Thoughts

Everything in its right place (?)

Posted on 2014-09-20 12:35 by rv

Right, let's get a little life streamwrite out of the way before starting the next phase of my life.

I am officially back to work after several months of break. I have to admit that I'm quite pleased about how I'm back at the old place, working with the people I know and like so well. While I've been away, absolutely nothing has changed in the company. It's comfortable because I know what to expect. Too comfortable, perhaps? We'll see.

Only four days ago I was relaxing at a tropical island with my girlfriend. We spent the whole week doing non-supervised scuba diving at the various dive sites of the island. It was pretty amazing. The perfect ending for a long period of holidays.

But everything must end, and everyone who is not filthy rich must eventually go back to work. My life always seems to be in either a self-actualized, enough-sleep, learning-new-things kind of holiday or semi-holiday period, or in an utter grind to level up and earn more money. There seems to be no middle ground. I can already feel myself slowly descending into grind mode. Self-awareness helps to keep yourself in the holiday mode for a bit longer, but it never last forever.

Some events can easily push you over the edge and make you lose self-awareness. In my case, I only barely caught myself at this yesterday. For the whole summer my home had been quiet, relaxed and peaceful, but yesterday all the housemates were back from holiday, and they were being noisy, instantly making me regret the decision I had made in quieter times to not find a new apartment but save up to buy one instead.

This place, where I live now, is absolutely not where I want to spend the rest of my life. But it's comfortable enough to serve as a temporary base of operations until my girlfriend and I get enough money to buy our own home. Given that we are living and working in London, with some of the craziest house prices in the whole world, that is not an easy task. Given that I am committed to living here, the fact that I am powerless to affect my housing situation for the better makes me lash out and try to blame anything and everything. My housemates for making noise, my landlord for the rent price (even though he's the nicest and most reasonable guy I've ever met and I like him a lot), the entire country for being so politically fucked up that they can't do anything about this, and so on.

But at least I have an out. It's a steep climb and it will take time, but there is a way out to reach a situation that I would be ultimately happy with and could find no fault with from my current perspective. Many people here don't even have that chance because they simply will never earn enough money to buy a house.

It's going to be a tough period before the winter holidays. It's like that every year. But I've found my direction. I know what I'm aiming for, I know how to measure my progress, and I know that I can make it. Perhaps that's enough.

Posted in Daily Life , Thoughts

Time fills itself up

Posted on 2014-08-26 21:50 by rv

..or: what I've been doing the past few weeks. (tl;dr - nothing much)

I'm still officially on my not-quite-a-holiday-but-not-quite-working-either period. I was hoping to have a few weeks of absolutely nothing on my hands: no obligations, no chores, no must-do's, no anything. The last time I had a period like that was after I left Japan and was in Holland with my parents for a few months. I tried to tell myself that such a period was still possible, but I really kinda knew already that it wouldn't be.

In-between holidays and holiday planning I ended up searching for rental apartments, houses to buy and jobs. Since I decided I wanted I car, I had to decide which car to buy and deal with all the arrangements around that. I was expecting a bit of quiet after my sister came to visit, but because a middle-aged lady ran her car into mine I had to deal with getting the insurance money and the garage (which still isn't quite dealt with, by the way..). Then a chance for a beneficial holiday presented itself, meaning I had to deal with delaying my resume date for work.

I had unreasonably expected another period of quiet right around now, but was wrong again. The car insurance thing is still going, so no mental peace there. Furthermore, I need to deal with renewing my passport, since it expires within 6 months, and accommodations for the next holiday aren't quite perfect yet. Lastly, after the track day I did with the GT86 the brakes felt like they've grown a bit weaker, so I've been researching about which brake pads, discs and fluid to buy. I have to say that they've firmed up again after this week's rain, so it's not a necessity, just a luxury problem to ensure that the next track day goes more smoothly.

