quenching my old passion

12am.
trying to transcode AOL video to something that is of high quality and generic (at least Windows Media Player can play).
Stuck.
Decided to call for help.
First one on the top of my mind —> tan_ce

Talking to tan_ce is like talking to a joshuatj in another parallel universe.
(I can’t think of other words to explain what I want to convey, parallel universe is one that came close, but I don’t believe in parallel universe..)
So this is how I will be like if I didn’t took the road not taken after SPM.
After my 7D in BM, a great milestone in my life, I’ve transformed into the joshuatj who I am today.
Or is it because after SPM my best friend Isaac went off to university while I have not much a choice but to take STPM.

Talking to tan_ce makes me feel very emo nemo…
It’s the FINALLY kind of feeling.
Finally I found someone who has the same frequency. (actually his is much higher, maybe I’m his lower harmonics)
If I have a friend like tan_ce at any point of my life before SPM,
I can say the path that I’ll take will be truly different.

As much as I enjoy doing technical stuff back in church or in school,
(from the view point of the current joshuatj) I am longing for people to resonates with me.
I am longing for someone that is almost at the same level of expertise to work with me side by side.
It’ll be great fun to actually challenge each other at trying to better our skills and at the same time be able to share our thoughts regarding the topic that we like.

Apparently, life as a technical guy is really sad.
It’s almost like nobody understands you.
I’ve never been so transparent with my thoughts and ideas before until the conversation with tan_ce just now. (haha… tan_ce I know you will be reading this~ But this is really what I feel)
I could only explain it as RESONANCE, where the driving frequency equals the natural frequency.

Stanley was my first resonance friend, from std2 till std6.
We’re one of the few in class who actually own a computer and play games on it. I am still searching for the computer game that we used to play together at his house. It’s called SALES, a chinese monopoly (大富翁）type of game where you are sales man trying to sell your products across the map. There are items where you can use to sabo other people. It might well be the infancy stage of 大富翁.

Isaac around the same time too, but our interaction last longer, std2 till F5.
But we got a lapse during F1 when I was in another class, it affects our natural frequency quite significantly. It took us quite some time to readjust. The first work-together was Turbo Pascal. That… was my first programming language, I actually photocopied the book and we learn together. Man.. it’s really FUN back then, we try to out beat each other by learning more.
Eventually I lose. He went on to VISUAL BASIC, then C++ then 3D Studio MAX…. the rest is history. I didn’t even know how to use VISUAL BASIC. I was too busy with my computer games back then.

ok, digress a bit… the fact that the text that i’ve typed up to this point are still here is truly God’s GRACE!
this is what happen, I’ve decided to save the post after such a long entry and as I click SAVE, the pop-up windows gives me this MIME error and I thought, "jialat, all my thoughts are gone~~!!" you know, inspiration to blog always comes just once. There was another time where something similar happen, but that time I was not so fortunate as I didn’t manage to recover the text, and end up having to re-type the whole post again… SAD :’(
But anyway, I decided to keep on refreshing the page, hoping that something will happen. After a few minutes, nothing work out. Then I thought, maybe I should do a quick search on Google and see if there are anything which I can do to recover the text. I started off with these keyword "text field lost recover". The first link irrelevant, try second link, read some of the stuff, learned that CTRL+SHIFT+T is actually a shortcut to re-open closed tabs. Then I decide to try refreshing the pop-up page a few times more, aha~ by God’s Grace, it work~ apparently there’s something wrong with friendster server and my request to SAVE the post didn’t get through, but it’s still somewhere in my computer, most likely lying in one of slots in my RAM.

I’ve digress too much from the main topic.

Coming back to where I stop, resonance friends.

After Isaac it’ll be JennHan, that was totally unexpected.
Till today I still don’t understand his sudden change of attitude towards me.

After JennHan it’ll be HockSiang, that’s upper6.
But it’s no longer about technical stuff (eventually we get to discuss about cameras after he worked in a camera shop during the holidays.).

Most of the time we’re debating over philosophical topics, religious topics (which eventually he told me not to mention God anymore in my arguments because i always hold on strong when I mention God in my arguments that he can’t really talk me out of it.), DirectSales (after STPM), Moral Issues…. basically everything under the sun, other than technical stuff.

Maybe that was when I started to change,
I was thrown into an environment where I have to make new friends from scratch.
It’s called surviving skills. I became more adaptive to changes.
Try to fit in to the community, but being joshuatj, his family upbringing background, there’re not many compromises, because he is quite firm in his principles. But generally, he soften quite a bit just to try to fit into the clique.

No more technical skills resonance friend to share my thoughts.
Besides, I really focus very very hard in my studies, I still remember I was enrolled in THREE Physics Tuition Classes. That’s seriously insane in other people’s perspective.
But after the 7D experience, I really want to test my capability of doing "STUDIES".
Apparently my STPM result is a good conclusion to my TEST. :p
I know I can EXCEL if I really put in my maximum effort.

Yeah, my technical skills really do grow, but that’s because I decided to took up Computing as my fifth subject in STPM. My reasoning was "since I’ll be playing with the computer all the time, might as well use this opportunity to really brush up my skills. With more time spending on the computer for school work, I can also reduce my gaming time, which is GOOD!! (at that point of time, I’ve already realised that GAMING is actually a waste of time, efficiency in learning is very very low. Most of the time you will be training very hard to be able to master the GAME, which in reality, is quite useless. )

Next up will be the BEST friend who has a phase difference of PI where I met during the five weeks of 2006. It was a mind boggling experience. It was also my very first time where I felt that I’m completely helpless and surrender totally unto GOD. Apparently everything went on smoothly and just got news that a superposition has just happened to this BEST friend of mine.

NUS, I’ve met quite a lot of near resonance friends, but most went into a plateau stage after a while or small spikes of resonance occasionally.

Ya, I am beating around the bush.
But I’m paving the path, trying to explore and explain why is my old passion burning.

Somehow when I talk to tan_ce, my old passion burns once again~
I asked myself why? plainly because I’ve found a great companion to do so together.

So what’s my old passion?
It’s the FREEDOM to JUST do technical stuff and forget everything about being a socially acceptable, an influential person, a person who impact lives with his life, a leader… everything.
The key point is to JUST learn and DO technical stuff, spending thousands of hours learning video editing, photography, archiving, understanding hard to understand physics, chemistry, biology, maths principles, truly learn about audio and PA systems, read tonnes of BOOKS… etc.

But I know that I can do all things but not all things are beneficial.
It might seem that having the freedom of doing all the things that you really like is the WAY everyone should take~ FOLLOW your HEART! FEEL… that sort of thing.
Apparently our heart is deceitful and following our heart isn’t the BEST way to do things.
Somehow, somewhere in my heart there’s this something else that keep motivates me to continue my strife towards the current joshuatj 2.0 direction, instead of the old path that joshuatj ver. alpha took.

See a need, fill a need~

Somehow, somewhere sometime I’ve decided to take up the responsibility to make a difference~!!! That?…. CHANGES everything else~!