When Cyberpunk 2077 first came out in Dec, I was quite busy and did not play it.
Afterwards, I was just scared off by all the ridiculous bugs, reported by players.
A friend tried Cyberpunk 2077 again recently and told me that the game was playable now after all the patches.
So I tried it also.
And I am hooked.
I have always fancied a futuristic and chaotic world. I still remember the first movie of this kind where Humans can unlock the full potential of our brains and be God-like!
Even only a few hours in the game, I can see the complexity and connections of the storyline. If it is anywhere close to the Witcher 3, it is a more than great game. CDPR’s ability is not to be underestimated.
The gameplay is good too. The shooting is definitely not the best but it is good enough for a RPG. The progression and weapon systems are good too!
All in all, I think I am going to throw lots of hours into this game.
The heart breaking incident grabbed the heart of many in Singapore.
Sorrow and worries spread across all the chat groups.
While it is not possible to make it unhappen, we should do something to minimize it.
Efforts could be made from many different fronts.
As commoners, we should try as much as possible to avoid putting ourselves in front of dangerous people.
If we are unlucky to just come across someone who just wants to draw some blood, there is little we could do other than just trying to protect ourselves by running or fighting.
Fate could be a bitch!
There are many potential “mines” too, where people might be looking for a “reason” to unleash their anger.
These can be prevented. We should be careful not to give them what they want.
Two goats meet on a very narrow and dangerous bridge, below which is abyss.
They go in opposite directions and cannot walk past each other. Neither one of them wants to back down.
And if neither of them backs down, they will be exhausted standing on the bridge and staring at each other, and both will fall into the abyss and die.
So one has to back down.
But which one?
It is hard to make any good decision if both goals are identical.
What if they are not?
Let’s say Goat A has terminal disease and will die in less than a week, while Goat B just strikes Toto and wins 10 Million dollars and it has a lovely family to go back to.
Now the answer becomes obvious.
Goat B should back down, because Goat B has more to lose if they both die.
This has little to do with personality, morality or value systems. This is pure logical cost analysis.
And Goat B probably needs to back down fast. What if Goat A just wants to draw some blood and die?
1.We all have dreams. We thought we could create our fate.
Coming to the world, most of us think this way.
When we met the world and said “Hello World” for the first time, we most likely were seeing such a big world there for us to grab.
Aurora Lane wanted to be the first write who experienced two worlds and write great stories. She believed ordinal lives could only breed ordinal stories.
She designed her “Lane” to her dream and joined the migration.
Jim Preston wanted to put his skills into use and build something. He believed that in earth, people just replaced things instead of fixing them (no second chances…).
He pursued a new world and joined the migration.
The spaceship is called “Avalon”. They both wanted to reach the “Legendary Island” to realize their dreams.
Like Aurora and Jim, we all have dreams too and I am sure we design our journey to realize them.
We all willingly believe we can make things better with our hard work, great wisdom etc etc
2.In fact, we are passengers. We go where Fate takes us.
What could logically explain Aurora’s experience?
The faulty sleeping pods “cannot happen”. Three of them did in this one ship on this one journey.
Out of 5000 passengers, Jim picked Aurora and after months of struggling, he woke her up.
Shortly after Aurora found out the truth, the ship had major problems and they had to focus on saving the ship.
…
Only fate could explain it.
I can totally feel when Aurora said “ you take away my life” and “this is murder”.
She had dreams and she designed a path to them and everything was working towards the destination.
And everything was just ruined all of a sudden and none of this was her fault.
If anything, I really think the movie could have spent more efforts in describing Aurora’s feelings! （Maybe the impact was reduced since I knew the stories already…I hate the reviews and I hate me for reading it.）
Coupled with my own experiences, I have learned not to attribute one’s success all to himself and not to attribute others’ failure all to themselves.
1.It started with too much free time and went back in time
I have had too much free time lately.
With my work in silent period (major stakeholders on vacation), freelancing projects more or less completed and Start-Up abandoned, I have too much free time these few weeks.