Lastly, I came back from holiday yesterday and some chav children decided that it would be fun to fuck around near my car. I was walking towards them from a distance when I noticed them touching it, and they appeared to be play-fighting and throwing themselves across the street, flinging each other into whatever came in their path, including my car. Yesterday was quite possible the first time in my life that I managed to intimidate someone (with language of course, not violence). The incident made me realize that I wanted to beef up my surveillance setup, for which I got a raspberry pi and infrared camera plus light. I spent half of today trying to get that set up, only to be rather disappointed by the frame rates. It seems to be a work in progress, though, as with everything Linux. At least the resolution is good. Still, setting it up properly will keep me busy for quite some time.

This is how time works. There's no such thing as 'free' time. As soon as a time slot appears free, something immediately fills it up. There's no use fighting it. Just accept it and fill as many slots as you can with things that you enjoy.

A long summer break. I'm actually kind of looking forward to getting back to work.

Posted in Thoughts | Tagged bric-a-brac

How to be polite

Posted on 2014-08-14 20:50 by rv

Original article: How to be polite. HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8178536

I don't often reply on Hacker News, but when I do, I post it here too because I wrote much wordses.

Excellent article, and I feel it applies to me. maqr's comment about this being dangerously close to social engineering rings very true, although I doubt that it's intentional/by choice. Personally I've never had a lot of natural conversational skills, so I find myself falling back to old tricks that work at times when I'm not confident, and sometimes they happen to be tricks that relate to social engineering. I'd like to think that this doesn't make my interactions less genuine. Finding a polite way to proceed through the conversation has not been a problem for me since I learned this.

Lately, rather than moving towards politeness, I'm trying to move away from it. The examples of always replying positively to people, never steering towards or even approach hostility is a very, very tiring path to walk. In my experience, it does pay off on the whole, but I've spent a lot of time talking to people that were just never 'interesting' or 'rewarding' to be with, simply because it always seems easier to please than to confront.

These days I'm trying to move towards blunt honesty with people as soon as I can (after an initial period of polite conversation to gauge if they'd be comfortable with it). So far, I think the people I know appreciate me more for it, and the people who wouldn't appreciate me for it are not in my life.

Or perhaps it just feels good to try something different.

Posted in Thoughts

The best one yet

Posted on 2014-08-10 20:32 by rv

I don't particularly like my own birthday. It always feels like a forced excuse to do something extraordinary. Occasionally, perhaps once every 6 years, I find this amusing, but usually I prefer to spend my birthday as every other day. I won't go out of my way to keep it a secret, but those who know me know that I don't need all the extra fuss.

That's why this year was an awesome birthday: just hanging out at home with a friend and going to a restaurant with the girlfriend. Things I'd do on any other day, and that's how it should be. Spending it normally is like confirming to yourself the current state of your life. As it so happens, the current state of my life is one I am ultra pleased with.

This year I went on many trips with my girlfriend, had an epic cycling trip and bought a car. It's also the year in which I've gathered unequivocal evidence that buying a house around London is fucking expensive and that I just can't afford one quite yet. But I've got a clear goal now and I can see that path that I must take. During my early years in London I deliberately left the future as open as possible given my constraints, hoping that the 'one true path' would show itself. It took a while, but it did. The next steps in the life of the me that I designed for myself are ridiculously clear to see. I've removed nearly all ambiguity I used to have about nearly every major life decision that I need to make in the next few years, or even decade.

The design of my immediate future life is complete, now it's time to start building it. Or rather, to start grinding away to gather resources, but even that can be a wonderful thing if you've got a true goal to aim for. Make it so!

Posted in Thoughts

A drive, country roads and the mighty moon

Posted on 2014-08-10 20:31 by rv

Sometimes, when I've been at home too long, I lose interest in the things I genuinely like the most in life. I love playing certain games, watching certain shows and movies, reading certain books or comics, and so on. But after a while I become desensitized to it. My quickfix is to do two things at the same time: play a game that allows for sort-of passive playing while watching a TV show or movie that I can follow without paying too much attention to it. This eventually gets me to stop paying attention to either, and I lose interest in each activity individually. The mind enters a loop state from which it is very difficult to escape. But it is possible.

