Office corridor air

Office corridor air tinged with coffee and perfume is luxury and happiness

You start down the hallway

Cold delicious air touching your face with a nutty brown flavour

An extra hot latte has been here, that of a quality kind

Has been danced around just a couple minutes before

High and low, high and low

So that you now smell it effortlessly

Gliding onwards, you are enveloped by the crisp air-conditioning breeze

Warm to the heart, cool to the skin

And at the end, a waft of gentle woody, floral scent

Ah a chef's kiss on the nose

What an exquisite walking experience

What makes me happy?

 They loved Canada, so I'd love to take them there.

Fly first class, stay in a cosy cottage, see the sights, sit by the fireplace. Enjoy the trip slow and fast whenever we want to, like sipping a hot cup of tea. 

My brothers would come of course. They would enjoy it. We would be so happy, in a delightful place we have only dreamt of visiting. 

Visiting Canada in itself would not give me as much joy, my family is included in the reason why visiting Canada would make me happy. 

For that matter, visiting wherever doesn't matter. Perhaps we can do a trip a year, going wherever as a family, so long as we stay in luxurious places, I am sure we can enjoy it.

I'd also like to stay in France for two years. Maybe three. Let's say five years. It would give me time to learn the language. My family can came visit every now and then, they'd have a free place to stay for as long as they want, a nice comfortable place. They wouldn't have to worry about money on the trip, because accommodation is free, it takes off so much cost. I'd love to mingle with the French, learn their culture, visit the clubs and bars sometimes. Have a glass of wine in the evening in my high-rise apartment looking out to a dazzling view of the country, city lights and all. Funny but I imagine myself living here alone. Successful and stylish. A spy almost, blending into the country but really a traveller. If I could get PR here would be great as a security for the future, then my family can have a safe country to retreat to, if anything happen in our home country.

I'd also love to work jobs without worrying about money, without chasing for the progression in pay, just simply for the love of the job. If I could be an F1 engineer (in the war room, or at the pit wall each race) in my early 30s, then switch to bioinformaticist or genetic engineering or someone working in the hospitals in the lab. But not doing routine tests, but rather doing research to help doctors better identify diseases say. If a person's certain tumour marker is high, there is range of illnesses that could be possible. What protein or RNA is produced by which gene in which cell that we can test for, that can narrow the possibilites, hopefully pinpoint to one. Instead of doing expensive scans or letting it be. I have always wanted to work in a hospital, but the pay is so low and career progression is not great for this sort of role in my country. 

If I could volunteer with the elderly community at church without worrying about the time spent there being equivalent to time not spent on improving myself career-wise so that I can earn more money. 

If I could have respect from peers because of what I do and who I am, or I could just respect myself in fact, I'd be happy. If I have a job I enjoy without worrying about pay, having good money in savings, able to bring family to trips, able to have the luxury time to spend with them, I think I can respect myself. I would need to put work in to portraying myself suitably, clothing-wise, doing the perm hair dye I always wanted. I would definitely need to work on articulating myself better, having better voice image and maybe more solid ideas of what my views are on different things. Accumulate some identity capital. But these in my current state, are a luxury to pursue. Definitely not top of list, as my career and dating life is sort of in a frozen state. 

Anyways it was nice thinking about these things. I was a bit lost as to what exactly can make me happy while walking back from work just now. I know I want to make God happy, but I feel like so many things can make God happy, you can justify doing every job wholeheartedly unto God will make Him happy, but would doing any kind of job make me happy just because it makes God happy? Probably not. Likewise for the type of life that would make me happy. Even though it is all in theory, it is good to picture. 

Interstellar Review

You only just watched it now?? 

Yes buddy, yes. 

Late to the game, welp I never watch popular things when they are hot.

By the end of it I was just thinking, just how much pain are they gonna drag us through. Pessimistic I know. I mean poor Brands is still out there? In a strange galaxy? By herself?? Shit man. And Edmund is dead. What even.

So synopsis (spoiler alert haha, does anyone actually need a spoiler alert in 2022?). 

