May 18, 2004

Relief

It seems I'm spared from the mind-numbing hassle of university applications -- for the time being.

I've decided to drop the idea of joining the undergraduate course at Monash and instead get into the Monash College diploma course. This one-year (or thereabouts) course will put me in the second year of university well prepared to handle the undergraduate course. It'll give me more time to prepare and finish with my A levels because it starts in October. Which, incidentally, means I get to spend my summer here. Woohoo! And Monash College is cheaper, class sizes are smaller, and Fareha foresees no problems for me.

In short, I'm incredibly glad I noticed this. If not for a series of entirely coincidental events which happened right after one another, I would never have. Which makes me wonder about these so-called `coincidences'.

More time here also means I'll be able to spend some time learning to drive and maybe take a training course in multimedia or Java programming (my preference). Maybe even play the guitar a bit more, who knows?

The only thing I have to worry about now are the Economics A level units next month. After they're over, I'll finally be able to relax.

May 16, 2004

Sluggishness

Sometimes I feel this great reluctance to get up and do anything. I'm so comfortable where I am that actually starting to do something, and changing the state I'm in now, seems, well, impossible. I've read in Bruce Eckel's blog that if we insist on making a big change to our situation, our minds revolt subconsciously and prevent us from effecting the change. But if we try to do something one small step at a time, we have a much easier time of handling it.

It's hard to go to university one small step at a time.

Typically I go to sleep around 23:30--00:00, and get up around 08:00. That's about eight hours of sleep, which is all I need. Of course, sometimes I get more and sometimes (rarely) less. Back in 2002, I had these bad nights where I couldn't close my eyes because it felt so uncomfortable, and spent half the night fighting to keep them closed. Then there were the nights I'd jerk back awake if I managed to drift off to sleep -- every damned time -- thus effectively getting no sleep for two-thirds of the night. Then, of course, there were the total brain breakdowns, where I felt like my concentration was getting continually shorted out by fuzzy random static. Not a good feeling, boys and girls. Thankfully, it's very rare.

Something interesting: all mammals dream, and no one knows why. Wonder what cats and dogs and the like dream about? I suspect it wouldn't make much sense to us. But it would be cool to `see' it (if that is even possible).

May 11, 2004

After dinner, things fall into place

It's almost time for bed. We've had a more or less good dinner at Don Giovanni's, and had all the basic birthday elements -- cake, candles, pictures (although I was in only one of them).

I got home to find my blog pretty much OK again -- last year's deleted stuff gone for good, and the new content and design viewable to the general public. I guess a few hours were all it took.

Yaman had a good haul from Erfan and Wahid Dada/Ruba Dadi. He's all set to order some more comics from Amazon.

I wonder how much influence I had on him in terms of getting him to like comics and books in general. He likes basically all the comics titles I do, but is much more selective when it comes to books. I'll read pretty much anything new I come across -- at least until I get bored. He'll look at the cover and decide on the spot whether to read it or not. He's into fantasy/sci-fi as far as I can tell, but not in a big way. Sure he's crazy about Asimov, but hasn't found out about Arthur C. Clarke or any others. (Harry Potter: yes.)

He also has different taste in magazines, or at least in one case -- Wisden Cricket. True, I've read some of the articles in one or two of them, but have not felt any compulsion, like I usually do with, say, PC World or Wired.

Also, he hasn't shown any interest in computers per se, beyond as gaming machines, or in programming. He also doesn't understand (or claims he doesn't understand) why someone would consider programming more fun than playing a (computer) game. What he doesn't realise is that it is perfectly plausible for a puzzle drive to manifest itself as a desire to solve programming problems.

May 10, 2004

Dash it all

OK, I've given up on my previous blog -- there's only so long I can wait for them to take it down. The new page is much better. I'll have to customise it, but for now it looks good.

I've always wanted a home page -- but Geocities makes for small fry and home pages are transient at best, boring at worst. (And I'm not talking about the ones that are dedicated to a specific topic -- those are usually OK insofar as their audiences are concerned. I'm talking about the `here I am!' pages that are put up as a rite of passge into the web.)

Anyway, getting back to the topic -- I guess this is as good a home page as any I've ever made. True, I didn't design and build it from the ground up; but in exchange (?) I'm getting all these advanced capabilites -- readers posting comments, individually manageable posts and blogs, and links to some great content (others' blogs -- there must be thousands of people doing this, and at least hundreds of interesting people).

Going to blog again

Decided to start blogging again. Medusa's Lair is nice because it's good for communication among us, but this is my spot, where I can pretty much post anything I like.

One reason I think I didn't latch on to the whole idea of blogging is maybe that I couldn't get into the mindset of sharing my private thoughts with the world at large. But then, nobody's forcing me to do that. All I have to do is share some of my thoughts that others might find interesting; things that I'm doing in my spare time, perhaps. Things that pass through my mind. And boy, am I spoiled for choice when it comes to that. Did I mention I usually have trouble starting to sleep at night because of the variety of thoughts and ideas crammed in there?

I sometimes wondered how much information the brain can take and store, whether it is limited (seems likely) and whether, like Sherlock Holmes, I should have limited my intake of knowledge of all kinds of subjects over the years. Well it looks like it's a little too late to go back now, so I'll just have to settle for turning myself into a jack-of-all-trades :-)