Moving already!

For various reasons I'm moving to Wordpress, sorry for the inconvenience!!

You can find me on:

http://guiltyvictim.wordpress.com

4am Project

Came across 4am Project on Facebook last week. A serious challenge considering I live in Kings Heath and my main mode of transport is the bus or the Number 11 (somehow I feel the reference would be lost in Birmingham and thus the need to link it).

A friend once said the point of photography is to capture what you wouldn't normally see. I figured 4am Birmingham is not the usual scene for the casual citizen of the West Midlands, and those who straddle the streets at such hours probably couldn't afford enough attention to remember the next morning. So now a group of us will give photo evidences that "Yes, Birmingham does in fact exist beyond the confine of conscious hours of our daily lives!"

Haven't fully established how I'd get there yet since the first bus doesn't run till after the meeting's over. A friend from Moseley has offered a lift if she's not too tired from a photo shoot the night before. If not, I'll be putting these bad boys on and hope my GPS doesn't fail me.

Probably gonna bring the tripod for some long exposures as well. Will post results!

Challenges / Old Year Resolutions

Plain and simple, as title suggests, the following is a list of challenges I will be tackling. Inspired by scribbleboy. I'll be blogging my progress under each topic in the future.

Like scribbleboy, I welcome any suggestions for challenges, just leave a comment and I'll do a feasibility study and add it to the list depending on results.

1. Blog regularly (at least weekly)
   This is the official challenge I've set myself, after making a pact with hexx0r. Point is to exercise my writing abilities, rather than just musing over other people's wit and intellect with envy.
   
   
2. Learn to Drum (by end 2010)
   Ok, so one's ability to drum is highly subjective, but sometimes you can just tell when someone can drum. I'm not putting down "take drumming lessons" because I know it's not a realistic for me for a while yet. I guess this whole thing is a bit of a long term goal!
   
   
3. Learn Sign Language (by end 2011)
   My fascination with sign language probably stemmed from all the late night tv I watched when bed-time was anywhere from 12midnight to 11pm.
   I later learnt from a couple of friends further benefits of sign language, and there's no excuse considering how my friends I now know who knows sign language!
   
   
4. Take more photos (at least monthly)
   So I splashed out £450 for myself last Christmas, and have been hiding behind my camera at every opportune moment since. Point is, I paid for the damn thing, I need to take more photos to make the purchase worthwhile!
   
   
5. Talk to people at parties (depending on how many parties I go to)
   While I intend to maintain the above challenge, I really oughta socialise more when going to parties. I think I spoke to a whole of 5 people at the last party when I had my camera, 2 of whom are my best friends... Not cool!
   
   
6. Go to soical meetups (at least twice a month)
   Meetup.com is such a wonderful site, allowing people to organise social meetups, meeting new people and all that.
   I discovered it after coming across an ad on gumtree back in March, nearly didn't go to the first meetup, but sure glad I did. I'd since made numerous new friends, and joined additional social groups. The key is to keep attending these meetings!
   
   
7. Improve my diet (by end of August)
   For various reasons I stopped eating 3 meals a day towards the end of April, sometimes going for days without food. Not exactly clever for someone of my petite figure! I'm currently on two meals a day at best, but the goal is to go back to 3 a day, as well as going beyond porridge and pasta.
   
   
8. Watch more films at the cinema (4 a month)
   TWKM knows I've got an unlimited cinema pass, which for your information, I have to pay for... so no, I'm not buying your ticket! Still, sometimes I get too lazy to go to the cinema, even when there're interesting films on. So to make the most of my past, my goal is to see at least 4 films at Cineworld a month. I welcome anyone who's interested in joining me :)
   
   
9. Talk to my friend's friends (ongoing)
   I've been fortunate enough to have many wonderful friends, who in turn have many wonderful friends themselves. I recently realised that friends of friends are just friends in the making, so expect random pokes from me if you're on my Facebook!
   
   
10. Answer random ads on gumtree / similar site and post results (once a week)
    After answering to a York Blog ad earlier this week, I decided this would be another interesting challenge to myself.
    These will either be serious, like contacting fellow film makers, or silly like the aforementioned York Blog.
    

What exactly defines me?

So I was thinking today, what exactly defines me as who I am? I certainly don’t expect to stumble upon the answer alone, but it got me writing and that’s the important thing!

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Is it my memories? Do I wake up each morning and become myself again, as in the briefest of moment I recall the chain of events throughout my life, the first toy, first memory of dawn, first prayer, first sweater, first day at school, first hug, first kiss, everything leading up to the last time I crawled into bed the night before?

How do I know I’m really me then considering how many times I passed out cold before finishing my drunken banters? Could I have misplaced my memories with someone else’s in the pub, and wake up another person? Thankfully chances of that are slim, as unless my friends are all being overly accommodating of the constant changes in my personalities and contradicting stories about my evil crossing dressing twin brother Roy.

Of course they could have been friends I exchanged with said person in the pub the night before. Thankfully Facebook and Flickr photo albums should protect me from any identity crisis for now...

Still. I don’t remember any mornings when I recalled every details of my life leading up to bedtime the night before. There aren’t ever buffering periods before I resume my personality, I just rub my eyes instinctive, turning over face down towards the pillow till I suffocate myself awake. So could my identity stretch beyond simple memories?

Maybe who I am is defined by my current actions? Even your memories of me can be distorted, or simply dated depending on when our paths last crossed. I’m not the same person I was yesteryear, how do you know the me residing in your memories is who I really am? I am here, physically, and I will slap you in the face if you argue otherwise, had I been there right now. Now that’s something yesterday’s me wouldn’t have done!

