Kids Play 9 - The Broken Shed

Hadrien was upset because the garden shed was broken into in the night and his little bicycle was stolen. What was surprising was that nothing else was stolen. There were bigger bikes, power tools, ...etc, which were more valuable but they were left untouched.

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"The thief must have wanted the bicycle for his child so much but couldn't afford to buy one for him," Hadrien's mother explained.

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After that Hadrien didn't feel that bad. He thought that perhaps the bicycle must have meant more for the thief and his child, and in that moment of madness had fallen into temptation and then stole the bike.

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Design Follies 2

This is another in the series of "Design Follies". To read my earlier post on the topic. Click here.

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Design follies take different routes. Not all of them are designed to be silly from the start. Sometimes they started out as being useful design, like this entrance to the bus, which has done away with steps and is so low that a wheelchair can go up easily.

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This one I managed to capture, is a city sight tour bus for tourists. However, I think the design merits must have not been communicated widely enough to bus companies, as when it comes to using them for public buses, they put a barrier up!!!

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Why do they need the handrail in the middle obstructing the access of wheelchairs and prams?
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This is the rooftop of a bus stop. The part I am focusing on is at the end of the red tiles where the gutter used to be. It is now filled up with concrete. The gutter drain used to be there to direct the rain water orderly down to the ground. That was a very appropriate design, such that rain water won't be dripping all over the place when it rains.

This gutter is now filled up because it collected dead leaves and choked up, leaving stagnant water there and breeding mosquitoes. With the high incidents of dengue hemorrhagic fever and people dying, I think we can put up with water dripping everywhere. So, this is still a good design that has even kept up with the times. :)

You can figure this one out yourself from the pix. I haven't seen anyone cycling up the bicycle lane. With the slope, the short run and the bollards, who would bother. (Note: When you are pedaling the bicycle yourself, every little slope requires extra energy. And the narrow space in between the bollards can be a painful path if you hit them. )

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These government apartments in Singapore were built ten years ago. At that time, they built the flats with elevators going to every alternate floor. Sometimes, in between two floors. However, as the population ages, the government realised that there will be more old weary legs that can't take them even one flight of stairs, not to mention the occurences of more wheelchairs in the near future. They now realised that they need the elevator to stop at every floor.

That was a "pennywise pound foolish" design savings. In order to save a bit of money, now they have to spend a lot.

However, don't expect the government to own up to this folly. When it comes to politicians, trust them to package something to their advantage when they need to. This correction is now sold to the people as "upgrading". That is, upgrading of the value of their property and enhancements of their assets. The majority of the people were sold.

As if this is not enough, if you are in the Opposition constituencies, you will not be privileged enough to enjoy the benefits of the upgrading. "No upgrading for you because you did not vote for me." Now they are even using their design folly as a weapon against the Opposition, knowing that there are also old people living there on the receiving end of their design folly.

This is an elegant glass vase of contemporary design. Good to look at but difficult to carry around. I broke the previous one, when washing them with detergent. It slipped off my hands and slammed itself on the sink, breaking into bits.

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That is the reason why old style vases always have a 'neck'. The 'neck' is there for a reason - to hold. But as it has always been there, we gradually take them for granted and design something more modern, arguably better to look at, but difficult to handle. Does that sound familiar?

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This one is familiar. To end your Windows session, you click the "Start" button. Steve Balmer's (Microsoft's CEO) mother picked this design flaw out. She picked a flaw many of Microsoft designers somehow missed!

Probably equally familiar is this humble air-con remote control. It has the start and stop controls on the same button. As a result, it is difficult to know whether the air-con is on or off sometimes. Occassionally, after coming home from work, you would realised that you have unwittingly left it on the whole day.

Bucky Group 22 - Vectors

As some Vacuum State readers have been asking where exactly the Bucky Group meet every Sunday, I have decided to upload the location above. Isn't this a beautiful sight and idyllic way to spend Sunday morning? This pix will replace the one I usually use for the Bucky Group posts. It is the iconic zig zaggy bridge of MacRitchie below.

