Pencil, Eraser, Ruler and Paper - Will be Relevant for a Long Time Yet.

In this fast paced, user friendly, mobile App dependent world. There are millions, no, billions of people surfing and using the Internet to buy, sell, post their lives, pretend to be someone else, practically living their lives on a second parallel universe called the social media. 
Think Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for English speakers, for the Chinese it is WeiBo, Wei Xin, QQ, Thai, Japenese and Korean prefer Line and the list is endless based on geographical region, ethinicity, cultural influence and even political leanings.   

I for one, am only halfway convinced that the use of digital applications are so useful for everyday life. Here are the reasons why I think the old school stationary are still and will still be relavent for a long time to come yet.

1. You can plan, erase, draw, postulate and just doodle on scraps of paper. There is NO PERMANENCE in drawing a plan, or an idea, and erasing or taking out the excess lines, thoughts and question marks just by using an eraser. True, you can use the electronic Paint software and save some trees, but the feeling of CONTROL at my fingertips is better with a pencil compared to a mouse or a stylus.

Maybe its a generation thing :) 

I was born and played with real kids from the neighbourhood, had real dogs,cats and a parrot REAL animals as pets, caught and fought our spiders, reared fighting fish, song birds, catching longkang fishes (that was a massive thrill there), digging for worms and using them as fish bait, the REAL DEAL. 

None of this imaginery stuff of Pokemon monsters, virtual cafes and Wechat zapped over and received monies. Modern day kids are so deprived nowadays 

2.  Paper, eraser and pencil do not need electricity of depend on your phone battery life. Need I say more ? 

3. The feeling of accomplishment that your picture, your work, your creative doodling, can be framed and you and only you have the satisfaction of holding, smelling the acrylic oils and canvas which the electronic paintboard does and will never have.

4. Finally, the feeling of crushing something is SO SATISFYING when you have completed it, I normally take the Sunday Sudoku out from the papers (much to my wife's irritation sometimes) and spend about 30 minutes to an hour to finish the most demanding (they call it Extreme Sudoku, the Daily Telegraph guys) and when I am done, I have GREAT JOY in crushing that small piece of newspaper implicitly saying :

" THERE, I HAVE OVERCOME ! " (small victory but nonetheless an accomplishment !) 

Again, perhaps its my nature and the fact that I was born in the generation of physical things and being in the real world, reading real paperback books and using pen, paper,pencil, eraser and all these stationery shops have to offer.

True the information and knowledge has never been easier, at the touch or swipe of our smartphones, and we have knowledge of practically anything. They say knowledge is power, well I say the use and the application of that knowledge is the REAL POWER.

Back at the local stationery shop, I must be their dream Gold Class Customer !!! 

Theory of Relativity and the Speed of Light

Lets recall a time from our elementary secondary physics class shall we ?  If you can recall the simple 3 variables relating to speed (velocity as a vector), distance and time  

                    Speed = Distance / Time       or       Speed x Time  = Distance 

Einstein theorised that an absolute number, called the speed of light, or the speed at which light travels is a finite number, 3 x 10 to the power of 8 metres per second. This speed is absolute (fixed). Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. 

Say you take a spacecraft and aim to fly to Mars. We have managed with our high technology to build a spacecraft which can fly to anywhere and can attain speed of light.

If you are in that rocket ship and as the speed of that craft increases so much that it hits the speed of light, for the same distance (observed from say the Earth), time ultimately slows down since the Distance is a constant (Euclidean geometrics).

Refer to the picture above ;  (reference : Relativity for Dummies ;  just to let you know I am not a genius !)

Therefore for someone to shine a laser beam inside the spacecraft and get it reflected from the mirror at the top of that spacecraft and caught in a laser receiver, the time taken for that to happen is t ; which is basically 2 d divided by c (speed of light or laser) ; that time taken INSIDE the spacecraft. Lets call this time t  

For an observer who sees this event from somewhere outside the spacecraft, he / she would have to take into the account the speed of that spacecraft, which is c (assuming it approaches the speed of light). So for the actual distance is 2 D which accumuates the speed x time of that spacecraft (see picture).

