Two more weeks,

and we'll be flying to Korea for this year's World Taekwondo Hanmadang.

Mixed doubles pattern practice

I had been hoping that we will be sufficiently well prepared to give the Indonesian and Spanish national teams a run for their money, but a closer review of the videos show that we still cannot match their physical conditioning and technical superiority.

There are many, many fine details to pay attention to, and prolonged diligent practice will give one the muscle memory to adjust, flick, thrust the right body parts at right time without conscious control.

With conscious effort, we can perform very very nicely on small bits. But to bright it all together requires the automated movements of muscle memory and to allow the conscious mind to focus on the big picture.

How bandwidth availability is making obscure data easily available

I'm not much of a downloader/ content pirate. Not because of my unwavering respect for intellectual property, but because I'm mostly impartial to movies, TV series and exploring music. Consequently, my collection of illicit music is abysmally outdated.



***
In 1997 - 15 years ago! - Pro Pinball: Timeshock! was released to great reviews. It had great depth in playability, very believable simulation physics, good visuals, engaging music and even a storyline. Till today, it firmly remains one of the best pinball games ever coded.

I bought a copy, and spent many many hours flipping balls around a simulated table. On and off, this game lasted me till 2005 or so when my ailing Compaq's CD drive failed to read the Timeshock CD. Torrent files for the CD image were rare, and to find a functioning torrent was a challenge. Finally managing to get hold of one with some activity, the downloading process took several weeks.

Timeshock was back, faster¹ and more robust. This lasted me for several years more, surviving several computer formatting and migrations. Until I lost the damn CD image. It's somewhere, I just don't know which hard disc it's backed up in.

Trying my luck with the torrents again, I was very surprised to be able to find one so easily; the download took an hour to complete. I did not expect this. Perhaps data storage and bandwidth has become so cheap that previously low-demand files are being made available again. I tried the other lesser known Pro Pinball titles, and they were just as easily available. This is amazing!

Notes:
1. Reading a CD image stored on a hard disc is much faster than scanning soundtracks on the actual CD.

Half a year in a roll of film

I have a film camera, a delightful little semi-automatic SLR with manual aperture and focus controls.


Click here for large size image

Every now and then, I will persuade myself that this function/ event I’m going to is going to be great and I should bring my camera… my FILM camera. But when I get there there’s not so much going on that justifies squeezing off a RM 0.65 shot so I usually end up with a photo or two, sometimes 5. The small number of photos and my boring social calendar means it takes about 6 months for a roll of film to be used, by then I’m a bit jaded by the hassle and lack of instant-ness of film.


Click here for large size image

I get the roll developed and scanned, and immediately get stunned by the vividness of it. The dynamic range is fantastic – there simply are no blown-out areas, and the tonal gradients look rather pleasing.


Click here for large size image

It also helps with my composition that I take extra care to squeeze the trigger when RM 0.65 is on the line, so I end up with a higher proportion number of better photos.

I should... will take the film camera out more.

The World Taekwondo Hanmadang 2011

3 months ago, I was in Korea for a taekwondo competition, and by golly was it an eye opener. The quality of the taekwondo competition was unbelievable (it’s one thing to see a video of an awesome one-off performance, but when you see team after team after team of consistently excellent performance, you wonder about the statistics), I saw a changing room full of naked boys, then I saw a changing room full of naked men…

The competition in question was the World Taekwondo Hanmadang 2011, with a very strong focus on the art form and no sparring at all. The event list was significant, with:
-Fist breaking
-Knife hand breaking
-Foot breaking
-Jumping kick breaking for height (highest jumping kick that breaks a light plank)
-Jumping kick breaking for distance (furthest jumping kick that breaks a light plank)
-Spinning kick breaking (most number of spinning kicks executed in a fixed duration)
-Combination breaking (break as many planks as desired, using as fancy/difficult techniques as desired)
-Team pattern
-Mixed doubles pattern
-Team demonstration (mixed event of 9 members to perform pattern, breaking, jumping kicks, weapons self defense)

Courtesy of the generosity of Air Asia X, our team of 15 flew into Korea at partially sponsored fares. Lower fares = more spending money.



