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Poor Kitten
Born to the world which itself didn’t ask,
Or maybe its karma did.
Little big eyes darting left and right,
Searching for food, avoiding danger,
or perhaps wondering the purpose of its existence.
Not. Just searching for food, looking out for danger.
No time to be an existentialist!
Poor Akila,
In the streets of Hyderabad,
Didn’t ask to be born, probably just a by-product,
of some adult indulgences.
Little big eyes darting left and right,
Searching for food, avoiding danger,
and came she knocked on the Tata Aria window;
shaking her little head left and right, she pleaded;
“Saheb, bread please”
Innuendo-Belaian Jiwa
Old song but quite nice.
Wrongly viewed among people of the world, not understanding anything is itself considered emptiness. This is not real emptiness; it is all delusion.
Without any confusion in mind, without slacking off at any time, polishing the mind and attention, sharpening the eye that observes and the eyes that see, one should know real emptiness as the state where there is no obscurity and the clouds of confusion have cleared away.
Wisdom exists, logic exists, the Way exists, mind is empty.
- From the Book of Five Rings.
Something less depressing
Sometimes things like this is quite entertaining. An old school friend pointed me to this video via Facebook, quoting her, ” She makes me wanna be a lesbian for a night”. Hahahaha.
Tribute to the King
Thanks for the memories. You will be remembered.
I am listening now to the official soundtrack of PERHAPS LOVE, playing on my trusted Marantz CD 6000 OSE Limited Edition CD player on a Marantz PM 6100 SA Integrated Amplifier with an Audio Pro bookshelf speakers. I put on the PERHAPS LOVE soundtrack after listening to Kyung Hwa Chung’s rendition of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor (Decca, Charles Dutoit conducting the Montreal Symphony Orchestra). Out of the blue, I thought of the PERHAPS LOVE soundtrack, a movie that I love and a soundtrack that was played repeatedly in my car audio system some time ago.
While Mendelssohn’s violin concerto is a really superb piece of work, sometimes, it takes a simple song with simple lyrics to take care of some of the heart’s feelings. As I was listening to it, I think of friends, Dominique Hee, who knew about my passion for PERHAPS LOVE, made it a point to give me as a gift the Special Deluxe Edition of the Official Soundtrack that also came with a beautiful photo album and a set of postcards. Also, as I was looking again at my trusted audio system, I remembered how my friend Joseph Loh, who is himself a crazy audiophile, took my hands and went to shops in Sungai Wang and helped me get a good and affordable system, and since he is also a reviewer for The Star in the audiophile section, perhaps his presence do have an effect on the price I paid for the system.
As I was litening to the violin concerto just now, I was also finishing Haruki Murakami’s memoir, WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING. I have been trying to get hold of the book for quite some time after knowing that the English edition is already out. However, the usual bookshops that I went to didn’t seem to have stock but how lucky was I to go to Pavilion that day and went into the TImes bookshop and found a copy. I really enjoyed the book and reading it, inspired me to do something myself. It is more than a book about running, but more so on how running affects one’s life, thoughts, self-understanding and world-view.
It can perhaps be looked at and compared with Miyamoto Msushi’s THE BOOK OF FIVE RINGS. Well, maybe not as hard-core, but I find a bit of similarity there and reading Murakami’s memoir, reminds me of the BOOK OF FIVE RINGS, how one should be disciplined, how one should perfect his/her craft, the physical and psychological barriers and its overcoming, the detailed, dry and dirty training that one has to undergo and practice over and over and over again until it is second nature. Nothing in life comes easy and a lot of hard work needs to be put in, no matter how talented you are, no matter if you are a genius or not.
I love Sunday mornings by myself. I try to wake up early in the morning (that is if I don’t have a Saturday poker night) and my routine would be to freshen up, check for mails and then go out to the restaurant and have a bowl of my favourite prawn noodles and iced nescafe, enjoying the Sunday papers as I eat. After the breakfast, I will come home and do a bit of housework, fill up the water, do some laundry, clean up the mess a bit, etc. while listening to music. Then I will settle down on the sofa to read a book and enjoy the early fresh and cool air blowing through the balcony door. I read until I feel like stopping and then I do whatever else I like for the day, maybe watching a DVD or studying Go or just lay around doing nothing. It is really enjoyable.