Exercise is my main way of resetting my brain. It nearly always works, although it will cost you time, a clean set of (gym) clothes, a shower and possibly some sore muscles. But you gain in health, lose weight and reset your mental state, which is well more than worth the cost. The biggest cost, time, is the one that matters the most. Compared to spending two hours doing apathetic activities, I find it much more enjoyable to exercise for an hour and then be aware, self-actualized and in the zone for the next hour, actually enjoying the thing I was spending my time on.

Cycling is the next obvious fix for me. The exercise bit of cycling helps to re-actualize yourself, but I mainly derive enjoyment and resetting from the act of being away from home, free on a bicycle, being able to go wherever I want. It doesn't have to be a speed cycle, although that's one way to keep pushing yourself after you've become too used to cycling. Distance is another nice metric. Unfortunately the weather and the landscape doesn't always lend itself to a nice cycle. If there's lots of wind I'll come back grumpy and dead, and if there's rain I will probably not even go out. Wouldn't it be great if there was an outdoor self-actualization activity that wasn't (entirely) weather-dependent?

But there is! I've got a car now! With a car you can go out whenever you want, no matter the weather. Sure, rainy drives are still gloomy, but at least the occasional rainshower won't bother you as much as when you're on a bike, and wind doesn't bother you at all. Plus, wet roads can provide their own entertainment for cars.

I guess the most important thing is variety in the things that you like, and variety within each thing that you like. You can't always keep doing the same thing in the same way, it'll dull your mind. I never would have been inspired to write this post if I hadn't gone out for a drive just now. I found some lovely countryside roads, enjoyed a pretty sunset while on the road and saw a gigantic moon come up over the hills as I was driving back. Brilliant. And sufficiently different from the other things I like to keep my mind from looping.

Fun things are fun! Many fun things are disproportionately funner!

Posted in Cars , Daily Life , Thoughts | Tagged car , fun

A car

Posted on 2014-07-09 15:12 by rv

I don't feel like wasting words today, so I'll get straight to the point: life is exceedingly limited if you don't have a car.

These are excuses I've used in the past to justify my not having a car:

Public transport is convenient enough
I don't need big grocery shopping if there's small shops nearby that have what I need (this excuse kind of ceased to work after I moved to the UK)
I don't want to deal with foreign language paperwork needed for a car purchase (whilst I was in Japan)
Money
Lifestyle

The last is perhaps not exactly an excuse, but more of a consequence. People with cars go to different places than people without cars. There's some overlap between places, but in the end you're severely limiting your options if you don't have a car.

Here's what you can't do (or can only do less comfortably) without a car:

Going to a superstore outside of town for big grocery shopping.
Buying large things for your home at a DIY (online ordering just isn't a very good alternative if you're not at home to receive the delivery).
Picking people up from the airport or leave your car at the airport for a weekend trip.
Doing day trips to faraway places or places that don't have good public transport connections.
Not getting annoyed at people on public transport.

It is possible to live without a car. But you'll limit the places available to you. You can still go anywhere, and even if you pay for public transport and/or taxis, you 'll probably end up being cheaper off than by owning a car. Money is not the issue, time spent in/outside of your comfort zone is. This is why a car, still, even in car-unfriendly countries, is freedom.

Posted in Daily Life , Thoughts | Tagged cars

Freedom of choice

Posted on 2014-07-03 18:55 by rv

It's been two weeks since I'm back from the cycling trip, and I've decided to take some time off work. The project I was on is running fine and I left it in good condition, or so it would appear given that I didn't get any emergency calls or tech questions in my mailbox while I was away. Rather than jumping immediately back into it again I'm going to take a few weeks to reorganize my life a bit.

My life tends to be quite single-threaded. Or rather, there's always a main, most-important thread, and any brain time left over is assigned to stuff that's of secondary importance. I'm not really good at concentrating on two important tasks at the same time. For example, focusing on my job while also occasionally going cycling or doing a half-assed programming project at home is quite common for me, but I find it impossible to focus on, say, finding the perfect apartment while also focusing on my job. When I do that, the quality of either task suffers, and I don't want to do that to my employer (or myself).