Cooper's earth is ending, people ain't gonna survive there because crops ain't growing no more. NASA sends Cooper and co. into space with two plans in mind: A) try to find three people on three different planets who went there 10 years ago to see which planet can they bring the remaining human race to, or B) start a new population of people on that planet and forget about the remaining humans. They set off, go through a wormhole, reach another galaxy. They land on Miller's planet, nothing doing, Mann's planet, nothing doing, and they run out of fuel. Cooper and robot TARS shoot off the back of Endurance, to propel Endurance which contains Cooper, off to the last planet with hope - Edmund's planet. They did this because there was not enough fuel left  for two people. Where did Cooper and TARS shoot off to you may ask? The Black Hole buddy, the Black Hole aka Gargantua. Apparently, the key to bringing the remaining human race to a new planet is understanding gravity. And gravity can only be understood if they can see Singularity and the data generated from it. Singularity lies on the other side of the Gargantua, which means people can't see it when they peer into it using space cameras. They need to go into it, cross over the horizon to the other side and fly into nothingness. Which is where Cooper and TARS are hurtling towards. They fall into some interstellar (hmm hm) interdimensional space. Cooper sees that he is in a space where he is surrounded by replicas of his daughter Murphy's room, with a second by second frame. Basically you walk down a maze-like aisle where you see Murphy vidoes playing through a loop when she was little and experienced the 'ghost'. He realised he was the ghost knocking over the books in Morse code, telling Murphy the coordinates of the secret NASA base, the word 'STAY' asking himself back in the days not to go on the mission. He encodes the data of the Singularity in the second hand of the watch he gave Murphy, and she gets it when she became much older and was working for NASA. She translates the code out in formulas and calculations, which made it possible for rockets of remaining human race to leave dying Earth and defy gravity. When Murphy 'got it', Cooper eventually falls back to space, near where the new Cooper Station became set up years later and was rescued. Cooper Station is built in the orbit circling Saturn. It is like the land of the topsy turvy. Murphy is now old, and immediately transferred from another station (wow they have two?) which took two years and in cryo-sleep so she would survive (apparently, with two space stations, they still haven't found a way to live forever), and see her father who now looks much younger than her. Brand on the other hand is on Edmund planet in ANOTHER galaxy, and is setting up camp for the future human race. What.

I think a couple of things stood out to me as to what made the story good.

1) The link between the first snippet of the story and the last, the ghost explained. 

It was the eureka moment. It was the thread throughout the story. This is a classic even in high school essays, I believe I got an A in Mandarin because my essay featured this 'revisiting' back a topic a couple of times, and a twist at the end (it was God's hand in it for my story). It is like the red scarf in Taylor Swift's song 'All Too Well'. Another minor link was the interviews from the first chapter with relevant snippets shown as it happened and the last chapter, showing the interviews in the museum on Cooper Station. 

2) The casual repetition of few major themes throughout the movie such as gravity and love. 

Honestly it is a long movie, but time flew because the script keeps bringing us back to a handful of themes amidst the wonderful actions. Simply put, gravity was the problem and love was the solution. Weaving these keywords into the dialogues helps the audience keep track of the plot, which otherwise can be too complicated to follow. 

3) The first apocalyptic chapter. 

It brings us back to earth (geddit geddit). This is one of my favourite parts. It felt so real, strangely relatable although it is set in an imagined future, we can somehow see humankind ending up like that. The little mystery in Murphy's room was the centrepiece in this chapter, with investigations and clues and tractors attraction making the audiences little Nancy Drews. The thrill of the mystery made me invested. The Dust Bowl, wheat and corn, all familiar but not exactly. 

4) A cocktail of classic human behaviours/emotions, portrayed perfectly. 

Familial love, sacrifices (compulsory for space movies), many tears (Matthew and Anne's were amazingly real), betrayal (by old Brand and Mann), hope and final salvation. 

5) The soundtrack. 

Hans Zimmer soundtracks I feel is made to make you feel moved, sad, and be memorable at the same time. I don't think it even played that many times, but repetitive nature of its melancholic melody makes you remember it. It definitely suits space movies. After watching the music still rings in your ears. Whenever you hear it afterwards, it brings back the feels the movie made you feel. 

