During the chaos of my parents’ divorce (when I was around 11), my uncles on my mother’s side (or maybe my grandmother—I can’t quite remember, but it doesn’t really matter since they shared the same values) offered to take me to a theme park out of town. But shortly after, they had a change of heart. They wanted to see who I would end up living with. Basically, if I had chosen to stay with my dad, whom they saw as their sworn enemy, they wouldn’t have bothered with me or the trip. I have to admit, for most of my adult life, I didn’t think anything was wrong with that—it’s kind of like how economics works: your employer is likely to withdraw benefits when they know you’re intent on leaving for another employer, seeing it as a way to avoid needless losses.

However, when I casually mentioned this to my landlord (yes, I’ve had many heart-to-hearts with this older lady), she was surprised, even a bit confused. She was like, “I don’t know what they were thinking, but if you were my grandchild and I knew you were leaving us to live with your dad, I’d want to take you anywhere you wanted and give you the best I could—because I wouldn’t know when I’d see you again.”

My eyes welled up. I was genuinely shocked to hear such a different perspective. Some people strictly prioritize benefits over kindness, while others don’t really care about gains and losses. It really got me thinking a lot about family values and what unconditional love truly meant. At one point, I even felt like I didn’t really know what love was.

I couldn’t choose the family I was born into, but I can choose to carry that conversation with me forever.

My first podcast episode. Short and melodic. Hope you’ll enjoy.

Transcript

For someone born in the 1980s, I have to admit I had a little hard time distinguishing between Atlantic Starr and Midnight Star — probably because both are American bands, both have/had multiple members, both had R&B hits, both were formed in the exact year of 1976, and both have “Star(r)” in their names.

But is it really important to tell one “star” from another? As far as I know, many people outside of the Anglosphere still think Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley were the same person or mistake Marilyn Monroe for Madonna. (Beyoncé vs. Rihanna might be even more challenging for them.) On hearing the first eight bars of Billie Jean, however, they can sing and dance to it with total abandon.

So the answer is definitely a no. All we need to do is appreciate the beauty of these marvy works and feel grateful to those artists who ever committed themselves to perseveringly creating one marvel after another and pushing the edge of the envelope, even though we cannot exactly recall their stage or real names after decades.

It’s Christmas again. Here we have almost everything one would expect of a “traditional Christmas” — snow, gatherings, foods, wines, Christmas songs, gifts under the Christmas tree, etc. I can’t be bothered to mention Santa because we don’t really have a fireplace in this house. Despite that, some elements even got an “upgrade.” Instead of snow flurries, for example, many people are travelling against a province-wide blizzard warning. We chose to stay in because none of us would love to get stuck on 401 or at YYZ for eight or more hours straight.

This Christmas I’ve also done something meaningful. I’ve written a bunch of thank you notes to important people that crossed my path in the past year, as well as leaving truthful, largely positive reviews on Google Maps for businesses that impressed me one way or another. (Some business owners did request me to write one immediately after our deal was done, but that’s not the only reason I felt obliged.)

For the rest of the holiday, I’m going to read, learn, and code, as if the holiday hadn’t begun or had already ended. Study computer science, they said. Be a lifelong learner, they said.

I wish everyone reading this post a merry Christmas and a joyous holiday season.

The following block of text is from Mark, an intelligent, philosophical friend of mine:

One thing that suddenly struck me several years ago is this: ALL negative emotions all stem from one single one: fear.

Grief comes from having lost something or someone, and the fear that you know they will never come back.

Hatred comes from when someone does something bad to you, that you fear can never be fixed.

Envy comes from someone else having something you want, and the fear that you will never be able to get it yourself.

Jealousy comes from the fear that someone that you love will leave you.

When there’s no fear, there’s no negativity. If you have a partner that you trust implicitly, there’s no fear of them leaving, hence no need for jealousy.

To me it makes much sense on many levels, although the gist of his message is about handling jealousy in a relationship. You can even find further evidence:

• Vanity stems from the fear that people around you will not like you the way you are.
  
• Anxiety stems from the fear that you will be unable to confront any negative consequences.
  
• Indignation stems from the fear that you’re losing control over a situation where you think things should be done your way.

But where does fear, the seeming wellspring of almost all kinds of difficult emotions, come from? How to overcome fear? How to prevent fear from happening?

I believe fear warrants its own book.

Today marked the end of the fall semester, as the last final exam was written earlier in the afternoon. I had kept myself busy for a prolonged period of time, with quite a lot on my plate. Some professors were either disorganized or lacking in proper approaches to delivering content, meaning that I had to be self-reliant.

That said, it is not necessarily a bad thing because people working in computer science often find it needful to acquire new knowledge on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis.

It’s pretty nice to have a few days off around Christmastime and New Year. I had planned to fly to Vancouver but didn’t manage to squeeze the 10-day trip in. There are a few things that I’ve been neglectful of and have to attend to at this point. Unfortunately, most of them wouldn’t get done remotely.

Speaking of New year, if I get the time, I’ll probably make a post like “My 2022 Year-in-Review” or “My New Year’s Resolution.”

Finally, iOS 16.2 got installed on my phone. This means I have one more collaboration tool (Freeform, only available on Mac, iPad, and iPhone — not yet on an Android device nor in a web browser), can sing along with millions of songs (Apple Music Sing), have my iCloud data better protected (end-to-end encryption expanded to 23 data categories) ¹, but can only receive files from Everyone through AirDrop for a 10-minute window, after which it automatically reverts to Contacts Only.

Many have advised against updating to iOS 16.2 to retain the ability to receive “surprise content” from strangers for an indefinite period of time, which might be the grounds for Apple’s adjustment to this service considering that it has proved useful in many circumstances where Apple, or some of the regimes they’re serving, don’t see fit. Apple says it is a measure to cut out unwanted content. But unwanted by whom? Why just 10 minutes instead of 10 hours or 1 day? Why is there not even an option for users to personalize the service? Would Apple force iPhones to reject phone calls from strangers after 10 minutes to prevent “unwanted” calls?

So many questions need to be asked. Without satisfying answers, this move seems to be hasty and sketchy.

I guess I have brought my blog up to code. Now the new version is ready.

One of the biggest changes is that this site is totally static, thanks to Blot.im. This means this site no longer needs a database, which is required by dynamic blogging platforms like WordPress. What’s the point of having no databases? Simply put, the site loads much faster, and the file system is simpler and more maintainable.

The posts on my old blog are all written in HTML. If I move them over I would have to manually add a “header” (meta data) to each post so that Blot can render them properly. They don’t even have file names but random post IDs, which means there’s no pattern to process them in batches. That would be a huge amount of work. So I’ve decided to keep the backup of the old site to myself and only move those longer, more important posts over here.

Now I’m writing on my iPhone using the Ulysses app. Posts are automatically synced to iCloud, where a folder is actually a mirror folder on Google Drive. This way I can take advantage of my iCloud Drive as a buffer storage since many iOS apps cannot use external storage other than DropBox.

If lucky you can even see my typing on the fly.

But hey, mind you, this is a static blog — my first static blog ever.