I started to think what I should do to waste all these time away.
And that was when all the thoughts started to come.
And it went deeper in time.
Firstly, it was just about things that happened recently.
And then, it went back a few years and a few years more…
And now, it reached my university life.
Now that we were here, I simply took my thoughts further, to pre-university life.
Well, after a glance, I did not see anything I would regret and cry to change.
Being unsatisfied with reality will push people to dwell in the past.
But things should not be that bad for someone who has too much free time and not many worries in life.
Or maybe I just do not realize what is going on deep down.
A sign of becoming even less mature compared to 15 years ago?
15 years ago, before university, there was a discussion in the class on “Which regret would you eliminate if you could go back in time?”.
I said to the teacher and class that it did not matter because it was inevitable to have regrets in life.
If we chose A, we would be wondering whether B was better and vice verse. And we could not choose A and B at the same time.
So this question was meaningless to begin with.
I believed I got praised. I was happy.
Now I am older and less mature.
Or I was just being naïve then.
A sign of feeling powerless and hopeless?
Feeling powerless and hopeless could lead people to wish they could go back in time and change things.
Even Superheroes and Mutants are no different, apart from that they actually did go back in time and change things in their worlds, aka movies and comics.
Does someone who has too much free time feel powerless and hopeless?
Maybe!
But not so much about the world, but more about himself.
One thing within his control is the willingness to sacrifice and the actions to pursue, which is weak currently.
Or he just does not want it badly enough.
A sign of giving up and living in memories?
Giving up may not be the worst option.
The problem here is that there are no memories worth living in.
Or any memory is good enough. The key is to manage expectations.
1.Where to find a place where we get sunlight all day long and we could leave our “WIP” sundial for the day?
In the video, the instruction was to fix the sundial in a spot and leave it there all day along.
First of all, we needed to find a place where we would get sunlight all day long.
Second, we needed to be able to leave our staff there.
To find a place where we would get sunlight all day long proved to be more difficult than expected.
Indoors was immediately out.
We thought of car parks and roof top gardens. At least the ones near our place were not ideal, due to either tall buildings or trees.
We looked around and did not find any qualified spot.
The next option we could think of was the beach…
We did not feel like going to the beach and the weather was not exactly “beach” type either.
I could only imagine how easy this would be in the place where I grew up.
Any yard or field or rooftop or small road would do perfectly. There would probably be some curious kids who would just join in the fun and cause some damage.
Anyway, we had to improvise.
I tried to explain to my son that the Sun is so far away from us that the car park, garden and our flat were essentially the same spot and the shadow we got would be essentially the same.
I had to recall a few modules I took in school but eventually he bought the argument, which made the task a bit easier.
We would just go to any place that had sunlight at the time we needed to record down the position of the shadow.
Of course, we needed to ensure the panel was always facing the same direction every time we marked the shadow.
The campus from my phone helped. We just drew an arrow on the panel and made sure it always pointed to the North.
2.Maybe the impact is more “Mental” rather than “Physical”
We thought we were set and we just needed to record down the position of the shadow at different full hours.
Quickly, the weather proved difficult.
The clouds were beautiful. I had to think a bit when was the last time I actually looked at clouds.
The clouds were thick. So the Sun was hidden most of the time.
We had to wait for the Sun to show itself to mark the shadow, which meant we could not record the position of the shadow at the exact full hour.
It could be 5–10 minutes later.
Again, we had to improvise.
Then after 11am, we lost the Sun entirely. It even rained heavily.
After lunch, we both realized that it would be impossible to finish the sundial.
But the homework was for the weekend and it would have to be turned in on Monday.
So I made a suggestion to my son — Since you already know how it works, the rest is just repetitive work. We can just guess where the Sun would be and complete your homework.
He disagreed but I pushed him to do it anyway.
I guess I just wanted to complete it. Come on, it was just homework and he already learned what he was supposed to.
So within a minute, we did it.