Obligatory group photo at the venue. Note the slick (sponsored) team uniform

The first thing that caught our attention was the Korean teams' synchronisation. The top teams were perfect- stopwatch perfect. The coordination of both timing and techniques were impeccable. Then we realise that many Korean universities have taekwondo departments alongside their engineering and economics faculties. That explains a lot.

Fortunately for us foreign competitors, we were in a ‘foreign’ category of our own. It is a win-win situation: the foreigners don’t get steam-rolled by the Korean teams, and the Korean teams are not exposed to the slight risk that they may be embarrassed by a foreigner.

Not to say it made life much easier. In my age category, 19-30 years old, competition was extremely stiff as most athletes reach their peak at this age. We amateurs were up against very strong national teams consisting of professional athletes. Our two teams finished 8th and 9th from a pool of 14 teams. Not too shameful for first-timers.

This was the winning team, Indonesia.


And right at the end, you can see one of the Malaysia PTC teams coming in 5th place (at that time) with 7.95 points.


The mixed-doubles 19-30 years old winners from Spain looked even better, partly because a smaller team is easier to synchronise.



The under-18 group was not as heavily fortified with national teams. With the firepower of our team’s under-18 mixed-doubles pair of Monica and Brandon, a bronze medal was secured for Malaysia.



Click here for large size image
In the breaking events, Kalaiselvan in the 50-59 years old foot breaking won a silver medal. He nominated a conservatives 4 planks to be loaded on the racks, and broke them easily. Many others were ambitious and requested more, but the tight packing of the planks meant that if the kick was insufficient to break through everything, none broke.

For the 19-29 years old fist breaking, Albert punched through 4 roof tiles but was outperformed by many. This was due to a minor mistake resulting in sub-optimal momentum transfer to the targets.



Medal winners Brandon, Kalaiselvan and Monica with our head coach Zul

The organisers had a welcome banquet for foreign competitors, which went OK. It was a buffet, and the variety of food was commendable.



That's just a bottle of soft drink




To be continued…

Programming types would say, "Hello world!"

Several months ago, I made the decision to give up looking for a job in Australia and return to Malaya. Working in Australia had its benefits- high purchasing power, excellent working hours, the possibility of relying on public transport and maybe easy access to good coffee.

The key word in the above sentence is ‘working’. For a good half year, I was as good as jobless, relying on a reasonably well-paying* freelance contract to keep me occupied and my finances in the black. The field in which I was experienced was small and slow moving at that time, and it was surprisingly difficult to find employment.

Being jobless can be rather unsettling, the most obvious reason being the lack of secure income. Also, one ends up with too much time on one’s hands. I did try to occupy myself, but things still do slip after a while. There was no drama with emotional instability, I would like to think, but I think I did have too little to do with my time.

The situation did not look like it was improving in the near term but the clock kept ticking. If I continue bumming for much longer my employability will decay and I might just end up in some dead end alley.


So here I am, back in sunny Malaya and employed within a month of returning. The pay is nothing to shout home about, the cost of living seems to get scarier as I learn more about living, the traffic can be a total tosser and good cheap coffee is rare. But it’s not all doom and gloom; on the contrary I’m quite glad I’m home. The family is here, the extended family is within arm’s length, the close friends are still here, good affordable food is easily available, the pace of life is more interesting and I have a promising job.

Now and then, I’d wonder how would things have turned out if I managed to find decent work in Australia. IF.

I might be living in a smallish apartment near the city centre, working rather civilised hours and accumulating some savings. In the end I’d still return to Malaya, so the only difference is a few more years Australian lifestyle and a little heap of accumulated savings.


Things didn’t turn out as I’d have liked them to, but it’s not the end of the world. Here, it’s much easier to plan and coordinate our wedding.


* this contract was with a Malaysia company, so what was originally lucrative became less substantial once converted to Australia Dollars.

Blogging

I'm now in Melbourne, jobless and enjoying every moment of the housewife lifestyle. Laundry, dishes, cooking, surfing, reading and studying. The missing element from my daily routine is tidying up after toddlers, which I actually do occasionally when we visit Jean’s cousin and his kids.

Tomorrow, I start work at a marketing company selling credit cards and financial products. I do not expect to do very well, but the sales training will be a good eye opener to a different world.

The internet connection is strangely slow. After being used to the blazing connection speeds in china (its so bloody fast because just about anything interesting is blocked by the government), this is quite agonising. 480 kb/s is simply unacceptable.