So yeah, one of the things I'm committed to this summer is to become a 'citizen' of London. Which, to me, means finding a proper apartment even further away from London and buying a car. Quality of life is either impossible or unaffordable when close to the center, and I'm committed to being close to the countryside already by my very nature, so the choice is logical. I've been holding off on this decision for a long time, always stalling, always waiting, because there's always some reasonable reason to delay. Either I'm too busy with work, got a big holiday coming up, gonna eventually move in with girlfriend, etc. etc. There's always some excuse. I've eliminated all possible excuses now, so it's time to inject some quality into my living situation.

At the same time I'm trying not to overdo it too much. Work can at worst be stressful but even at best there's still this constant pressure and feeling of not being able to let your guard down, so I'm relishing the feeling of not being responsible for a massive project for a while. A sudden complete lack of responsibility is kind of hard to cope with when you suddenly find yourself in the middle of it. I keep on wanting to compulsively check my work email but have to tell myself that it's not necessary. Another side effect of being able to do anything I want at any time I want, is that I am doing anything I want at any time I want. But only for a few minutes, and then I get bored of it. So I end up switching from playing a game to reading a book to watching a TV show to playing another game without ever really committing to any one thing.

That's what happens when I let myself run on freeflow, and I can't say it's terribly brilliant. It's not so much the lack of motivation, it's the lack of determination that prevents me from accomplishing things. Things like writing blog posts ;) . Exercise helps a lot. When I hop on my bicycle I get a chance of scenery and a good workout, waking up my body and my mind, which helps me focus greatly. Variety in life is really important to stay determined.

I will try to blog more. This summer is a great summer!

Posted in Daily Life , Thoughts

The Alpha Male

Posted on 2014-06-23 00:32 by rv

I have never been an alpha male kind of character. I never really spoke up myself until recently, mostly because I never had a need to speak up for myself before. In the past, just the occasional assertion of personality would suffice and let me return to leading the introverted life that I prefer. That much hasn't changed. When given the option, I will avoid conflict and try to stay in the background.

There's always a point where you can't avoid standing up for yourself; a moment when, if you don't stand up for yourself, negative things could or would happen to you. Sometimes you can avoid conflict at a minor penalty to your personal comfort by staying passive, versus a major penalty to your comfort and possible failure by trying to assert yourself. Depending on the situation and your personality you may choose the passive strategy at times and the active strategy at others. This kind of philosophy can apply to dealing with estate agents, house mates, colleagues, and so on. I find myself choosing the active strategy more often as I grow older.

Let's apply this to problem solving. One of the (apparently recurring) problems I had/have in my life is dealing with people (estate agent, housemate, colleague) you've got a conflict with that is just unresolvable. Assuming a conflict already occurred and were unable to prevent it, you can deal with it in any degree between passive and active. The passive way tends to be to move out of the way yourself, and leave others the way they are. This is absolutely a beta course of action, but sometimes it's the only way out, such as when your housemate's lifestyle is just too annoying (yet not illegal) but he won't change it no matter what.

Legality is too easy of a boundary to switch from passive to active, though, as most benefits of the active path are found well before that. Asserting yourself by asking your housemate to lower the volume on his TV will yield a far easier payoff than by moving out. The same goes for estate agents and colleagues: a simple (yet authoritative) chat will usually resolve the immediate issue. Sometimes that's not enough, though.

Which leads to the question of what to do in the aftermath. If you're a reasonable person then you'll probably take steps to prevent the same thing from happening again in the future. If your past housemate was noisy then the next time you check out a new apartment you'll be sure to ask about the housemates before deciding. If your colleague proved incompetent, you'll try not to be assigned to the same team the next time.