As can be seen from the drawing above, then the total distance travelled is 2D ; 2D divided by c (speed of light) will give you T  which in the observer's world is larger than t. 

Hence, the only summary I can conclude is that t is smaller than T, or hence the t in the spacecraft moves slower than the T in the observer's world.

Hmm.... 

You will age in Earth years but if you were inside that rocket ship, you will not feel that time has actually slowed down, it is time as it happens.

This I believe is the concept of general relativity which Einstein postulated in the early 1920s. 



   

Does Time as we know it, move in a Linear, Exponential, or Random Manner ?

This is another postulation which I have. Bizarre as it may sound, the events leading to the missing (so far) aircraft MH 370 which has thrown up so many conspiracy theories that I thought of my own wacky theory.

See, the concept of time as we know it. While we experience it to be moving in a linear and one directional manner, meaning, only going forward and to us, it appears that it is moving daily and measured and calibrated according to the watches and based on Greenich Mean Time,which in previous millenia, was based on the time taken for the Earth to make 1 revolution around the Sun. I believe Copernicus came to that theory and the Arabs then make Sun dials also so as to get a grasp of this 'dimension'. 

Anyway, coming back to the missing plane theory. What happens if the plane had been taking a path in time, and while for the rest of the world, time moved into an elliptical manner due to some event, but the plane continued in a straight path somehow moving but no one noticing that time had indeed slowed down inside the plane, so for all intents and purposes the plane is still moving along its flight path but in another dimension totally removed from the time as we know it. 

  

So the rest of the world's time is on the elliptical pathway and the plane is on a 'straight' pathway. So that would mean that somewhere in the future, the plane MAY meet with the current time as we know it. Did something make the plane fly at the speed of light ? 

No one inside would be none the wiser. But the rest of the world would react with astonishment. Einstein postulated that as any object approaches the speed of light, time slows down, the stuff of science fiction movies past and present, that the spacemen and women would come back only having felt they were away 2 months in space but the time on earth would be in decades.

Just my overworked wacky brain on overdrive. 

Thoughts about the AfterLife ; Heaven and all that

I had a dream some time ago. Not too long ago, but I recall I was sleeping in the attic of my house when I dreampt about the afterlife.   These thoughts are mine only. So do bear with me.

Some questions came into my mind. If our loved ones are gone to Heaven, then when it is our time to go, what age will we 'see' them ? Will they be babies, infants, young adults, mature, old or nearly dying ?

This applies to our parents, our grandparents,relatives, friends who died young, and the lot of people who have passed on before us.

In my mind's eye, in the afterlife the dimension called 'time' does not exist ; the physical being does not exist. So the concept of a person as 'matter' does not exist. Only the spirit which can transcend time and move from ages past, present and future can and will be omni present.

So we can possibly teleport from one age to another in the spiritual realm and see our parents and grandparents in their different ages and stages ? How about the times when they weren't married and you and I were not even born ? Will there be some understanding or do we all go into a 'room' at exactly the ages we passed on ?  

If there is no birth how can there be death ??

Are we in the present realm ? Or is there another parallel universe or universes which occupy diffferent zones which teleport us.

This can explain why aeroplanes, ships, people mysteriously disappear for decades or even hundreds of years and somehow reappear now, in the future or in the past 

These aspects of mortality and the fragility of life has sent many millions of people into group think and trying to find meaning to life.

For me, the meaning of life is that it is totally random. To understand it, one needs to have a full understanding of the complex human mind and we are only at 15% - 20% of grasping how our supercomputer works. Once we get to near 100%, perhaps we can fully understand what we were put here for. 

Comprende ?    

    

Happy Birthday Andrew ! 25th Oct ; 21 already. Fully Grown Man !

Photo taken in Dec 2009 Alexandria Port, Egypt 

The relentless march of time goes unabated, and we will one day return to our Maker. My younger son, Andrew, turns 21 years old today. How time flies ! While I am happy to see him spread his wings, the time has passed all to suddenly and we can never recover it. Love your children unequivocably for the binds that keep us together will last a lifetime. 

