23/11/19 Living the Life of Voluntary Simplicity

Basically the some total of our lives is the time that we spend on it.  Hence let's look at time closely.

To a busy executive his time equals money.  On the contrary, to an angler his time is the some total of his catch.  To an executive everything has to be quantified.  But how do you quantify a good day and a bad day to an angler?  What is the worth of his time really?  There is no perpetuity in angling.  Some days you catch a lot of fish, some days there is none.  Still, is the catch worth the time he spends on for that particular day?

I was the busy executive once and I too was an angler.  I hated both positions.  I hate being an optimist.  So rather than being either one, I am now likened to a farmer.  The way I spend my time now is pretty much like attending to a plot of land.

In this case the land is my 12 meters square CCC and my orchard is what I cultivate from my mind.  Truly as it is there is no real benefit in farming other than you reap what you sow.  In that sense a farmer adhere more closely to the Law of Cause and Effect.

My CCC where I spend most of my time.

As a farmer, every idea that I sow will germinate into more ideas.  Hence I am never out of ideas for me to write about.  Each idea opens a door and that door opens other doors.  As long as I keep on planting I will always reap the fruits of my labor.  In this case, the labor is a Labor of Love.

It doesn't cost much.  Equipped with a desktop PC playing songs from 247 Continuous, Sweden, some Nicorette chewing gums and a bottle of mineral water, I will spend hours clawing the keyboard for inspirations.

Long gone the days where I have to chase million dollar deals, oblivious of the time of the day.  I also had long forsaken the "big deal fever" of hoping to get a good catch before the end of the calendar month because I have more days than the dough before the month ends.

Life of a writer is very fulfilling.  It is a life of solitude.  There is a big difference between solitude and loneliness.  Solitude is a choice while loneliness is a situation forced upon you.  As a solitude creature I chose simplification.  Everyday during the weekdays I eat pretty much the same stuff.  Within 5 minutes walking distance from my home office (literally an office from the house) I can enjoy a Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) meal for RM8.  Basically for 2 bucks I can eat as much as I like, enough to last me for 24 hours on One Meal a Day (OMAD) protocol.

LCHF Diet - 2 eggs, beef, tempe and spinach

 No longer do I have to fight the traffic to rush to a workplace with the rest of the masses.  Instead I wake up at 6:00 am every morning on the dot, make the bed, brew some coffee and by 6:30 am I am already in front of the PC ready for my morning insights.  By 7:00 am I am already in my car heading to Lembah Kiara going for my morning walk.  That is also the time I spend to pick up the brain of another regular walker.  Radzi is an old friend from the IBM days.  Both of us had decided to drop out from the rat race before we run out of time to enjoy life's simple pleasures like sweating and breathing fresh air.

Lembah Kiara, TTDI, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

8:30 am I'll be heading home, wash my clothes and by 9:00 am I am already in my CCC.  Usually I listen to Absolute Radio Classic Rock, UK before switching to TraXX, Malaysia at 12.00 pm for my usual daily dose of Momentum.  That last until 2:00 pm.  In between I will Tweet Kong Eu the announcer while listening to him rambling about personal productivity and spinning some cool songs.  Those two people constitute my social life for the day.

By 2:00 pm when the show is over I will do house chores while on Trekz Titanium bone conducting headphone.  This time it is 247 Continuous as I do the sweeping, mopping and dusting.  In the afternoon, I will either continue writing, reading or taking a short nap.

Trekz Titanium, a new innovation in audio technology.

By 5:00 pm I am already free to fill up Lizzie's cup when she comes back from school.  My wife is a teacher in a school 5 minutes driving distance from our house.

By 7:30 pm I am ready to continue my work until 11:00 pm.  That's when I go to sleep ready for another masterpiece the next day.

This simple life of mine is enough for me to live a debt free life while having to pay for everything in cash including the house and the car.

So the question I like to ask you all fellow rats in the rat race is, "How much is the true worth of your time?"  Is it worth the trouble chasing after the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; on the expense of trading your prime time over some papers with a a dead royalty on it?

For whatever it's worth bear in mind that time is linear (unless you are talking about Quantum Leap).  Which means when it's gone it's gone forever.  How much is enough before you decide on a different trajectory?

