help, for her film school requirement. It’s about a simple subject – happiness – but looking at it now, it has grown to be poignant and very commentary. (Or maybe it was just nostalgia kicking in.) Also, in it were a lot of faces I saw much of during that “era” when it was filmed. Quite aptly, I quickly realized how happy I was during those times, being in the company of those people – and I never really reflected upon it then! Hindsight is always 20/20, indeed.

Therein lies the lesson: Happiness, in its highest, most blissful form, is never in the present tense. It is either that it has already happened (memories), or that it is what we hope would happen (ideals).

I failed. 26 minutes.

Ever since I got to HK I take care of my dirty clothes via weekly trips to a professional laundromat, and so escaped for the time being the great responsibility of washing these treasures myself. That was Kowloon and this is now.

Owing more to the frightful thought that I would have to regularly lug a big bag of laundry and walk five minutes to the nearest cleaner, I have decided to finally “get my lazy ass off” and learn The Arcane Art. Of course, being the parasite that I am, I tried to leech the Internet for helpful suggestions. I found some good ones, but this is the best by far:

Image courtesy of mopo.ca

Speaking of mom, my folks have been in town for the past four days. By virtue of being class-free, yesterday took the opportunity to allow me to show them around, particularly some aspects of my current lifestyle. (Now they are sure that I actually do what I claim to have been doing.) They got to go to my current place of residence, my school, and one of the staple HK shopping places: Mongkok. I wouldn’t need to elaborate; suffice to say the tour was rather comprehensive.

Maybe except for one thing: In Mongkok I took them to a hotpot place called Little Sheep. Months ago, when I went there for the first time with my classmates, I promised myself I’d take my dad there as I was sure he would enjoy it. (I think he did.)

They are due to fly back later today. It’s great to see them again – as always, the fact that I miss my folks is tangibly reaffirmed by their presence. And, the reversal of me as host and they as guests has proved quite enjoyable.

I also haven’t realized until now that at this point I know my way around HK, not just geographically but in a metaphorical way: the culture, the people, the language (er, to a teeny extent). I am not saying that I am as good as a HK local – for that what I know so far is not nearly enough. I am simply saying that the novelty of being in a foreign country has worn off, and that I am starting to like (and dislike) this place for what it actually is and not from stuff made out of fantasy.

I am tourist… No More!

“This is the greatest and best band in the world’s. . . tribute.”

- Tenacious D (rephrased)

My bandmate (I don’t want to say ex- because I’d like to think I’m still part of the band) from a group from back home, Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man (MoaCSM), just posted photos of the old ensemble from years ago in his blog. It is sort of a coincidence that just recently I have been thinking about the bands I have been in, which especially involves the aforementioned. Seeing the pictures brought a nostalgia too powerful to just keep to myself – hence this post, to keep the memory intact.

I have been involved in many bands in the many years that I have been playing music, and I mean more than a handful. I have played with lots of musicians of great skill, with people whose music have touched the very depths of my personality, with bands that just give off a wonderfully exuberant dynamic that would (most of the time) catch on with the audience, driving them wild (er, sort of). But among all the possible interation-combinations of the above, MoaCSM is my most. favorite. band. Ever.

Sure, we’ve had our share of fun and unforgettable gigs (e.g. glam rock and 80’s night at Big Sky Mind), eureka! moments in song arrangements, and all that bliss that comes from being in a band. But these music-related ups are merely nice details why I love these bunch of wackos so much. The big simple deal is this: as different as what we do are, each of the four of us are ultimately alike. We are geeks who, among the large demographic, like the same kinds of things.

Or most importantly, we like talking about the same kinds of things.

It is logical to think of the probability distribution of conversation topics occuring with respect to the number of persons (“collective minds”) involved in discussion. That is, as more people enter into the conversation, the lower any group of subjects are likely to be discussed, and even so, each would be talked about at a shorter duration, surviving only until such time as at least one person decides to move on to a different one. Now, if more people have some common interests, then the probability of discussions encompassing such interests would be higher. However, if the group itself was formed precisely due to those interests – say, musicians hanging out after a gig – then it just follows that the probability of anything music-related being discussed will be almost equal to 1. It is now more accurate to think not a probability distribution, but a Venn diagram.

Bear with me here! So, four musicians belonging to one band have conversations within a circle consisting of others (musicians from other bands, friends, gig audience, etc.) It is totally predictable to talk music, or even some other art-related things. But to take away the others, leaving only the foursome, and have them talk about things entirely different from music, but talk about them as if they were as common to them as music? The odds are quite low, indeed. In this case, the Venn diagram has the circles converging so tightly as to almost form only a single entity.

This is MoaCSM.

We have not discovered this phenomenon until later on in the band’s life, on the night we first got together – over alcohol, of course – with nobody else but the four of us. (It was in my house, for the record.) It started with comic books, anime, film, and we always come back to those. But at some point subjects became more and more ambitious, reaching to a point where I could say they were intellectual discussions. We were not anymore just talking about good works in media and literature, but the philosophies, principles and science – most of all the science! – behind these works. And that’s not just it: soon we would ponder over theories we could barely grasp. We dealt with the macrocosmos (the universe) and the microcosmos (the mind), then things about our lives, then everyone’s lives… we have turned ourselves into existentialists, philosophers, mathematicians, theologists.

It is of course pretentious to claim that we achieved the degree of complexity that actual mathematicians, philosophers, existentialists, etc. tackle in regularity. We were only go so far as our own small intellects could. But we all went there together, at the same level, and for that one night we were thinkers of the world, scholars that would figure everything out for the benefit of the human race.

And that went on with each and every night the band got together, huddled alone in a quiet dining room, unlocking the secrets to Life, the Universe and Everything. For all intents and purposes, it has become tradition.

I miss those times.

Err, as I spent too much time writing about the band, I now make haste to announce that I have moved to my more permanent place. It is in Po Lam, right in the heart of… nothingness. It is a suburb of Hong Kong (or at least as close as you could define “suburb”), there at the far east of Kowloon. If you look at the MTR map, I am five minutes walk away from the very last station at the rightmost.

I actually like it here. It’s a 15-minute bus ride to school, and there is a huge mall that has everything I need – even equipped with a cinema! – about a block away. My flatmate, whom I am renting my room under, is a nice guy who likes things clean. The overall flat is big, around 600 sq. ft., and has a Yamaha Electone organ and a Clavinova, the latter of which I love the piano sound a lot.