This Sunday, I managed to jog after a long while. My knees have mysteriously recovered, after my being horizontal due to my recent flu and fever. So even falling sick had its plus point. :)
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We continued with Bucky's book, "Utopia or Oblivion"'s Chapter 3, "Prevailing Conditions in the Arts". In the opening pages, Bucky reassert that while much of the knowledge we were taught as separate subjects in school are not separated from one another in nature. Nature did not have separate departments for Chemistry, Biology and Physics, requiring different heads of departments. In Bucky's view, nature has only one department. As the exploration capabilities during Bucky's youth were very meagre compared to today, what the biologist were able to see with his very low-powered microscope looked very different from what the chemists seemed to be dealing with. The chemists and physicists couldn't see what they were working with anyway. So, they felt they needed different departments.

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Bucky in the subsequent paragraphs endeavoured to explain his findings in for a coordinate system for nature and felt that if there is one, it would be characterised by arithmatic and geometry. Particularly he mentioned that Chemistry has shown us that nature was associating and disassociating in terms of whole rational numbers, such as H2O.

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Scientists in those days were comfortable modeling in 3 dimensions, as it can be graphically represented by a cube. When it comes to the fourth power, then they realised they cannot illustrate their model graphically. Some scientists erroneously considered 'time' as the fourth dimension and that it is invisible and not possible to show its geometry.

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Bucky then found himself working and impressed with Vectors. Although Galileo used them tentatively and erroneously in developing his parallelogram of forces. Click here (a previous Bucky Group post where we discussed the use of the parallelogram in navigation.)

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Bucky wonders if nature might have a set of omnidirectionally operative vectors that represented all of our experiences.

[Book reading stopped here, but stay tuned next week and find out what Bucky's geometries are.]

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Discussions

I notice that Bucky likes geometry and uses them to model his findings so that we can understand the generalised behaviours in nature. I find it so cool!

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Question: "Why do we need to understand about vectors? How would it help me to locate my three lost cats?"

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Replies: If you had recorded your cats' regular movement vectors, you would have been able to find them. (BTW, two of the cats are suspected to have been killed by a group of monkeys. The third one just went missing.)

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Joo Hock mentioned that if we can handle vectors well, which comprises direction and frequency, then it may lead us to teleportation.

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Chia Siew: Then will the head end up on the arse at the destination end?

Monica: Well, to some people that may be where their head is mentally most of the time anyway, so it is ok. *chuckles*

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Postmortem in the coffeeshop:

During breakfast after the session, Joo Hock related to Eric (my American friend) about Bucky's aborted plan to kill himself one day by the great lakes. Eric's hometown is near the great lakes in the US. (Continuing the story) Then a voice came and told Bucky that his life is not for him to take, and on realising that, decided to dedicate his life to humanity. He had used his life as an experiment to serve humanity.

Then it occured in my head. "Is anyone one of us courageous enough to do the same as Bucky?" I have done a micro-experiment when I was sick last few weeks. It was fun! Will I be daring enough to do more?

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Last but not least, we got our usual dose of free orchids from Sue. It's from their farm. We visit the farm in Kota Tinggi from time to time. Thanks Sue.

In Sickness or in Health 5

Everything happens for a reason. After lying horizontal for much of two weeks, I realised my knee pains are gone, and as I had not eaten much, the constipation is gone too. I also have lost a bit of weight, which was about time.
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By now, I am about 95% recovered. I go cycling in the morning and take short naps in the afternoon. On my regular cycling route, I always dread this long slope up. My mind wanted a powerful and swift upslope run, but my body was panting and crying out for oxygen. I could no longer go up the slope the way I did. The mind is willing but the flesh is weak! :)
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On the following day, I recovered further and this time with the same mind of going for a powerful swift run up the slope, I managed to pedal myself up to the crest of the road without straining too much. I wasn't panting.
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The interesting observation on these two days is that on both days, I had the same mindset, but different states of fitness. The mind was the same, but the bodies were different. Here, I experienced and rediscovered that my soul (or mind) and body are separate entities. I am not this body, I am this soul that drives my mind, that drives my body. My mind remained the same. I am proud that I had not allowed the state of my body to affect my mind.

