Unintended Consequences

The Condor Heroes series I've been following dealt with this theme. The actions of the characters may without their knowledge help or hinder their allies and enemies. The world, as they say, is wide and full of strange things. Intent and outcome are rarely coincident, as someone told the King of Dreams. I think it's something to remember when we try to help those less fortunate. Good intentions don't cut it in this world we live in. If one is truly committed to being of use one needs to do the hard work in finding the real mechanism for assistance.

Goodbye, Condor Heroes

I finished the series yesterday. I'm impressed with the sophistication of the themes explored, like how honor/goodness needs to take into account the circumstances - and therefore there are different kinds of honor. I also liked how they showed both good and bad characters reaping the consequences of their actions - good deeds don't always result in good and bad deeds don't always end up with bad. Both types of characters aren't completely blameless in that they all do morally questionable stuff for reasons that wouldn't hold up to the mores of today, but even the most evil of them have a chance at redemption.

Is it wrong of me to like a villain more than the main characters? I vastly preferred Ouyang Feng to any of the leads. In the novels he gets redemption in the second book, but it's okay with me how they chose to handle things with this adaptation. Hell, they changed Yang Kang into a more morally ambiguous character after all. This adaptation's Ouyang Feng does go insane, but the end implies he's becoming more in touch with himself as he finds stability. 

This makes me want to read the novels. One of these days I'll learn Chinese...

Quiet Spots

There's a spot I like in the restaurant I eat in. The weather is almost always hot, but the view is worth it - trees and green grass, a creek (man-made, regrettably) running beside with lots of koi and the occasional duck; birds on the wing only to turn back and land again, a cycle I don't tire watching. Sometimes I see people pass by, people-watching is interesting too.

I eat some keema or falafel or beryani, then I finish off with yoghurt. I don't like having people around when I do this, it seems like a shame to spoil the silence. Pretty soon I have to go back to my monitor and my work area that's awash in artificial light. But for a while I can enjoy this. 

I like trees and open spaces. I could never live in any of the more cramped cities in my country. Even where I live and work there's not much space - there's always someone happening by on your business. Being with people tires me, more often than not. That's why I also like the dead of night - there's no one to bother you while you train or read or meditate. At night, I used to have a midnight snack of instant noodles, fried egg, bread, coffee, and sometimes french fries; I was young back then, okay? But nowadays I just have the coffee.

Age of Wushu

Wallpaper image from Age of Wushu Media page

All this wuxia stuff is making me want to try out this MMO. I'm reading good things about the game over at Massively so I was thinking, why not?

I'm really liking the idea behind their Player versus Player system, in that it resembles fighting games a lot. What I don't like is that the MMO still maintains a significant resemblance to other MMORPG's that exploit the grinding mechanic. If it takes a while to build my character up to a level that satisfies me then I'll just stick with Yomi - the characters there were balanced by a professional game designer and by some dedicated players, and they focus totally on the fighting aspect.

The movement abilities though are superb - I would really enjoy spending time just moving around in the air and over water:

Condor Heroes

So I'm still watching the series. I am now on Episode 16. It's an irritating tendency for me to be so absorbed into something as to forget other stuff I need to do, so this will probably be the last episode for the day; I need to go and train and study some stuff.

It's definitely a different way of thinking. I mean, one character has an internal energy armor around her; it does not hinder her movement, can be worn with anything, is tough enough to repel some pretty advanced techniques, and routinely protects her from daily annoyances like snake bites. Oh, and it's a passive ability - it seems like it's always on and does not need her concentration to maintain. If I were living in this world where martial artists can have the ability to control poisonous vermin I think I would find a way to learn this skill. You would think that would be obvious, but no - because the skill was developed by a rival this martial arts hero won't even deign to think about learning it. He instead developed a skill that enables him to kill the vermin with needles. Yep, a skill that's dependent on having the right ammo, time to set up, and extreme abilities of perception, coordination, and precision. A skill whose effectiveness lowers drastically the more inebriated you are - which the inventor of said skill often is, given that he drinks wine from a seemingly-bottomless gourd. 

The concept of using snakes was pretty cool, I think. It's like using fire to attack in parallel, but more subtle. It's also a low-risk kind of attack - if you fail you can try again, and the loss of one snake isn't that disastrous. You also don't need to be anywhere close for it to work. I guess I'd learn this if it were real.

The episode had a lot of discussion about one's roots, about who one is. Ultimately it boils down to where you were born and what family your parents belong to. It's a recipe for division, and woe betide anyone who did not have power in this world. The conflict in this series was between the Song and Jin, and it's interesting that the characters were so focused on this that they neglected to reflect on whether there may be other groups waiting in the wings.

Legend of Condor Heroes

I found subbed episodes of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" on Youtube yesterday, and have spent the rest of the time since then watching episodes.

The show is from a wuxia novel trilogy by Louis Cha. This is a very big deal in the Chinese-speaking countries and so piqued my curiosity. I recognized a lot of the terminology since I used to play a text-based MMO called Kung Fu Knights way back when on the Kongregate site. A lot of the places, people, groups, etc referenced the novels; there were some concepts I recognized from my martial arts training as well, like how incorrect internal training could cause afflictions to descend upon one's mind and body.