This train of thought makes me wonder about punishment. If your estate agent tried to rip you off but you managed to terminate the contract, do you actively take steps (by suing) to prevent the estate agent from ever doing that again to anyone else? When your colleague proves incompetent, do you actively try to get him fired so he doesn't mess up more stuff? Or, put more generally: after your personal conflict has been resolved and you gain nothing new by pursuing the matter further, do you still try to punish those that 'wronged' you?

It's a pretty aggressive way of thinking. Ender's Game has a great example of this (spoilers!): instead of lightly beating a bully once, Ender beats the living shit out of him so he will never bully anyone again. It's a risky strategy though, and has to be carried out with extreme confidence. You can't just go around suing all your estate agents, calling the police on all your housemates and getting all your colleagues fired for incompetence. It won't often be that the path of aggression-after-the-fact is a sensible one. On a personal level it's never sensible, since you'll never use the same estate agent, or live with the same housemate, or work with the same colleague. But you'd be saving others from their terrors, which some people might say makes it worth pursuing.

Myself, I'm not decided yet whether aggression after the fact is ever worth it. I've let my past conflicts slide into oblivion and don't worry about them anymore. Leading a crusade against my 'enemies' is absolutely not my thing. The only time I ever doubted that was the horrifying experience I had with my previous estate agent, for whom I had prepared evidence of her wrongdoings and was ready to take her to court if she hadn't given back my deposit (which still took many passive-aggressive phone calls), but she did, so I dropped it. Since then I've approached any potential conflicts with the same attitude: be in the right, document, and be prepared to escalate, but only if necessary. Does that make me an alpha male? Probably not. But I'm getting closer.

Alpha among Betas. Beta among Alphas.

Posted in Thoughts

One with the bike

Posted on 2014-05-25 13:24 by rv

After cycling every day for a month, there's so many things I wish I could convey to others about cycling, and touring in particular. But words don't convey anything, the only way to understand is to do it yourself.

That feeling when you approach a minor hill at speed and manage to use your power to get up it without shifting down.
The satisfaction when you've been going up, down, up, down all day, slowly climbing, and finally at the end of the day it turns into a windless downhill just when the sun breaks through the clouds.
That moment when you reach a conbini after a huge hill, sweaty and tired, and everybody just looks at you in wonder, and you're just too tired to even care.
The feel of the bike when you're nearing a traffic light, and the weight of the trucks has made the asphalt stand up on the edge of the road, and you zigzag on and off it to feel how high it is to decide which side you should be on.
Pulling up to a traffic light and trying to time it just right so that you don't have to come to a complete stop before the light turns green again.
The smug satisfaction that comes from overtaking the same car/truck several times when there's several traffic lights in a row.
The 'brace yourself' moment when it's a windy day on a narrow road and an oncoming truck passes you at great speed, the gust of wind nearly knocking you over.
The reverse moment when the road is wide enough for a truck going in the same direction to pass you at speed and you try to catch as much of its wake as you can.
When you seat yourself firmly in the saddle after a lunch break and realize that your butt doesn't hurt because you've gotten used to your bike.
Quickly reaching under your saddle to turn on your rear light when approaching a tunnel.
Awkwardly reaching under your saddle for five seconds to turn off your rear light after a tunnel.
When it's actually quite cold and windy but your cycling efforts are exactly enough to keep you warm.
When there's rubble on the road and you know exactly which bits not to hit and zigzag around them with perfect timing and confidence.
Checking behind you to see if your luggage is still there, after every minor bump.
Slightly jumping up and down on the saddle while looking down at your rear tire to see if it might have gotten softer, after every minor bunp.
That downhill moment on a relatively quiet road when your speed and concentration suddenly increases and you start taking a wider line to ensure that you have enough space to maneuver safely in case of an emergency stop or evade.
The nod you give to a truck driver for making a very polite pass. You'll never know if he saw it.
The fifth time you hear a truck rapidly approaching behind you on a narrow road, and you decide to take a very wide line to prevent him from passing because the previous four trucks cut you off rather dangerously.
The scenery when you decide not to take a tunnel for a change, and the side road turns out to be beautiful and quiet.
The feeling of being rescued when you're near the end of your strength and switch from progress mode to search mode, and happen to find the perfect restaurant/conbini/camp site.
And my favorite one: the feeling of the warm wind blowing on your face after a huge descent from chilly cold temperatures into a warm summer breeze.

