Infinite State Automaton

This week has been very hard for me. I learned many painful things.

This week has been very good for me. I learned many important things.

Growing is hard to do. The comfortable clothes you have and the world around you does not change to match the different you. Instead, you have to adjust to the world as you yourself change. In the process of adjusting, you also grow - and so the process of growing and adjusting is one of constant change. To not grow, means to stop changing, means to no longer fit in to the world, and so you will be left behind; die.

That is the rule of life.

Goals:
Food - this has been terrible. I know the reason for me to fail here and I will be working on it this week.

Saving - I managed to meet my goal for four weeks, but then my car had a problem which used up EXACTLY the total amount I had saved so far >.>;; Cars are expensive. But, I learned that I can use public transport to go from work to home faster than driving in the afternoon. Car fuel is very expensive. I run through $60 a week. Public transport will cost me $40 a week. It is only a small saving, but like all things in life, it is the little things that add up to make a big thing.
I will try it out not this week, but the week after, and see how much of a difference it makes.

I am not sure if this is a 'win' or a 'loss'. I did manage to save money. If I didn't have saved money, then my car could not be fixed. From the long term plan, this step was failed, but in the short term, it was success. I think this is the meaning of the saying "To win the battle but lose the war." Fortunately I have many, many more battles ahead of me, so I can still try to change my fate.

Exercise - I did not go to the gym for over a week now, so you would think 'Oh Sky, you failed here.' Actually I exercised a lot harder this week than I did before! I have fenced for two Monday nights in a row. Fencing is...unlike gym, which leaves me broken and utterly unable to move, fencing is an endurance thing. It uses completely different muscles, too. It is the junction of three things - your intellect, your strength, and your precision.

The following Wednesday I also went sailing again. This time I did not fall in to the ocean, win! The wind was stronger so the waves were bigger, but the direction was more favourable and so we did not have to tack as often. My fellow Lion from Kenya, Boyan, came out this week. Due to car trouble (and having to borrow my brothers car) ID I did not get to go sailing at the most recent time, but hopefully next week will be better.

I saw how dangerous sailing could be last time. There were thirty boats all trying to do a 180 degree turn about a buoy in the river channel, only a hundred metres wide. I did not see a single boat collide with another, but the sounds told an amazing story. Even though we moved so slow, the sharp crack of sails changing in the wind, the yells of boatsmen warning to each other, the crash-sh of wash being forced out...all of it combined in to a very tense situation.

I count sailing as exercise because the next day my body hurts like I have been exercising. I am not sure exactly what I have done that counts as exercise while I am on the boat, but it hurts, so, as long as the body thinks I am fit, it's all good.

Saturday afternoon was laser skirmish. This is done outdoors. We wore hats that detected when a laser had been fired at it, and the hats had a wire that connected them to the gun - if you were hit, the gun was disabled from firing for three seconds (but you could still be hit, so run and hide!). The guns were quite large and surprisingly heavy. The children had a small uzi style thing that they could fire one handed, that had a red laser pointer targetter. The women and Sky had a heavier four kilogram thing that needed two hands to fire and a scope. It was designed to be used as a sniper rifle. To make it more fun, this gun would announce loudly when you were out of ammunition.

The last gun was a fat five kilogram monster that was some kind of heavy machine gun. It was a 'spray and pray' approach. All of the men except for myself took this one, so of course I was the butt of many jokes about taking a womens gun. Well, I am not very strong! But actually I had seen the terrain that we would be fighting on, and it was a heavy slope with lots of objects to hide behind. I knew that most of us were unfit and would want to play the sniper game. So, having a sniper rifle seemed like the smartest thing to do. I am glad that I chose it because my arms did suffer a lot from carrying it around, but not as badly as the men who then had big bruises on their arms the next day at work!

This game was a lot of fun. The only problem for me is that I like instant gratification, if I can't see that I scored a hit on somebody I keep on shooting at them - if they don't react (and many of the children completely ignored that they had just been liquidated and continued to fire at me even though their gun had stopped working) I would keep plugging away until they gave up or I ran out of ammo. I could not tell if I had scored a hit or was missing my target unless I was close enough to hear their gun make the 'omg I was hit!' sound, which was about, fifty metres.

I did not know how to use a scope. This was a surprise! Previously I have used only open sight weapons, so you would get up real close and personal with it to get the best shot. But this scope would not work unless you moved your head slightly back from it. Perhaps my head was in the wrong position, and many of my attacks missed the target - I don't know.