I've had a slow epiphany over the duration of the past week:

In motor sports and the auto industry, wheel slip is an important term in determining how much friction the tyres and road are generating.

A commonly accepted approach is that the tyre produces maximum friction when it is slipping a little (usually to the order of 5%). Roughly speaking, a car travelling at 100 km/h and accelerating heavily will have its driving wheels spinning at 105 km/h.

However, it is not necessary that the tyre surface actually slips against the road surface. This is because the measured speed of the tyre is actually measured at the wheel’s shaft. The tyre’s surface will move at 105km/h (as in example above), but the portion of tyre contacting the road will be moving at 100 km/h.

This can be understood by considering the tyre surface alone. The tyre surface spins around the shaft at 105 km/h, but at the area where the surface touches the ground, the surface speed slows down to 100 km/h. This is possible because the tyre surface is elastic, and can compress a little. The rubber at the surface will be moving at 105 km/h, then when it nears the contact area it sort of bunches up a bit and slows down to 100 km/h. Once past the contact area, the rubber loosens up again and speeds up to 105 km/h.

This action of bunching up is reasonable, when you consider the elasticity of the material. The bunched up material is under compression, and will help transfer force from the hub to the contact patch.

Sleep now, work starts tomorrow.

Sabrina is nuts

On twitter this morning:

Yee Wei:
The 3 ladies in accounting are talking about diapers, their's kids' (in)ability to hold their bladders overnight and the cost of diapers.

Sabrina:
Dude you go talk to them bout anal sex! Just to get a reaction! GO! GO! GO!

The Knife of Legends

The Kinmen knife was the star of my uncle's knife block. Made from used artillery shell¹, its very hard blade was able to hold a sharper edge compared to softer metals. The blade is made of metal folded and pounded many times like puff pastry, giving wavy lines on the side of the blade where the layer boundaries show through.

The knife is alive; it calls out to be used. It wants, desires, to cut and dice things into neat regular sized pieces². It can plant strange ideas in one's mind.

"That juicy melon probably needs to be cubed."

I heave the large juice laden melon onto the chopping board and quickly slide the pointed end of the blade into the fruit. The hard steel meets no resistance and spreads the fruit's flesh easily, sliding against the soft moist interior tissue as easily as a well lubricated shaft in a jackhammer. The fruit was of exceptional quality, and a thick sweet liquid began to ooze onto the chopping board.


***

Kinmen is a Taiwanese island located between The People's Republic of China (often simply referred to as China) and the Republic of China (also known as Taiwan). It is a widely known fact that Taiwan, unlike China, is not a republic of the people.

The location of Kinmen makes it a location of military importance, thus drawing it much attention over the course of the two Chinas' colourful history. In the late 50s, China made a move attempting to take Taiwanese islands Kinmen and Matsu into its loving arms. After a 6-week bout of intense artillery shelling on the island, the campaign came to a stalemate as the United States and Soviet Union intervened. This intervention did not stop the fiasco in its entirety- the whole thing turned into a 20-year propaganda campaign.

The propaganda campaign in question consists of each China stuffing artillery shells with propaganda leaflets (instead of explosives) and lovingly delivering said shells to the other China. Conveniently, the game settled into a quasi-happy equilibrium where each bombards the other on alternate days. This mind numbing process lasted for 20 years.

When all this ended in 1979, some 450,000 artillery shells have accumulated on the island of Kinmen. This made the island a fairytale mine from which processed high quality steel can be picked from the ground. Artisans and craftsmen collect the material and fashion them into various tools and objects, with kitchen knives being the most notable.

Notes:
1 Intact artillery shell, only used once with no explosives, lady owner. Good condition, must see to believe. Makes 50 knives. RM 200 neg.
2 This supposed phenomenon of a knife having wants may be the result of the author projecting his/her desires onto an inanimate object.

Good grief, I am getting fat!

No more walking to work/ camera mall/ wet market/ supermarket/ train station/ dinner, a well stocked fridge at home, lots of Milo at work¹ and easily accessible good food are contributing factors to this worryingly tightening waistline. Which is bad, because new pants cost money.

I need more physical activity than what my weekly 2 hours of prancing-about at taekwondo offers.