Sometimes I wonder if I should really go out more often, perhaps go hiking or running a marathon or something more physical. I really think that this will be good for me. I think I should do that. I used to go to the gym on weekends but have stopped going to the gym now, which I think is a mistake. I enjoyed my gym time a lot, my normal routine will be going on the treadmill for about an hour, then play with the weights for another hour, do some stretching etc. and then go to the sauna room for a good sweating session. I remember that no matter how tired I was before going to the gym, after going through the routine, I feel the more fresh and energetic, with all my previous fatigue gone. I even feel happy for whatever reasons. The hormones are definitely at work.
Perhaps William James is really right. I really believe it the moment I read it back in 1992. He said, “We do not run because we are afraid, we are afraid because we run.” Something like that. I always think about this when I don’t feel like getting out of bed in the morning for work or do something that my feelings tell me that it hates but the brains tells me that I should do. As Murakami san would say, it is good to feel pain. When you feel pain, the muscles ruptures and heals itself, and becomes stronger after that.
“….the toughest part of a marathon comes after twenty-two miles”.
Yeah, another post on Go but one post on movie is coming up and brewing ;-)
My current intensity with Go has several origins, firstly, the increase in the number of tournaments that I am participating in, as I have promised myself earlier to take part in every tournament that I can and have time for. The World Mind Sports Games in Beijing is a major fuel for me. Secondly, the gang at the Malaysian Weiqi Association, namely Mr. Tiong, Billy, Zaid, Alex, Philip, Xinwen, Dennis, et al has been really great and I enjoy their company a lot, and their enthusiasm for Go encouraged me to become better at Go (and to beat them too). Thirdly, we now have a league system and I have participated. I don’t want to lose all my games and I want to emerge as one of the top players there. Fourth, playing Go calms me and is a good antidote to all the crazy things that is happening in the office.
So I have now devised a plan which I am determined to focus and execute for the coming 3 months. It is going to be strenous and demanding but what the heck! I have gone through much tougher times, I have been through much more extreme situations and have survived and emerged better, so I believe this regime is going to do me good. Here is the plan:
1. 60 minutes in the review of one Lee Changho game using the very nice book that I recently bought in Kinokuniya.
2. 25 minutes spent to solve 24 basic life and death problems using the L&D book I bought in China. These problems are not very tough questions but is good training.
3. 25 minutes spent to solve 20 Tesuji problems in the Tesuji problem book composed by Lee Changho.
4. 10 minutes spent to study one problem in the Chinese book entitled Connecting and Cutting. This is a very advanced problem book on connecting and cutting, using real professional games and full board situations.
5. 30 minutes to study one chapter/section of the Ishida joseki dictionary.
In total, 2.5hours a day which is manageable.
The above are mainly aimed to strengthen my reading and fighting skills and to develop a better full board vision for the game, thus executing better strategy.
The above is going to last 3 months and with the team study and the league, let’s see if I can get to 3 dan soon.
Reading Go Discussions.com, I was led to the Dullest Blog in the World. Wow, what a magnificent blog this is! I am totally hooked.
“I was reading the forum and saw the link. I clicked on the link and find the blog to be interesting. I continued to read it for some time.”
After 10 hours of work, the first complete study pack for Module A is ready: Module A Study Pack
Please comment. All feedback is highly appreciated.
Well, after coming out with the syllabus, here comes the materials :Module A study pack
It is still in draft form and completed up to section A.3 which is quite sufficient as an introduction to absolute beginners. More to come.
Comments and correction welcome. Please also read the author’s note.
Ayn Rand. Karl Popper. Two of a dozen or so thinkers that I really admire.
The two fellows above are so cerebral, I sometimes wonder if they are right and their intellect might, although towering, sometimes leaves me a bit cold. Growing up in the Asian tradition, “mysticism” amazes me and the truth is that the intellect cannot really explain many things. Just because the eyes can’t see, the senses can’t sense and the brains can’t register doesn’t mean that something doesn’t exist.