Spheres of Success

There is this group called "Spheres of Success" started by two of my friends. They gather once a month for one hour to discuss about successes they have achieved. Any success no matter how big or small, involving groups of people or just themselves. No negative thinking or events are allowed to be mentioned, unless they are used to describe their journey to their sucesses. I have joined their meetings and have found them very enlightening and energising.

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This is their fifth meeting and already two other groups have formed to meet on different days of the month and different locations.

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Come and join us. We meet every second Tuesday of the month at 5A Mayo Street, Singapore. You can start one too. You will find it very encouraging.

In Sickness or In Health 4

My Internet connection stopped a few days ago, as my provider had upgraded their signals and my modem can no longer synchronise. When the modem cannot synchronise it cannot connect with the Internet. In much the same way, when we cannot sychronise, we cannot connect to the universe.

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So I bought a new modem to replace the old one. As I was still not feeling too well, I left it on the desk for a day. Mentally too tired to read manuals and install the modem. My impatient housemate then offered to do it. However, instead of using the power adaptor for the new modem, she was lazy and used the old one. She just took the electric cable of the old modem and plug it into the new modem. In doing so, she instantly burned the new modem. The voltage was too high for the new modem. She blew the new modem and thus we still cannot connect. Metaphorically and drawing parallels to spirituality, if we put too much pressure on someone to self-realise, it wouldn't work. He/she will still not connect. Thus religions and spiritualism cannot be forced.

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Having no Internet connection has its plus points, as I spend more time doing other things that needed doing. Most of all, to spend time by myself and walking in nature. Though walking even short distances at this time still made me pant (as I am still not fully recovered), it was still very pleasant overall.

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During this time, a friend of mine moved in to my place. I think we both have positive influences on each other. He comes from the Mid West of America where people go to bed soon after sunset and he still diligently follows that. Without the Internet and someone to talk to at home, I too sleep early and wake up early.

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We also go for our regular bicycle rides along the beaches. Though he has lived in Singapore for a while, he hasn't seen these places. Over the years, he has been busy rushing around. This is his period of transition before moving to the next phase of his life. He is often impatient. I told him not to. Everything happens for a reason and we must capture every opportunity to enjoy the very moment. In this case, the period of tranquility and peace. Soon we will all be very busy rushing again. So enjoy the peace now.

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I found this video clip from Eckhart Tolle. Watch this. He explains the power of Now very well.

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In Sickness or In Health 3

The flu went on but I continued with my experiment with myself to see if I can keep my mind above all the backaches, giddiness, cough, drowsiness and fever. I managed quite well. I told myself that since my energy was so low, every ounce was precious and many incidents and issues that normally would have mattered to me ordinarily would not be allowed to matter. Then incidentally, one of my business associates at this time was still calling me and was very unreasonable, but it didn't affect me. I was proud that I stayed above it all. It reminds me of the saying, "If you didn't mind, it didn't matter."

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This went on well. Then gradually I got better. First the cough went, then the backache went, I could then breathe better and feel less drowsy. During this period, the same bothersome business associate came back and was persistent with his unreasonableness despite knowing that I was unwell. This time he did irritate me! "How come?" I wondered. I shouldn't be irritated since I am feeling better now. I should be able to see above everything else even better now that I feel better. Why can't I be above it all like when I was hardly breathing?

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At this point, I realised that at the time when I was physically weakest, my faith was strongest. Then, I knew that I could not afford to waste any bit of energy left in my body. However, as the body recovers, physical comfort slipped in and I had gradually allowed my mind to descend to the usual pettiness! Oh dear! How did I allow that?! :)

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I remember a time in Singapore when most of us were poor. Physical comfort, if at all, was very spartan but we didn't know any better. Everybody helped everybody else within strong communities and I could not remember anyone feeling lonely or uncared for. Fast forward forty years on and you now find most people keeping to themselves in their flat after work, watching television, surfing the Internet or indulging in their own material comforts. Now do we find lonely people.