***

Over the weekend, I dropped by in Singapore (again). I've visited more malls in Singapore than I have in Malaysia and China combined². As a naïve and impressionable person, I was thoroughly in awe of the variety atriums I saw. Most memorable were the 6-storey high and irregularly shaped atrium at Raffles City topped by a seemingly open-air retail space at the top level, and the squarish triple-height atrium at Marina Square was beautifully lit with numerous white coloured deep concrete beams spanning the space diffusing direct sunlight that came in through the glass roof.

On Saturday, we had brunch with 2 of my mother’s schoolday friends, and dinner with my godsister and aunt's family. As is typical for dinners at this aunt's place, it was mind blowing- this uncle is really, really into cooking. Starter was a course of carbonara linguine, followed by a salad with feta cheese and chorizo. This was then followed by a break from eating, after which was the main course. Baked cod fillet wrapped with a thin slice of bacon, served with a dollop of wasabi-tinged mashed potato and portobello mushrooms. Another short break later, we had dessert consisting of D24 durian, jam tarts and cup cakes. The entire process was lubricated with 2 bottles of white wine and talk about food.

Mind blowing indeed.


Notes:
1 I might be over exploiting the free beverages at work. I typically make a very potent cup of Neslo consisting of 4 heaped teaspoons of Milo, 1.5 heaped teaspoons of instant coffee and 1.5 heaped teaspoons of creamer.
2 Likely because most spots of interest are located in, or need to be accessed via an MRT station under a mall of some sorts.

I have resumed taekwondo training after six years of enforced abstinence. Of course, it was not complete deprivation from martial arts through those years. Until a couple of years ago, I had been dabbling in aikido, karate and pseudo-boxing (the fitness kind with no killing intent) to keep myself busy.

On re-entry a month ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find that despite a nasty decline in speed and stamina, I still had a decent grasp of the fundamental skills. In other words, I can still kick, slowly.

On hearing of an upcoming test in November, I asked the instructor if I would be able to make it. “Train for it first, then see if you’re ready later.” Sounds good. I got my black belt in late 2000, 2.5 years after starting as a white belt. My nine-year interval between 1st dan and 2nd dan tests is nine times the wait for a typical practitioner.

For the breaking part of the test, I’m leaning towards using the chopping kick for one of the techniques. Inherently less powerful than a sidekick¹, it will be a suboptimal choice if not for the fact that it’s quite satisfying.



Notes:
1. A sidekick is potentially powerful because it is a very linear kick, with the kicker’s body, the kicking direction, and the target all arranged in a straight line. The reaction force of the kick thrusts horizontally against the kicker’s body, therefore allowing the kicker to use his/her body mass to great advantage.

The previous post was not my doing.


***

I've been home for a month already, and it's been an awesome month. Went for granddad's 90th birthday, restarted taewkwondo training, stayed overnight at a penthouse in the middle of KL, good food on a daily basis, getting to see the gf on a weekly basis, resuming use of my 6-year old notebook (my 17-inch Dell notebook is coming tomorrow)...

It's good to be home for this little spell before I make another move.


From his visit honeymoon to Cameron Highlands, Hou bought 6kg of strawberries for RM 80. Slightly bruised in transit, mom decided to cook them to turn them into a jam-like gloop.

To make the best use of this decadent juice/jam intermediate substance, I made a vat of yoghurt and here is it:

So long and thanks for all the fish

Some last minute packing, as usual. Tomorrow I'm to return the company computer, mailing a formidable parcel of my belongings home (surface mail is cheap), then it's time to go to the airport.

Personal high score

Purchases made today:

• 5 long sleeved shirts from Marks & Spencer¹, 425 RMB
• 10 pairs of briefs from Uniqlo, 345 RMB
• 20 pairs of socks from Carrefour: 42 RMB

Footnotes:

1. Marks & Spencer opened their China flagship store in Shanghai late last year, and made some opening blunders, including insufficient stock (due to goods being detained at customs) and suboptimal product spread. They also seemed not to realise that many Chinese men tend not to wear long sleeved shirts to work, preferring short sleeved shirts or polo tees. The result- deep discounts on their stock of long sleeved shirts, with prices starting at 69 RMB each.

Honey I'm home!

Yesterday, I heard that there was an urgent opening to be filled in the Malaysian office. In the evening, I called the boss to check on the situation and to ask if I can transfer over.

