fly crying

General Templer was a hands-on manager and was famous for flying to trouble spots. Sometimes his chastising of the villagers had humorous consequences. Noel Barber mentions such a case after a guerrilla ambush caused Templer to immediately fly to the nearest village where he harangued the collected inhabitants:

“You’re a bunch of bastards,” shouted Templer; and Rice, who spoke Chinese, listened carefully as the translator announced without emotion: “His Excellency informs you that he knows that none of your mothers and fathers were married when you were born.”

Templer waited, then, pointing a finger at the astonished villagers to show them who was the “Tuan,” added “You may be bastards, but you’ll find out that I can be a bigger one.” Missing the point of the threat completely, the translator said politely, “His Excellency does admit, however, that his father was also not married to his mother.”

been doing some research on the Malayan emergency. this anecdote made me chuckle. lol.

water tickle

ah i forgot something i wanted to say

complainers irritate me

paranoia white

work is settling in, but feeling increasingly unsettled this few weeks leading up to the finals. perhaps i did set my bar too high in the first semester, but i refuse to believe that i will be taken down so easily. yes, i do admit it is hard, i feel a lot less in control this semester than last semester. but it has always been like this when it comes to humanities, at least i feel my good friends have always agreed with me about the fact that when you do arts – you usually have no idea how well you did in the essays or exams, unlike sciences – there is a clear cut answer. well anyway perservere i must.

been playing badminton for about 2 months now i should think. i really like it! anyway it was during badminton that i came across a certain idea. it seems to me that there are some people who readily undergo the process of “sizing up” when they meet new people, while other people do not. but the dichotomy yet does not seem so clear cut. it seems to me that there might be 3 different categories:

1. sizing up comes naturally – and they act on these processes

2. sizing up comes naturally – and they do not act on these processes

3. sizing up is out of sight out of mind

well in this case it brings up the problem of behavioral psychology – can behaviors really tell us about the thought processes of people? at most, we can only hazard a guess. ["essentializing" is my new favorite hated word.]

right. so to put it in context – you would see these categories clearly when playing badminton at berkeley. so the way badminton works in berkeley is that in a week, there are 3 days with courts open for badminton. you can not book the courts or anything like that, so basically the asian population swarms the badminton court during the period when the courts are open specifically for badminton. but the thing is there are only 6 courts. and another thing is that the berkeley badminton team trains during the same time and well pro skill people do not waste their time with recreational people. what people usually do is to split a court into half, so 2 pairs can play on one court at each time. (not a game, just each pair taking a vertical half.) alternatively, you could challenge 2 pairs playing a game by “calling” cause if you win then you get to stay on the court. and i shall stop here before i actually poison the well. 

so going back to the concept of sizing up – i definitely fall into category 1. the first time i entered the badminton courts – even as a beginner, i sized up people. the world of badminton in berkeley became categorized and structured – these are people i can play with, and these are people i cannot play with cause i am noob. and i definitely will not “call” on in a game that i am no fight at all to the pair; i would not want to waste their time! 

but soon i noticed, especially among the asian americans – they do not seem to operate in this way! they are unembarrassed and regardless of their skill level, they would just “call” in on games even though the skill difference may be really great. so i wonder if it is because “sizing up” just does not come naturally do them, or do they just not care in general? 

was it because of our culture/society that had resulted in this difference?

i cannot say rightaway which method of operation is better, i should think sizing up reduces embarrassment but then it means you lose many opportunities. 

well then it led me to think about theory of mind again – it is true that not everyone has the same perceptions and feelings – but are there universals?

1.25 in change

i like.

flop cop

i wonder if the absence of a statement is a moral judgment in itself.

 

anyway finally had a thought intriguing enough to blog about but been procrastinating it for a long time – i suspect by the time i get around to doing it i would have distilled it to a one-liner. oh wells.

i.e. i am still not going to do it now.