I felt the success of the story is in a well written script with good technical backdrop. Each major episode in the movie was given the time it needed to develop, so they did not feel rushed through, but at the same time they did not zoom in on things that did not matter, it is like you know everything they show is important to the story. Things that did not matter were like how Cooper got scooped up from home, into a spaceship and shot off on a rocket in minutes. Like hello, no training, going through plans etc.? Of course they did, but they were not pivotal to the story so I was glad they cut it short. And finally, they major episodes, they executed them well, the dialogues addressed everything necessary, it is like at any given time in the storyline, there was only one major thing happening and the writer made sure to pare it down to that as much as possible, completed it, before moving on with the next. For example, when they are deciding which planet to go to next, Mann's or Edmund's, they don't talk about Royle's death no more (which in movie time had just happened prior), they focus solely on that and the arguments from both sides. It helps the audience follow. The tying up of loose ends at the end, revealing the Easter eggs, helps the audience with closure too. 

The movie makes one feel a variety of emotions, go to multiple places, but there is a constancy in repeated themes and keywords that threads through the storyline that propels (geddit?) one through. 

Takeaways from Podcasts

Submitting to Authorities

We can submit to authorities because Jesus has already won. The authority may not be Christian, but because Jesus has already won and is King, it means the authority is put there by Him to reward good conduct. When God asks us to submit to authorities, it does not mean blind nationalism, but to submit with view of King Jesus as the overall Lord. 

Political theocracy seems to be the ultimate way to change things according to modern vibes; you can make the greatest impact by changing laws or governance. But the way Romans is structured: first talking about personal conduct, how we ought to love and bear one another in the family of God as a sign to the world, then only leading to talks about submitting to authorities, suggests otherwise. Taking care of personal conduct trumps making a revolution in the governance of a nation.

The Tyranny of Meritocracy

The author presents an argument that meritocracy originated from biblical theology. There are two broad concepts in the religion space, one of salvation by good works and another of salvation by unearned grace. A sort of similar version in the Christian dialogue is free will (what you do affects your salvation) versus predestination (nothing you do can affect your salvation). The Reformation movement pushes the latter idea more strongly; salvation cannot be bought or earned. The Reformation work ethics is something along these lines. Because salvation cannot be earned, the work we do on earth is purely to glorify God, not so that we earn salvation, and not so that we can enjoy ourselves using the product of our work (like pagans do?). Because doing any of the latter two takes away from the first objective. This then meant that people were working and not spending as much, leading to wealth accumulation. 

Meritocracy is a double-edged sword because it makes people who can make it using this method automatically deserving of the outcome and morally justified in that. It also makes the people at the bottom who do not make it seem crap, like it is on them that they did not succeed. People who belong in the latter group are such as people who did not go to university or flyover states in the US. 

What politicians say is interesting because it reflects ideas that are convincing to society. For example, cleverness is the in-thing now. To convince someone to do something, you tell them it is the smart thing to do, whereas it is more about the ethical/right/virtuous thing to do in the past. 

What does praise mean?

What does it mean when someone praises you on graduating with a first, or getting a good job, or having a baby? It probably means their estimation of you as a person increases. Taimur is uncomfortable with praise precisely because of this. Is someone's respect for me increasing with how well I do (my job) in a certain domain (plumber/magician/analyst), or is it not limited to domain, but the respect for me as a person increases because of X? One may say I respect all humans equally irrespective of how well they do as opposed to respecting someone more in their domain because their doing well. The latter is shown through actions such as following them on twitter, going for dinner with hopes of collaboration, but how is the former shown? For example you say you respect a Warcraft player with rank 100 as much as a player with no rank. You would want to be friends with the first to go on quests together or just be friends because you think you would click. Then how do you show respect for the latter as well, since you say you respect them both equally regardless of merit, what actions can be a proof of this behavior or thought? It is one thing to say you respect all humans equally and another to treat all humans equally.  

How to optimize the process of making deep connections

Take the "36 Questions to Fall in Love" questionnaire, filter for the best ones and ask your circle of friends, who wants to go on a long walk with you, chatting about these questions with the aim of making deeper friendships? 

PS: Only do this when you are around 19 years old, doing it much later may seem weird.

From Knowing Faith and Not Overthinking Podcasts (2.5 recordings)