This Tuesday coming, Michael is taking me with him to the Army Reserve training. I was also approached on Friday to consider doing Masters after I graduate. They didn't ask for a yes/no, just to say "Would you consider it?" I said I would consider it but I would like to know more details first. I said about my original plan to move to USA for my dream job, but I was keenly aware that where I am now is very good and 85% my dream job already.

I need to work out what I want again, and what is important to me.

Relationships - this was a really big surprise.

Kind of I was still on a downward spiral to self destruct. I was looking for something to hang on to so that I didn't have to start all over again. There was a girl that I had been very cruel to only a few months ago who, out of desperation, I turned to. What I found surprised me and was a big wake up call for me.

She said that she had forgiven me for the way I had treated her. Instead of allowing it to hurt her, she said that it had inspired her to prove me that I was wrong about her, and she had moved on in her life to successful things. She also thanked me, because in the midst of saying painful things to her, I had also said some things that were deeply inspiring to her.

She taught me that forgiveness is something that a person has from inside of them. They don't need to say it to another person, "I forgive you for xxx". If you have to tell the person you forgive them to feel better about it yourself, then you didn't really forgive them, did you?

There has always been some sexual tension between the two of us, but we have not done anything about it because she is married. After this conversation, the tension vanished. I did not realise that I had been behaving badly until I stopped doing it. I literally could not see. Afterwards, we went out to the Fringe Festival together and had a great time. We changed our frustration with each other for wanting to do something we shouldn't do, into a...I am not really sure. Whatever it was, it was a good thing. Instead of feeling some obligation to hold her things while she was trying on different clothes, instead of feeling obliged to do/say something, I was able to move honestly and freely. I felt good and confident about myself and was able to relax, and she did too. We talked about it and wondered the reasons for it. I don't know.

But whatever the situation, we somehow built a surprisingly good friendship out of an embarassing and awkward situation. Somehow we gave each other exactly what we needed, not what we wanted.

From this, I realised that what I had said earlier in my blog about women was disrespectful and wrong. I wanted to delete it, but as an adult I must accept responsibility for the things that I have done and said. Later I will write more in my blog about it, but for now, this apology can do.

--Edit:
I forgot the last bit of exercise that I did which was, for lazy Sky, quite epic. After I took my car to the mechanic, I walked to work - I knew I would be late, but I didn't realise HOW late - an hour and a half. On Friday, I left work at 4:20 and ran to the mechanic. I got there at 4:50. I ran in thirty minutes what it had taken me ninety minutes to walk. I don't know the distance or how it compares to actual effort (as I didn't run ALL of the way) but I haven't run this distance for a long time. It's a small but definite show that the gym and exercise is improving my fitness. I am really happy :D

On February 14 at 10 am I recieved the e-mail to tell me that my final submission was a Credit, which was enough to push my failed mark up to a pass.

The result is that I will be graduating in March 2008.

It only took me ten years >.>;;

As I was growing up, I learned that girls were never treated with much respect by boys, and the world seemed to accept and encourage it. For some reason, they were treated as less-than-people. Their good ideas and advice were ignored, and they were made fun of and degraded. Even something like a simple reminder was written off as nagging. If a woman has a problem, it is never as important as the problem a man might have, because a man is always using logic whereas a woman is always emotional. For some reason, emotion is not a valid reason to have a problem. Something like feelings are only temporary. Tomorrow, you will have forgotten you are upset, silly girl! That is why we don’t take what you have to say seriously. Why should we do anything about what you have to say today? Tomorrow you will want a different thing. That is the argument I always hear.

I didn’t understand why women accepted this treatment. The boys that they liked so much didn’t even see them as equals. But still, girls would allow themselves to be talked over and ignored and relegated only to be pretty things to show off to others. I had hoped that as we got older and people matured, girls would raise their standards and not allow themselves to be treated this way. I didn’t want to accept that world, so I tried to live in a way where I could feel satisfied. I always felt I treated women with the same respect and consideration as I do any other person. To me, there is no difference. I believe women are just as capable as men to do any important thing, and some things they can do better. Any adult having this conversation would come to the same agreement. So, why do these same adults not respect a woman’s ability? I don’t understand it.