Just as my parents have gone before me and I will one day face my destiny, I am glad to have a pretty fortunate life. So I wish for my young son, Andrew to go forth and do his utmost with the world at his young unfettered mind. He will face downfalls, trips, challenges, triumphs, loves, losts, joys and sorrows but through it all he will emerge stronger - that is my wish for this young man, just as many millions of young men go forth into adulthood.

Taken Outside the Valley of the Kings, Egypt 2009 

Seize the day young man, for the day will turn to night, the spring will soon turn to summer,autumn and then winter. We will have turned one full circle. The relentless march of time goes on unabated. Whether we have made a mark is not for us to decide. But we can surely give this life a 'Go'.  Make the fullest of your life. We only have one chance.   

Are You A Scrapper ?? Hard Work and Diligence only takes you so far

The Sydney Opera House is Iconic but Smaller than eveyone thinks in real life 

I have discovered that to get somewhere, I must 'scrap' and fight tooth and nail for survival. That is the only way to move forward. To be nice means people can and will take advantage of you if you are not careful. Hence it is always with guarded optimism that I manage my outlook as well as project my aspirations accordingly. 

There are opportunities out there to people who are willing to sacrifice their time, their 'face' and their skills whatever that may be. To take it easy and cruise or depend on the kindness of other people is pathetic, especially if I am able bodied and willing to learn new things, even at my age (55).

The Boomerang - what goes around comes around 

I am now scrapping for everything and anything which means that time is limited and opportunities go to the most hardworking or persistent of all. I will ensure that at the end of the day - I will win that opportunity. Scrappy play in football means both sets of players from both teams are fighting for the ball - for to win the ball gives the player and hence his team the opportunity to score goals. Hence, scrappy play while necessary can be disguised once the fluidity, skill and the willingness of the players to take calculated risks to push forward the ball. Hence in business it is like that, being nice or waiting for things to happen sometimes or many a times is like waiting for the durian to fall. I prefer to have a process whereby the opportunities are ever increasing and the orders keep flowing  orders.   

Never stop improving ; keep trying and get better 

For too long I have been in a rut, just playing according to the old rules of the game. I decided to work harder, think more and changed to rules to suit my needs. That way I an dictate to a large extent, the cashflow, the potentials and the profits. Its a very complicated fluid process with no end in sight. Only challenges and facing up to each and every one head on and moving on. To sit on a problem is dragging the issue 1 more day. 

Kill issues once and for all and start afresh, for there is no time to waste or wishing how things 'could have been'.

Think, Do, Act, Moderate and the cycle repeats itself endlessly.

There will be Bad Days

                                      Sam Man Zhai at east Coast Park Beach 1964



There will be bad days, so be prepared for the storm of criticism that comes your way. Deal with it and become a better person for it. To resist and do a "Mexican standoff' just because it is your life, I think is manifestly stupid and sometimes self pride or ego affects your thinking and behaviour. Denial never benefitted people and they pay the price of it somewhere down the road in time. 

I have been pushing my business for 15 years now, toiling at the orders big and small. It is quite something to go and do something if it does not reward me monetarily. So I must be clear what I went into at the beginning of the journey. If I do not see a positive or net profit at the end of it, I think it is best for me to shut and call that  business a failure. 

It is not about the romantic notion of being an entrepreneur and the 'fake news' press many times romanticises and plays up the wild rides of the Bill Gates, Elon Musks and Jack Mas. They must be truly special, driven, and ego maniacal to push through an agenda for only they have the ability to take on massive financial risk, create that public persona and create demand or forsee an insatiable demand for their 'product'  

Bad days are here as my boyhood team lost 2 - 0 at home to Watford. Nuno now has to take stock, analyse what happened, why the lapse in concentration and decide whether to drop players, how to motivate the team further and whip them into a positive force for the next match next week. Its a bad day at the office but not the end of the world.

Bad days are necessary because I will savour and appreciate the good days even more when the deal comes in unexpectedly or when the work is so plentiful I need to come back and work on the weekend.

Its the balance in life. Deal with it wisely and I will be better for it in the end.