Ruonin

Looking for a place called Home.

Oct 2013 Update

A lot of negativity over my last few years.  Fatigue and job dissatisfaction took their toll.
Nevertheless, I'm happy to announce that I have married my long time girlfriend.
I dare say I can die content =]

Wisdom?...

Hardening hearts make repairs difficult.
Sad that wisdom learnt seems like a visit by Karma.

What makes a good place, good?

Years later, and I think, "Should I have stayed?"
Young and dissatisfied, I wanted to get what life owed me.
When the pursuits of wealth turns empty, then what do I want out of life?
Now, almost a decade later, I wonder, "Should I have stayed?"
~

source: http://th05.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/f/2012/046/c/0/perhaps_she_should_have_stayed_in_her_cage_by_kristinellinson-d4pv81h.jpg

Dream: Evil dragon and time travel

Dreams as they go don't make sense. I just thought that it's amusing to log them and read at a future date. Readers might want to skip this entry.

[dream: act 1]
In long shop house area, much like Tanjong Pagar.  Waiting for someone.
[/dream: act 1]

[dream: act 2]
In unfamiliar shopping center.  Had an appointment with an NBA player at 12 noon.  It's 1.45 pm and he's very late.  Wanted to not wait for him, like what Lincoln would have done.
[/dream: act 2]

[dream: act 3]
Evil Chinese dragons(note1) attacking Chinese opera houses.  I was shown a map of a web of river valleys with settlements populating them, each having an opera house.  I have went backward in time, just before the second attack.
[/dream: act 3]






[dream: act 4]
An elderly man was collecting tax/license fee from the opera owners.  He commented that their ticket rates are very cheap.  I know instinctively that this was just before modernisation forced prices down and opera house out of business.  I got to know the price is $1.50.  I agreed, "Very cheap".
[/dream: act 4]

[dream: act 5]
In a small flat.  Younger versions of my parents-in-law are eating egg omelettes and pork cutlets.  Had a thought that if I could stop them from eating unhealthy food now, I could prevent their health problems later.  Saw an elderly woman to the right of me.
"Dua Ah Ma(note2)", I greeted her in Hokkien.
"What Dua Ah Ma?  There's no such thing", she replied in the same dialect.
Pointing to my mother-in-law, I said, "She's Ah Ma.  You're Dua Ah Ma.  I came from the future".
"What?  I don't know you".
Another voice spoke up.  In place of my father-in-law.  A younger version of my maternal grandmother sat there.  She was her plumb self as I remembered her then.  She said, "As he said before to me, once he speaks up, you'll recognise his voice".
That's right, I thought.  I told her that when I time traveled the last time(note3), but that event has not happened yet...
I asked, "How could you know?  It hasn't happened yet".
"I don't know".  She replied.  "I just do.".
[/dream: act 5]

Ah... I missed you.

Footnotes:
note1: In cultural history, Chinese dragons are forces of good, and not evil.
note2: A bad translation.  I was addressing my mother-in-law "Grandmother", and my grand mother-in-law as Great Grandmother".
note3: Dream self had this "memory" that he(myself) met his maternal grandmother in his time travels, and she was convinced of his identity.  However, that "event" is supposedly years after this one.
~

The taste of an oyster

The taste of an oyster.

source: http://www.chow.com/food-news/54106/the-taste-of-an-oyster/

This is an excerpt from Rowan Jacobsen’s A Geography of Oysters: The Connoisseur’s Guide to Oyster Eating in North America, Bloomsbury USA (September 4, 2007). Copyright Rowan Jacobsen.
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An amazing amount of ink has been spilled over the years in an effort to nail the taste of oysters. The essayist Michel de Montaigne compared them to violets. Eleanor Clark mentioned their “shock of freshness.” M. F. K. Fisher was one of many to point out that they are “more like the smell of rock pools at low tide than any other food in the world.” To the French poet Léon-Paul Fargue, eating one was “like kissing the sea on the lips.” For James Beard, they were simply “one of the supreme delights that nature has bestowed on man. ... Oysters lead to discussion, to contemplation, and to sensual delight. There is nothing quite like them.” Something about them excites the palate, and the mind, in a way that other shellfish don’t. You don’t see cookbooks devoted to scallops, and you’d never have found M. F. K. Fisher writing Consider the Clam. 

Yet something about oysters resists every attempt to describe them. 

If we didn’t love them so, it wouldn’t matter, but there’s a tension and energy in the fact that we adore them, many others do not, and that we struggle to explain this mysterious love. The proliferating category of oyster adjectives—cucumber, citrus, melon, copper, smoke—is useful, but doesn’t cut to the core. At some level, it’s not about taste or smell at all. Because an oyster, like a lover, first captures you by bewitching your mind.

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My turn

Now it's my turn.
I dare not say I don't deserve it, yet I feel victimised.
I take responsibility for my faults, not unforeseen acts that slipped us all.
For your distaste, I say the feeling is mutual.

What is one's worth in life?

We started our education as soon as we're aware.
20 years later, we have to work else we'll starve.
10 years after that, we have to get married, else we're losers, and doomed to loneliness.
If we get kids, then we support them till they're old enough to get married, and more.
If our partner pass away, we go on with life, crippled.

Who or what are we living for?
Our tummy?
Our kids?
Our partners?
Ourselves?
~

No more email updates

Will be removing email updates

Mr Au

Mr Al had said it before.
Mr Ma is going to say it now.
Mr Au's only ability is his mouth.
~

Star Wars IV in 60 seconds

Star Wars IV in 60 seconds

video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CUx2ypHQJO0

CNN grieves that guilty verdict ruined 'promising' lives of Steubenville rapists

CNN: So very sad that two promising young men were convicted of rape. Both very promising. Both very good football players.

So... it's a damn tragedy if you're talented and you had to be jailed for a crime you did? 
video link: http://youtu.be/MvUdyNko8LQ

Twined

I placed you as my center
I know I'm in for heartbreaks
This room represents you
I'll be waiting for you

Thoughts on Management patterns

subject: Thoughts on Management patterns

Loyalty
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Loyalty cuts both ways.  An organisation should reward a loyal staff.  If an organisation does terminations mercilessly, then staff morale will be badly affected, which in turn makes it hard to build loyalty.

Get it done today
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A lack of respect for an employee's personal time.  Bosses often do so to hand in their own deliverables timely.  Yet, shouldn't there be a consensus on when the work can be completed?

Deliver it as you promised
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Many managers insist that the promised delivery date is to be fulfilled. Are managers glorified time keepers?  Or should they, with their experience help to spot potential problems before they happen?

I don't think it needs 5 days
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This either produce a slipshod work in the end, or force the employee to put in serious overtime.  Like, "Get it done today", the manager would appear uncaring.

~

Year 2012 in summary

An escape from hell.  A stay in limbo.

Two long awaited unions.  A return to water.

A rude experience.  Long overdue task.  

An uphill task.  A penny short.

A sad news.  A sad injustice.