You must cycle.

Posted in Cycling , Spirit of Japan 2 , Thoughts

An open mind

Posted on 2014-05-23 11:44 by rv

I'm not sure what I'm trying to write. There's probably no point to this post. Maybe it's advice to myself.

Let's start with traveler's luck: it's that glorious moment when either you've not planned properly or your plans just didn't work out, and yet something happens that magically makes everything alright again. The best example I've got of this is on my very first cycling trip in Japan: we finished our cycling day quite late, couldn't find a camp site and then decided to go to a hilltop onsen instead since we were there anyway. The place also happened to have a restaurant so we had dinner there too. After dinner it was already pitch black outside, and we asked the owner if he knew any place nearby where we could camp. And the owner just let us stay right there, next to his restaurant/hotel, to put up a tent right there. The next morning we woke up with the most beautiful view of the tiny islands scattered around the area.

Another great example was when I reached the southernmost point of Kyushu. There happened to be a free-of-charge camp site right there next to a lovely bay. Due to pure serendipity I happened to arrive there just as two other traveler's arrived too: one by car, one on foot. We hit it off great and traveled around together for the next few days.

It's not always good, of course. In my case I often/sometimes run into trouble when not pre-booking a place to stay. I'd say for those times that you can't magically find a nearby hotel or camp site, it's 50/50: either you end up staying in a bad location (overpriced hotel or unsafe/noisy/dangerous tenting) or you end up being rescued by a local who either shows you the perfect spot him/herself or points you in the right direction.

It takes the right mindset to forget the bad days and remember the good ones, and to push your luck more in the future. It depends on your personality too, and might be difficult to change. You have to be somewhat in your comfort zone to give luck a chance. If not in your comfort zone, then at least you should have made some hypotheses about how far out of your comfort zone you are going to be if everything turns to shit, and if you're going to be ok with that.

In my case, my comfort zone has two edges: safety/security (which is a non-issue in Japan not even worth discussing), and cold. I've had some really cold nights in a tent in the past, mostly due to a crappy sleeping bag, and I've also been freezing cold from cycling in cold weather and working up too much of a sweat. It's nice to be (somewhat) prepared for the cold, but in Hokkaido the worst-case scenario is that you can't find a camp site or hotel and will have to sleep somewhere in the middle of nowhere, out in the open. Then you'd better hope it doesn't rain..

Modern technology enables you to eliminate luck from the equation entirely. Thanks to portable internet devices you can have internet all over the country you're traveling in. You can pre-book hotels on the fly, you can map search anything you want. There's no need to ask locals, no need to leave things to the last minute, everything can go as smooth as you want it to go. My advice: don't do it. Don't rely on technology. If possible, don't even bring the internet with you if you can avoid it. If you have it then the temptation to use it is just too easy.

I myself am a terrible example of this; during my current trip I've only done unplanned camping once, and it was a disaster. Every other time I pre-searched camp site locations before setting off, knowing how far they'd be. Most of the time on the days that I didn't have a hotel pre-booked or an endpoint for the day decided, I ended up in hotels rather than camping. It's difficult to take a chance when you have a certain positive (or at least neutral) outcome available to you. You can't swing the traveler's luck roulette wheel if you're staying in business hotels every night. Try a camp site or a youth hostel. Talk to people. Go on adventures.

Perhaps I'm being too careful. Perhaps I'm just acting my age according to my already un-adventurous personality. Perhaps after I've reached Wakkanai I'll feel re-entitled to a new adventure. All in all, this post is an assessment of a trip that is not yet finished. The moments that will be remembered and the moments that will be forgotten are not all accounted for yet.

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2 , Thoughts

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