Yes no problem.
Awesome.

This morning I found out that “urgent” means “start on August 24^th.” Oh shit, I’ve only one weekend to stock up on cheap clothes, mail my excess luggage by surface mail, put my financial affairs in order, arrange my air ticket, finish reading Gone With the Wind¹ and pack.

I’m going home!

Yet I’m a little nervous. I have not lived in the Klang Valley for more than 6 years. I don’t really know my way around town, there’s this need to get used to traffic jams and toll charges and parking charges.

It’s a bit like moving to Kyoto, except I don’t have a bomb proof excuse when someone gives me a wtf stare because I asked where is The Gardens. And I’m going home.

Having stayed alone for some years has made me used to doing things to my own terms. What time to eat, how clean to keep my room, if I want a proper meal or just chocolate biscuits for dinner, what time to wake up…

Anyway, I’m going home and it’s going to be yet another new world.


Footnotes:

1. The landlord’s bookcase contained an almost mint copy of Gone With the Wind, printed in 1980. Here’s one of many fantastic paragraphs:

It had begun to dawn on him, that this sweet pretty little head was a ‘good head for numbers.’ In fact, a much better one than his own, and the knowledge was disquieting. He was thunderstruck to discover that she could swiftly add a long column of figures in her head when he needed a pencil and paper for more than three figures. And fractions presented no difficulties to her at all. He felt there was something unbecoming about a woman understanding fractions and business matters and he believed that, should a woman be so unfortunate as to have such unladylike comprehension, she should pretend not to. Now he disliked talking business with her as much as he enjoyed it before they were married. Then he had thought it all beyond her mental grasp and it had been pleasant to explain tings to her. Now he saw that she understood entirely too well and he felt the usual masculine indignation at the duplicity of women. Added to it was the usual masculine disillusionment in discovering that a woman has a brain.

"Gone With The Wind", Mitchell, 1936

Client who wants everything (equipment packaging, site layout, piping layout, electrical drawings, process flowcharts ad infinitum) designed and drawn right now.

Chinese government still blocking access to youtube.

Client then changes its mind and decide that an additional 30% in capacity would be good, then insist we redesign and redraw everything before the end of yesterday.

Chinese government still blocking access to Facebook.

Understaffed company.

Chinese government still blocking access to Blogspot (right now I'm blogging through a proxy so the formatting will probably suck antelope penis)

Housemate took everything out of the fridge to defrost the thing, and left for Malaysia neglecting to refrigerate. That was last weekend. I just came back from outstation to a see my milk, cheese and everything else had been baking in the 33 degree summer afternoons. For one week.

Last month’s travel expenses claims still not paid out.

Ok fuck this shit, lets talk about something less miserable.

This coming Wednesday (22/7) will be Pi Approximation Day. Also, a total solar eclipse will be occurring over a narrow corridor fpassing through to Shanghai. This event will be the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, and it’s duration of totality will not be surpassed till 2132.

In principle, solar eclipses are quite boring event. You’re merely standing in the shadow of the moon. Yeah big deal.

However.

The moon just happens to be the correct size to blot out the sun’s very bright surface. This allows the sun’s atmosphere to become visible, where normally the surface’s brightness will overwhelm it be a factor of 1,000,000.

There was a tinge of regret when I sold my preposterously long lens on ebay. Now I know why. Bollocks.

When the visual cortex stops working

Today, I watched my brain turn itself inside-out. A thoroughly frightful experience, but very “interesting” (but only in the way a scientist would use the expression).



I had just disembarked from the overnight sleeper train from Tianjin, and was making my way out of the Shanghai train station towards the metro station. All of a sudden, I felt faint. After I climbed a flight of stairs up to ground level, it felt much worse. I was wobbly, and had to stop walking to hold on to a wall to prevent myself from falling over. My vision blacked out completely- I could see nothing. This lasted for about 10 seconds.

My sense of balance was failing rapidly, and even the wall was not helping me keep upright. I had to squat down and brace my head in by hands. All this while, I was worried my condition would deteriorate further causing me to keel over and pass out on the wet pavement in the rain (and lose my computer, passport and phones). This lasted for approximately 10 seconds until my sense of balance and vision returned, just barely.