But coming back to Objectivist Phenomenology, my last sentence do contradict a bit in that Objectivist do believe that there is existence that is independent of our sensory capability, independent of our existence. Just because we do not exist does not mean that the tree is not there. But on the other hand, Objectivists do not believe in the existence of God since they have no way to “prove” that he exists. But they have no way to prove that He does not exists! Objectivist just believe that what is there is there… what we can prove there or not cannot be proven anyways.
Like Kant said, our mental faculty is just not made up to really understand the universe. In a way, Objectivists are like the Buddha too. When asked, he just said to the common people, just live the moment, whatever is there, is there. There is no need to know what is beyond. Just practice the teachings and it is enough for enlightenment. There is no need to speculate.
There are also many Objectivist ideas that is quite interesting. For example, Objectivist politics claimed that taxes is wrong because it forces people to pay. Anything that uses force is bad. But if there are no taxes, how is the government going to finance public projects like schools? Ayn Rand has some interesting ideas.
But above all, in this period of economic turmoil, Ayn Rand’s economic idea is really interesting. To sum it in one line, “If the Government does not interfere with economics, there will be no economic crisis. Politics and Economics should be separate, just like Politics and Religion”.
Wow, really?
Ayn Rand is cool. Read her novels, Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead.
Edit: Well, somehow the code didn’t work, so just click on the “Pop Out Player” to listen.
“I AM A SICK MAN…. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors.”
What a wonderful opening from Dostoevsky’s NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND.
“My Go is sick…. My Go is spiteful. My Go is unattractive. I believe my Go sucks. However, I know nothing at all about Go, and do not know for certain why my Go sucks. I don’t consult a professional for it, and never have (except briefly with Alexander Dinnerchstein), though I have respect for Go professionals.”
NOTES FROM A GO PLAYER – i.e. moi
Ok, back to the topic. Over the past few months, I came to realise just so how important knowledge about joseki is which I have also blogged about. A joseki screw up can immediately screw up the game and this happens just too often now. Maybe a year back, I don’t seem to have this problem and seem to have josekis at the tip of my fingertips, literally, but recently, as I progress, I get stuck when my opponent play different (and often much more interesting) joseki variations. Not that they do it due to fancy but they do it because they think it yields better results and very often, I am at a loss at how to answer the moves.
I am not saying that the joseki variations a very fanciful or are trick plays but just different variations of common joseki. My inability to answer that shows that I really need to study joseki and learn more variations. My current stock of joseki knowledge stalls my progress.
As such, I am embarking on a 3 month study of Ishida Yoshio’s Dictionary of Basic Joseki. Yea, yea, yea. That book was written in the 1970s but what the heck, I don’t even know those stuffs in the book, so when it is written is not really relevant until I know what’s in the book. Besides, I have other references such as Jungsuk in our Time, Korean Style Baduk vol. 1 and most recently, New Openings in the 21st Century.
Also, one huge problem that I face is that I often don’t know how to continue after the joseki, and as such my SmartGo program comes in really useful where I can search a database of 45,000 professional games and check out the joseki played and how the game progressed from there to get ideas on how to play and develop after the joseki.
What a pleasure to have all these stuffs and to learn leisurely. I love Go.
Oh yea, I mentioned about the New Openings in the 21st Century book which I have received just a couple of weeks ago. AMAZING book. So many new ideas inside there and answers some of my questions as I see how high dan players play on kgs and didn’t understand their moves. Now I found answers to some of them and I have been trying out some of these new ideas in my games too. Maybe this is also one reason why I lose so much recently.
New Openings in the 21st Century will be a book anyone 3dan above will greatly appreciate. That is not to say that lower level players cannot appreciate this book but I feel just that players 3dan and above can really milk more ideas out of this book.
In a conversation topic today, the topic of good “cartoons” crop up and immediately, Hayao Moyazaki comes to my mind although the word “cartoons” cannot really be linked up to Miyazaki but to Mickey Mouse for example. In stark contrast to Mickey Mouse, GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES comes up in my mind (although not a Miyazaki product), thanks to a candy box that my wife bought for me:
Looking at the candy box, a very deep feeling emerged inside me. I suddenly recall the feelings that I felt while watchng the movie. What a great movie that is! One of my most favourite and treasured movies of all time.
