Just Bought Some Ink

I would argue water is the best element out of all the elements available in the Pokédex because water is infinitely adaptable and it embodies the human experience more than fire, wind, or earth. One that adopts the philosophy of water will be unfazed by the ups and downs of life and find inner peace. Water is infinitely adaptable because it adopts the shape of the vessel that contain it. Anything that cannot adapt is bound to break. Most things aren't immortal because at one facet or another, they're unable to adapt to one or more changes in the environment. In humans, aging is the gradual erosion of the body's ability to adapt to stressors. For example, as one ages, their skin loses elasticity over time, making it vulnerable to wrinkles and tears. I practice the art of accepting the impermanence of all circumstances of life by embracing uncertainty in my day-to-day life. Instead of planning every minute of my day, I outline a few of the most important tasks I must get don...

Imagine walking along a trail in the early morning. You see a beautiful sunrise in the distance and hear the calm lapping of water from the river next to your path. You feel calm and content for a moment. But your brain begins to obsess over how good the moment feels. You worry about your emotions returning to baseline after the experience ends. Intrusive thoughts enter your mind, "what did I do to feel so calm and content a minute ago?" and "how do I remember this feeling and process so that I can experience this happiness again?". When your mind begins to stray from the present moment and spiral into a rabbit hole of worry, you should take a break and journal. This is the perfect situation to write down your emotions and necessary cues to remind you of this experience and, most importantly how this experience made you feel. This is a process I call snapshot journaling because documenting experiences immediately after the fact is like taking a snapshot of one's...

There’s nothing more calming than running around “lasvegas,” my quaint Animal Crossing town. I love zooming past the trees to chill, whimsical background music and heading to the Museum for some coffee at Brewster’s. These are the simple joys I cherish in Animal Crossing.  The game focuses around a human, the player, who moves into a town with talking animals. Typical game progression involves buying a house from a rich racoon and taking out loans to expand said house. However, upgrading your house doesn’t unlock much more new content, so one can forget about paying loans to Tom Nook the racoon and enjoy small town life. One lesson I’ve learned from Animal Crossing is how to enjoy random encounters. When I walked, I used to be solely focused on the destination; however, I realized I could encounter pleasant surprises along the way.  In Animal Crossing, I could be walking to the store, and a beautiful butterfly could cross my path or a balloon with a gift box could be floating ...

Do you want to relive the experience of being absorbed in your favorite book? Do you feel like your emotions control you? You can take back control over your emotions and mental state through conscious application of music. For example, gyms always play fast, up-beat music to get their lifters pumped and ready to beat PRs. However, music can actually be used to illicit very specific emotions depending on your experiences.  Any song can be encoded in your mind to represent any emotion or personal experience. This might be absurd, but here are a few examples of song and mental state pairs that I have. Kordhell "Murder in My Mind" is the single-pointed focus I feel when walking briskly through an airport, hell-bent on getting to my gate on time. Billie Eilish "Therefore I am" represents the contemplative state of mind where I can create ideas to write about. Palaye Royale "No Love in LA" reminds me of the struggle and perseverance needed to read papers that I...

Perfect is the enemy of good. My journey has been plagued with imperfections left and right. I am an engineer by day and a home cook by night. Even though I’ve studied engineering for four years in university, all I’ve learned is that I don’t know much. I’ve grown up and moved out of my parents’ house and can vote and drink; however, all I’ve learned is that there’s so much more to adulting. However, realizing that I know nothing is more enlightening than thinking that I am all-knowing. Life is more enjoyable when exploring the unknown. I’ve discovered that there’s more to explore when you’ve had the epiphany that you don’t know anything. I guess that’s what you call the beginner’s mindset, when you don’t have any expectations about anything and everything feels like an adventure. I thought I had my life sorted out in childhood. All I had to do was get into a good college, and I’ve made it in life. I adopted this view from my parents, immigrants who come from a culture that values educ...

Does your day-to-day look like this? Wake up, make breakfast, drive to work in intolerable rush hour traffic, get to the office at 9am, attend meetings, respond to never-ending emails, have lunch at 12pm, get back to the grind at exactly 1pm, go home at 5pm, scroll on your phone or watch TV while eating a microwave dinner out of exhaustion, stress about all the unfinished tasks you’ve left at work, and finally, go to bed to repeat the same thing the following morning. What do you think is wrong with this typical day-to-day life? Sure, there’s nothing so bad about it. It’s stable; it pays the bills and keeps a roof over your head. However, how does going through this schedule for five days a week for the rest of your life going to make you feel? I believe this sort of schedule kills your spirit of creativity because you don’t have time to experience a deep sense of boredom or reflect on your actions and the direction in which your life is moving. But, you might ask, why should I reflect...

A Stupidly Long Nighttime Routine I’m a pretty simple person. I am happy when I get a good night’s sleep, and I am dysfunctional and lucid when I don’t. So if the price to be happy is a ridiculously long compiled list of nighttime routine habits from every single productivity guru out there, then I’ll be performing the routine like a Broadway star on opening night. Without further ado, here’s the list: Hot shower — I need to relax those muscles that I use to just sit at a desk to type. Stretching routine — My shoulders get tight when sitting at a desk all day. Foot massage — My only exercise is walking on flat uniform terrain, namely asphalt. I can’t imagine how much tension is in the same small muscles in my feet. Brain dumping — Not only are my muscles tight and stressed, but so is my monkey mind. It’s better to let it run wild on paper than when I’m trying so hard to count sheep. Oral Hygiene — Nothing signals “ready to sleep” more than clean mouthfeel. It’s not marked as complete u...

Dystopia? Fusion of humans and robots? Brain interfacing? I grew up reading dystopian fiction: Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Dystopian worlds are fascinating. I suppose they could be a result of technological advancement severely outpacing developments in governing civilization. For example, to what extent should IP be protected? Today, plagiarism is only punished when information belonging to some corporation is reused to make someone else money. What if brain interfaces existed and corporations that rely on protection of IP can block any person’s brain from thinking of any ideas related to their IP? If your Netflix subscription expires, you then forget everything you’ve watched. Everything I’ve said above is absurd yet could be plausible with the right technology. That’s the nature of dystopian fiction. It brings up the question of if a certain technology existed, how would governments and human interaction evolve to avoid the destruction...

Boredom is a motivator. It drives people to think up something new to alleviate the feeling of aimlessness and restlessness that characterizes boredom. Time vs Biological Cues Humans today use time to gauge when tasks should be worked on or completed. Time decides where one should switch tasks. Time is standardized, and everyone knows what a minute, second, hour, day is. However, what did people use to govern their lives before the construct of time was invented? I think people used to rely on nature, external and internal cues to decide when to switch tasks; decide when to eat, sleep, spend time with friends and family, or hunt. Hunger decides when an ancient man must eat; tiredness, when he sleeps. Those are some examples of natural internal cues that drive human actions before the concept of time was known. Time vs Nature Natural external cues include seasons and weather. The sun decides when one must sleep because humans never evolved night vision. Seasons decide if it’s time to ha...