More, I don’t understand why girls don’t stand together to change it. Men don’t respect women, but they like having them around because they are useful to do things for them. If a girl complains to a man, he will just ignore it because…it’s not important to him. She can’t complain to him about his behaviour being the reason she is upset. He won’t hear it. In this situation, the girl’s only choice is to eventually leave. In a group situation, the boys will all point and degrade the woman who is leaving and make up stories to say that she is attention seeking or a drama queen, all the while belittling her and saying to all the other girls who can see ‘if you are upset and complain this is how you will be treated’. So long as a woman can be singled out and targeted individually like this, it’s impossible for her to win. Even if a man stands up for her, the others will say he has feelings for her and is ignored, because – well – feelings aren’t grounded in logic, so, he shouldn’t be listened to either.

In that kind of situation, only women can stand up for each other. A man can’t do it, even if he wants to. His only choice is to leave the group if he can’t support the way the women are treated in it. If he is not part of the solution, then he is part of the problem.

But I wonder what would happen if all the women stood together and left at once? Suddenly, the men are the ones who have a problem. I wonder what the world would be like if it was run by women.

I’d like to think that humanity had gotten past this basic immaturity but it seems we still have a long way to go.

Today I went sailing on Stan's friend's ship, the Naiad. I'm told it's a Norse word for 'Water Nymph'. The vessel is ten feet long and had a crew of myself (ballast), Michael (assistant director from work, also ballast), Stan (from work - jig controller-guy), Sarah (mysterious girl who did things with ropes), Liz (the captain for the day), Liz' husband (the usual captain who was watching over Liz to make sure nothing exploded), and their daughter, whose name I never caught, who did something else, maybe navigation, I'm not sure.

The wind was strong and the skies overcast, but the day was good. The water temperature was also quiet pleasing, as I discovered about half an hour in to the race when I partially fell in to it.

It started off very well. As we pulled away from the vessels permanent dock in the marina, a pod of three dolphins came up and started playing. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera - I was worried about it getting wet (a good fear as it turned out) and didn't have it on me.

My job on the boat was essentially to counterbalance the boat whenever it tacked. We were sailing in to the wind for the first part of the race. I was surprised by how much speed the boat was able to pick up even when sailing in to the wind. To do it, the captain had to zig-zag the boat every two or three minutes. At this point, I had to hop from one side of the boat, over the cabin, and down to the other side, whilst avoiding the bottom of the sail from smashing my skull into little mush pieces. As you can tell be the fact I am writing here without some impairment, I managed to escape without having splinters of skull liquifying my precious brain meats.

However, this did happen - one time I was too slow to get across and the boat had tipped up to somewhere between 65-70 degree angle. I was mid-clamber across and didn't have any hand holds, so instead I just fell. I managed to grab one of the wooden railings on the cabin as I dropped and so I only thigh deep in to the water. I needed help to get pulled back on board because my clothes were suddenly waterlogged and too heavy for me to get back on after having gone to the gym the night before >.>;; Luckily Michael-ballast-assistant was in easy reach of me and we proceeded on without further trouble. I scraped my left shin considerably on the toe rail. After about five minutes of pathetic whimpering the pain went away. Historically I don't tend to bruise at all, so I won't have anything to show off, but later Stan took a photo of the cuts. Then we all traded horror stories of injuries. I think the worst was Stan's son Stefan, who had fallen and dislocated his knee as well as taking off huge amounts of skin, ow.

Aside from this minor thing, the day was actually a lot of fun. I'd recommend it to anybody. Afterwards, we all had dinner at the yacht house. I don't know if I will do it every Wednesday night, but I will definately try it again.

Yesterday, Ben and I had a great conversation on our tea break. It started out with me complaining about the task Shraga had given me, but then Ben gave me a startling revelation: The reason I am doing this research is because nobody has done it before. The AFP couldn't tell me anything, not because it was secret, but because the information simply didn't exist. This was encouraging!

Ben: "Nobody has done anything like this before. So, if you get it wrong, nobody will know."

I can't argue with that logic.

From there, we talked about the future of the human race. What will humanity look like in ten billion years time? We agreed that the first race would be to find a way to make humanity independant of this rock we call Earth. I reckon we can make it. But first we have to resolve the problem of people currently having to eat mud cookies. I had this same conversation with three different people in the last week - Bosco at the Vietnamese New Year, Sarah over the weekend, and now Ben.

So, here's a question for you - if you could live forever, in your preferred state (so for me anywhere from 22-now seems good), would you do it? Some people say to me, no, they would get bored. Others say that without some kind of time limit, the value of life would be diminished. Others say that they want to experience the whole range of human feelings, including growing old and death. Others say, they want to know what comes next.

Me? Hell no. I'm going to live forever. I could live for eternity and still not experienced everything I wanted to.

What about you?