If there is one thing that this post can do, I hope it is that you will look for the movie and watch it. This movie is widely available in any Speedy Video shop.
I promise you that you will not regret watching this movie.
Well yes, the big worldwide news nowadays is that Obama is the next American president. Many people were happy, even many people in Malaysia. The feeling is just like our own March 8 election where people saw hope and change for the better. To be really honest, I am not so sure. I really don’t know if any substance is going to come from what is just merely symbolic at this point in time. We shall see how it goes from here. I am always the type of person that is afraid to hear big promises because big promises often fail. I would rather hear small promises, small steps, building a better future brick by brick. Maybe I am just a little bit too conservative or the beancounter in me is just a little too prudent.
That said, as it has been clearly illustrated in the book BLACK SWAN, all the major changes in history is a result of, well, how to say, a fluke at best because it is just so unexpected. Maybe “fluke” is not the right word but unexpected, unplanned and unpromised. What we can do is really to prepare ourselves when a black swan event comes or do as much as we can to expose ourselves for black swan opportunities.
This post actually is about Go Books as one of my new acquaintance, Dennis, is interested to buy some go books and his interests sparks me to maybe write some comments about the go books that I have since I do have quite a number of them. I have written about go books a bit in some of my previous posts, so maybe I can continue to do that.
Recently, I have bought the “100 Tips for Amateur Players Vol 2″ and the Yang Yilun Workshop Lectures volumes 3, 4 and 5. This is in addition to the “100 Tips for Amateur Players Vol 1″ that I have bought some time back plus the “Think Like A Pro: Haengma” and “Think Like A Pro: Pae” books written by the same author Yoon Youngsun and the Yang Yilun books “Fundamental Principles of Go” and the Workshop Lectures volumes 1 and 2.
Needless to say, I love those previous books and their authors and have learnt a lot from them. On the way to my house now is Kim Sung-Rae’s new book, “21st Century New Openings”. This is a follow up of his very excellent book “Korean Style of Baduk vol 1″ where he discusses about the Avalanche joseki and the mini-chinese opening. In his new book totalling 380 pages, he is going to talk about new josekis and fusekis that is happening in the current go world. This ought to be really interesting although the depth may be beyond my current level of understanding.
The “100 Tips for Amateur Players” is made up of questions concerning the joseki, opening, invading, attacking, life and death and some training questions. From my experience, the shapes and positions that the author chose to illustrate the problem is very real and happens all the time, at least in my own games. There are positions that I have just studied and in one of my games with Mr. Tiong, I was able to use the lessons learnt from the book immediately. This happened so often in my real games, I made it a point to always revise the lessons in the book and as such I have now read the first volume over more than two times. I appreciate the author’s efforts to choose positions that is so real in our actual games and not some imagined positions that does not normally happen in games. The positions are quite thoroughly studied and explanations given. Although the books contain some typo mistakes, these are nothing compared to the contents of the book. Players in the range of 5k to 2d should be able to amply appreciate this book.
Yang Yilun’s teaching style is very clear and very principle driven. Instead of asking one to memorise a position and sequences, he tries to explains the play by way of formulating principles of play. I see this first in his book “Fundamental Principles of Go” which I bought about 4 years back and is one of the book that I most appreciate. I have read this book over and over for many times now and even if I go over the book now again, I still learn some things especially in the end chapters on reduction and invasion. This book is followed by by his Workshop Lecture series where the contents of his workshops are transcribed into book form and the style is similar to the “Fundamental Principles of Go”. Again, I love this workshops lectures and benefited a lot from them, especially so the lectures on “Playing Complicated Joseki”, “Choosing the Direction of Attack”, “Punishing Weak Groups Directly”. The details of these books can be found on the Slate and Shell site. Again, I will see that these books will be very much appreciated by single digit kyu players right up to about 2dan although double digit kyu players will surely benefit from reading them too.