Case and point my recent email with a long lost aunt led to this very same topic – she mentioned this little boy she used to see, still lingering in her memories, and it was as though she is talking to a complete stranger now when we speak. Merging the two identities proved a challenge she had to embrace, will I forever be two different persons in her mind? Time will tell I guess...

My action right now, writing this blog, could define me as who I am. I mean, what can be more true? We are as true to who we are at this very moment, right? Even if everything that happened prior to this moment can influence the way I act – be it my sitting posture (leaning so far back that I’m nearly sliding off my landlord’s chair), my ability to type 60 words per minute, the choice of words and grammar as I punch these sentences into the computer – I can still make a choice right now to do something completely random.

I choose to eat a Satsuma before resuming (om nom nom) this sentence. Even if I can’t choose to do every possible action in the world right now, there’re still infinite possibility right now to take an action out of the ordinary. As much as I am still the same person, I can choose to be someone else.

But. And here’s a big but. Does what I do, or what I want to do, matter more in defining who I really am?

Say I want to be a drummer. Through that desire I choose to take the action of signing up for drumming lessons. Through the drumming lessons I might become a real drummer, I might not. But my desire to becoming a drummer is what prompted the action of taking drumming lessons on the first place, to tap my foot endlessly on buses to the bass line of songs on my iPod, to try and decipher which cymbal, drum pad and the timing of the bass drum on the current song I’m listening to. But I am not a drummer.

Who I want to be in the future (a film maker / writer, part-time drummer, fundraiser), and what I want for my future (wife, kids, friendly neighbours), influences (but not necessarily dictates) what I do today. Of course, backtracking a bit, it’s the past experiences that led me to the desire of becoming a drummer, past experiences also influence whether I’m willing to try new things as much as the next person, past financial decisions impacts how much I can afford on drumming lessons.

Yet again, for every limitation my past presents to me, there’re infinite possible futures in my path. If my past love or prejudices with certain stereotypes can be broken in an instance of the present based on how I feel right now, then my imagination is the only boundary to who I might want to be tomorrow.

Then who the hell am I, and what defines who I am?

Answering a Blog ad

Came across an ad today for writers for a blog based in York (evidently the county wars extend to the internet domain), and out of naivety and my desire to write, I posted a reply.

Stupidly I forgot to click "email me a copy" so I'm gonna try and rehash what I wrote, in my vain attempt to sound like a promising blogger.

Dear York Blogger

As a British Born Chinese who grew up in Hong Kong, Portsmouth and Wales, I hold no alligence to my Birmingham Postcode. As such would very much like to venture into the exciting world of blogging in York.

I own a computer that's capable of interpreting my finger dances into legible English. I own a chair that provides hours of comfort while exercising in front of the prior mentioned aparatus... Wait, scrap that, the chair belongs to the landlord, but I will blog on my feet if needs be, should my residence to your York Blog be accepted.

So please indulge me the lowdowns of your project, and we can discuss possibility of collaboration.

Yours truly

Reasons and motivations

Being a daily user of Google Reader, subscribed to 40 rss feeds ranging from the useful like Lifehacker; the creative like BOOOOOOOM!; the random like Snopes; the inspirational like PostSecret; and my regular dose of webcomics like Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal; I come across many interesting reads and ideas (whether I read them or not is a different story).

One such read, which I stumbled upon last month, which admittedly didn't read at the time thinking it'd never apply to me, was how to write a successful blog. Of course I will be lucky to be able to find the article now, so I resolved to the next best thing. Whether I'll be able to disgest and absorb the advice is another matter.

So I started this blogging lark last night after chatting with Scribbleboy last night, whom I first met at a mutual friend's party but conversation was made difficult with my camera glued to my face that evening. I poked him on facebook as part of my 12-step programme to making new friends (I think it was step 4 - steal my friend's friends, after step 3 - re-establishing connections with my old friends).

Of course, TWKM knows that I'm OCD and OTT, I'm the kind person who'd painstakingly setup a wiki on his computer to record important information about his friends. I promptly setup this blog, after signing up for Twitter, downloading TweetDeck, linking my Facebook notes with my blog feed, installing ScribeFire and Facebook toolbar. Of course TWKM knows that I have ADD and don't follow through a lot of things, chances are this will become one of them. Time will tell.

So anyway my resolve is this - I'm going to spend the next week deciding what it is that I'll use my blog for, be it to set myself challenges like Scribbleboy and his housemate, or to rant review (oh dear I can't do strikethrough without editing html on blogger!) about the latest flick I watched "for free" with my cinema pass - I'm gonna figure out what I'm gonna blog about.

Meanwhile may I present you with a puzzle to distract you for long enough for the next post:

http://www.booooooom.com/2009/05/29/puzzzzzzzle-challenge/

And thus begin the new era of internet usage

TWKM (those who know me) knows that I'm lousy at social networking sites.

Okay, not lousy like Grandma Audrey or Auntie Cat Lady, but I updated my Facebook status once every two weeks typically, and never comment on friend's embarrassing photos, too lazy to often click that damn "Like" button, and of course filling in those loveable quizs floating just about left right and centre.

Of course TWKM and actually observes my Facebook usage would know that everything in the above paragraph is a lie, a lie that has been mostly true (as in truly a lie... am I making sense?) for the past week.

Being home bound leads to many problems, one of which is too much time at your hands, often misspent. My time over the past month has truly been misspent on youtube, last week on Facebook, yesterday on Bejeweled Blitz. And last hour has marked a new low, which I dictated as a new "era". I joined Twitter, I even texted to twitter my second update. (My dying regret though is that my first message on twitter is a reply to Ant for trolling Twitter (is that an oxymoron? (Am I using too many brackets? (No, wait... I have now...)) Time will tell))

And of course, over the past few minutes, I've been writing my first post to my new blog. First of many hopefully. Brace yourselves, Internet!