I became aware of a motorcycle-taxi behind me asking if I needed a ride. I told him my address, he quoted me 15 yuan. It was a slaughter (a normal taxi would have cost 11 yuan), but I was in no shape to haggle.

I was able to get on the bike and keep myself in balance without problem, but my vision was still bedlam. In hind sight, this is not very surprising as the visual cortex is of substantial size, and visual processing is a very resource intensive task.

Below is a Photoshop recreation of my rather useless sense of vision at that time.



Normal view

Click here for large size image



WTF view

Click here for large size image

Allow me to attempt to describe what little I could see.

It was an overcast day with light drizzle, so the sky was entirely white. My field of vision had returned to normal, however, everything was in very very low resolution. In the middle of my field of vision, I could ‘see’ some detail, but everything else was a blur of white and splotches of dull colours.

When I look at buildings, I see it as if it was a pencil sketch on white paper. I could perceive some of the edges of buildings- these edges were rendered in a plain purplish colour. The rest was mostly white in colour. It appears that the perceived edges were moving with respect to my field of vision. This is consistent with findings that moving objects are easier to detect compared to stationary ones ¹. Conceivably, the perception of moving objects is given a higher priority in the visual processing part of the brain.

Over the course of 5 minutes, I regained my sense of vision. I could walk and keep balance as if nothing had happened.


Footnotes:
1 – This is important for the survival of many species. A moving object could well be a predator, and being able to detect a predator early would increase the creature’s chances of not being eaten.

Weirdo

Of late, I’ve taken to reading journal papers for leisure.

Despite the main body of most research papers being very in depth studies of very specific, these papers do provide a fair bit of enlightenment of the field of study and general fragments of knowledge.

Here are a few free resources that might light your boiler:

DOAJ
EMIS
DigiZeitschriften
NUMDAM
Project Euclid
Polish Virtual Library of Science
SwissDML
arXiv.org
mini-DML

Fate has dealt me a good hand.

Adventure at a post office

Let me tell you a story.

I went to the post office with my envelope.
The envelope is from FedEx, made of manila card with a clear plastic pocket for the air waybill.
I used a sheet of A4 to tape over the orange and purple logo on the front and wrote the destination address there nicely. And slipped another piece of paper into the air waybill pocket to show the return address.

The girl at the counter asks, “Is this a letter?”
“Yes.”
“Erm, this is not an envelope.’
“It is.”

She then goes to ask someone else if it is an envelope.
She returns, “No that’s not an envelope.”
“It is a courier service envelope.”

She leaves her position to consult with another colleague.
On her return, she tells me with an air of finality, “You cannot use this envelope.”
“Fine, sell me your envelope.”

For 60 cents, she gives me a normal brown paper envelope. I write the delivery address and tear open the beautiful FedEx package to repackage my goods. She eyes the contents suspiciously.
“What is that, you cannot send that as a letter.”
“What?”
“Only documents can be sent as letters.”
“So how do I send it?”
“You need to send it as a small package.”

In the end, I decided not to mail it. I’ll repackage it properly as a ‘letter’ and mail it another day.



Online, wiser expatriates have advised exasperated newcomers to lower their expectations when in China. Expect everything to go wrong, and you’d be fine.

Sigh.

Finally putting things into practice

I have been unable to access any blogspot sites since Friday, a remarkable coincidence with my little outburst against the local government regime. Perhaps they are related?

Anywhere else and I’d have said bullshit, but this country has proven itself at being able to throw up unpleasant surprise after unpleasant surprise after unpleasant surprise.


***

In the intervening time, I have FINALLY taken the time to actually start some financial planning. Like what the texts books have been telling me since… June 2007.

1. Identify financial needs and goals
2. Allocate assets

In line with item 1, I did a budget forecast of my next big thrust into fatherhood dictatorship, and the initial results were not encouraging. 10,000 AUD just to secure a miserable seat in the Outer Party’s Supervisory Committee is just… depressing.

How the fish do these crooks finance themselves into the Inner Party Censorship Board and Economic Planning Council? Ok fine, stupid question: they are crooks.


The asset allocation bit was a bit trickier. Having made earlier contributions to various mutual funds, I had to break down each fund into its constituent asset types to find my total exposure to each asset type. Then compare the existing allocation to the target allocation etc etc.


Ok I’ll not bore you with the number-crunching and data manipulation game.