There have apparently been previous versions of this TV adaptation. I can't say anything about those, but I have already watched the first nine-and-a-half episodes so far. As far as I can see the world is along similar lines as what you'd find in "Le Morte d'Arthur" - it's an idealized place where martial virtue is paramount and there's always derring-do and intrigues. In "Le Morte d'Arthur" it's chivalry in terms of feudal knighthood while in "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" it's chivalry in terms of Eastern Asian martial arts and Confucian values.

I remember reading "Le Morte..." back in high school. For a book about the Arthurian legend it was a remarkably dry read. The really big events can be listed in a page or two; in between each event you get mind-numbing tales of knights fighting mysterious warriors who seem to have been gifted with powers, knights fighting other knights, knights getting it on with supposedly chaste women, ad infinitum. I really cannot imagine the kind of mind that would be able to gain entertainment from such a work. 

Louis Cha's novel probably benefits from being a more recent work; plus the above series has been calibrated to appeal to modern audiences. Just please don't come in expecting anything amazing with the fight scenes beyond coordinated posing.

The world-building is really top-notch. So much so that I feel like it's not a place I would ever want to be in. Why? Perhaps it's how the scriptwriters decided to tackle the project, since there seems to be a lot of deconstruction of the concept of jianghu. From what I have seen so far, disciples' lives are completely at the whim of their master; people avenge the slightest insult with duelling; honoring whatever virtue requires someone dying or maiming themselves; antagonists die earlier than the protagonists - but if the mains become Heroes of Another Story expect that they will die a violent death.

I'm debating with myself whether I want to continue watching past the first half of episode 10. A character who started out bad was humbled and seems to have turned a new leaf and even got himself a fiancee, but because of the massive difference between his past and current circumstances he gets tempted to reverse his change. I mean, if it were me I'd have seen from a mile away the difficulties that character will experience adjusting to his new station. And why is it no one in this setting seems to bother trying to find a way to provide for their family? It's always martial virtue this or martial skills that; every hot-blooded male seems to think that this is enough to put food on the table - until they get separated from their non-warrior wives and the latter have to fend for themselves. And even the one who got the coveted title "Best in the World" - as one character puts it - was still mortal; he died. 

I guess the me right now, sees the fantasy for what it is.

Something to think about.

My snowflake courtesy of http://weavesilk.com/

 

Traffic

Took an hour to get home today because of severe congestion. Traffic has been a historical problem in my country. Even with all the recent road widening initiatives and laws similar to #3 on this list, traffic still uses up a big fraction of the gas drivers purchase and is a major cause of air pollution. 

Everybody has a solution, but I'm a fan of small actionable tweaks to our daily activities. So this is where Mr. Bill Beaty comes in, in an article I first read about from BoingBoing. 

My Diet

By Alex Proimos from Sydney, Australia (In Speedos  Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

First off, have a read on this Wikipedia entry about abdominal obesity. I'm a bit concerned about my own love handles so I decided to do something - but intention doesn't always lead action, even with my training.

A large part of what I'm trying to learn for myself is the fact that what you look like doesn't dictate what you can do. My endeavor musn't be about looking attractive or showing up people who make my girth all that I am. It should be about health and quality of life, and what I'll be passing on. I read about genetic accommodation and epigenetics, and I don't want to pass on activated genes that increase my descendants' chances for cancer or other diseases.

I took the Coursera course for The New Nordic Diet; I like the ideas that they introduced, about emphasizing sustainability, aesthetics, flavor, and nutrition in crafting unique cuisine that reflects their culture. I can't claim to be able to do the same, but I've since incorporated elements of the diet to my routine.

I eat walnuts now everyday, and I'm incorporating more vegetables, especially chickpeas and peanuts, in my diet. I've stopped my frequent snacking, only eating three square meals a day. I don't drink carbonated beverages; I've gone months without doing so. My breakfast now has oats and black coffee - and come to think of it, I don't drink anything with my coffee now. A consequence of taking the CAMBRA course, I guess. I drink about two liters of water everyday, that's it.

It's rather unfortunate that my country has neglected food products coming from wild sources, so it's hard to find meat form wild game or wild herbs. I'm supplementing that lack with borrowing from other cultures' cuisine. After all, my country is something of a melting pot. A Korean grocery close to us is my source for seaweed (both laver and dried), kimchi, and gochujang; I'm still trying to source herbs like cilantro as well as mushrooms, but I've happily found soba and pumpkin seeds and watermelon seeds. I eat yoghurt too, and am still looking for kefir. I've also successfully gotten my family to adopt curries and Indian spices.

I'll try to post more about the effects of this in the coming months.

Oh Happy Day! :D

Realities I've learned because of what I got myself into

What's the difference between college-level and corporate programming?

How to take action in the face of limited knowledge

Life has been interesting these past months. The tester job I landed myself into got extended two more weeks, but at least there are now more of us so the work is less toxic. I have now officially worked support/maintenance, testing, and app development. Pretty soon I'll be taking some lessons on ISMS, hopefully to become an internal auditor. 

I'm still not happy about my coding skills though. I can really feel how out of my depth I sometimes am. Part of the problem is that this field is so big. Breadth and depth are out of this world. Never been good with something so loose and wild and unstructured. The above are just touching the tip of what I'm realizing so far.