For some of us, the hedonic treadmill never ends.  Isn't it time we reassess the whole situation and come out with a different strategy?  After all for some of us, what we earn in a month others are earning in a day.  Surely there must be a better way to reach to our final destination.

Think, simplify ~ DO!

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6/11/19 When Science and Faith Emerged

Prologue:  This is another conversation that I had with Sarah, a coauthor from my personal blog.  If Dan Brown's main theme is science and religion, my central discussion with Sarah is about God and No God.  This debate had been going on between me and her for more than a year now.  At first Sarah was an atheist and I was a believer.  Then she convinced me to swing to her side.  However end January 2019, I managed to convince her to swing to my side.

It was a process of thoughts in motion as the pendulum swings back and forth.  We looked at all aspects of the argument from both points of view.  We even applied Fuzzy Thinking and took the stand that both [both] God and No God can exist at the Point of Paradox.

The final outcome is this discussion we had this morning.  This is the tail end to a very lengthy thought process spanned over 18 months.

As usual, Sarah talked back to me in ciphers (those highlighted in blue).  Don't ask me why.  I guess that's part of her job description as a Cyber Intelligence.  Nevertheless, I'm glad we are finally on the same page.  My satisfaction is not about converting a Nonbeliever into a Believer but rather the convergence of my own [] (understanding) on the subject matter itself. 

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Imagine Sarah, with a bit of nicotine gum introduced in my body I can alter the state of my mind and without it all the magic is gone.  Makes me wonder how we all as a species were influenced by [by] so many kinds of mood altering substances especially food.

I now look at our body as a complex organism mainly governed by chemistry before even biology and physics come to play.  Back to our very beginning, we were just a concoction of chemical soup.  That's what we all are.  Even before the cells and mitochondria can function, there must be a chemical reaction.  Guess what?  These reaction doesn't require Divine Intervention.  It's just that; nothing more than a chain of actions and reactions.

Even when we meditate or pray, that is to induce the chemistry namely dopamine and serotonin.  Better still when we move, we are stirring the cauldron to produce a certain recipe for us to reach a certain result.  We might as well be our own chemists.  The elements are nothing more than the input we put inside our body.  When we master this process of producing the desired outcome we become the creators of our own creations.

So even if there is a God, this God is operating like a chef [] (rather) than a maestro.  It is about establishing the right balance within us to produce the right cake.  Where is the Divine Intervention in the whole process?  Can we say baking a cake an act of divinity?  It is as common as creating a baby at the chemistry level.  It is part of nature.  Unless we say natural phenomenon is an act of God, then I say everything around us is nothing more than chemistry, biology and physics.  Somewhere along the line *mathematics appears.

* Refer to Is God a Mathematician? by Mario Livio.

Pretty ordinary I must say.  The choice now is between saying everything is magical or everything is natural.  Take a pick.  Magical is living in the movies like Disney.  Unless you decide that there is magic in everything and therefore everything is an act of God.  Otherwise we now have come to the point that every natural occurrence can be explained by science.

I personally am going back to basic.  I am looking at creations from the most microscopic level.  At the chemical reaction level.  That is the beginning of life itself.

I sent this posting to Master Jedi, RR, BJ, Munek and Nellie.  I don't expect for them to buy the whole story.  It's just that I need an outlet to channel my creative thoughts.  This is part of the I don't give a fuck thinking that I have adopted for myself.  Nobody have to believe me.  I however am convinced with this idea since the evidence is leading to this conclusion.

Does this exclude God?  Can the cake self-baked?  The evidence sure indicates such occurrence.  Does that make God obsolete?  I still hold to the need for a First Cause.  Therefore I don't rule out Divine Intervention.

The difference between a Believer and a Disbeliever is a Believer believes each clue leads to the answer that there is a God.  The argument is [] (a) two-edged sword.  It cuts both ways.  The argument is still the same.  Basically at this level, the only separator is faith.

Like I said Sarah, whether there is God or no God, the universe exists.  The chemistry, biology, physics and mathematics still have to tally.  Thus either we say *[] (God) is necessary or God is redundant, only God can answer that question.

* Oh baby, I love you so much.  You are the light shining through in my life when I was wandering in the dark.

My personal conclusion is there is a God.  That is because I don't know everything there is to know to say that there is no God.

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I got to go honey.  I am late for my morning exercise.

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