I knew at noon, the shadow should be roughly due south this time of the year and I knew Singapore was using the wrong time (1pm is roughly noon).
I knew where North was (We had the arrow). So that was easy.
With the few “key points” there, the rest was just spread kind of randomly.
So we completed the homework.
Yay!
And I went to enjoy my nap, knowing my task was done.
Late in the afternoon, my wife told me that we received the instruction from the teacher that due to weather conditions, the assignment was postponed by a week.
I suddenly thought to myself — Why was completion so important? Why did I have to complete it? What would my son have learned from this experience?
Shouldn’t the natural reaction be to complete as much as possible and tell the teacher on Monday that the weather did not allow it?
Shouldn’t we expect the teacher to allow more time for the homework due to the weather, the uncontrollable factors?
Or would that even matter?
If the teacher allowed more time, we would utilize it to complete it and if not, my son learned what he was supposed to learn anyway.
I wondered whether I had been poisoned too deeply by all those motivation theories, all the “result-oriented” mindset, all the “can-do” attitude?
Maybe when we feel we have lost too much “nature” among the man-made concrete, it is more “Mental” rather than “Physical”.
Compared to physical bleeding, mental bleeding is even harder to take.
And the bleeding has began since the mid of last week. I think I am close to the state of “Bled Out”.
As for the reason?
My stock portfolio of course.
It dropped from one new low to another, all while the market is doing good.
Now it is so bloody red that I do not know what to think or do.
Staring at it does not do any good and just makes me feel like shit.
My courage to add positions after the drop is seriously affected now also.
Now I tend to trick my mind into forgetting about it.
I do not quite know what to do any way.
But I believe it will come back sooner or later.
So patience is a virtue.
Taken by author
Refer to the above two pictures.
The one on the left was taken this morning when I walked to my study room.
The one on the right was just a moment later. I just walked into the living room and had a cup of water and when I returned, I saw the full son, shining.
It has been “climbing” the whole night, just to “jump out” at that moment.
While the moment is glorious, the “hard work” and “tortuous wait” is necessary for it to eventually come and shine.
I have to say that we had a good start because we had many things entrepreneurs would cry for.
1.We had money and support
Even before we decided to kick start the whole thing, we had an investor.
He is willing to invest quite a handsome sum that could last us for 2–3 years at least.
And he owns his own company and he promised support, e.g. on marketing material, client network, licensing products etc
Of course, he would require shares and we discussed and reached a mutually agreed arrangement.
2.We had time
Like any start up, a lot of time and work was required.
Luckily, we both could spare the needed time, without affecting our life and work.
We had to work till 2 or 3 in the morning for a few times and had to burn a few weekends, but mostly, our work allowed enough room for us to do the needful without affecting our time with family.
And we can continue this kind of commitment at least until we have something serious ongoing and then we could explore hiring someone or even getting full time.
3.We had connections
We both knew people who would need our solutions.
And we both knew people who can provide some of the solutions.
We could easily act as middleman in the beginning before we established our own solutions capabilities.
…However, it was what we lacked that led to the end
We had many good things to start with.
But two things we lacked, namely “Want” and “Need”, caused lack of commitment from both of us, which eventually led us to ending the adventure.
“Want” and “Need” is usually used to guide us on spending decisions to reduce expenses and save money.
However, I find them perfectly fitting here.
They are really good things, without which motivation and resilience becomes abstract.
1.We lacked the “Want” — passion
We both believe that we can manage bigger and better things.
We both believe that our jobs do not provide enough room for our full potential.
We also both believe that our solutions are capable of improving the efficiencies of the industry.
However, we do not have to have it.
We do not lose sleep if we do not have it.
So I would say the passion is not present.
2.We lacked the “Need” — pressure
We both have families and some net-worth.
He always has a job and I have a job now too.
While we do welcome the extra money and impact that this adventure could potential bring us, we do not really have the need.
We do not need the revenue of the start-up to feed our families or pay the bills.
Therefore, neither of us was willing to quite our job and became full-time on this.
Therefore, things moved slowly sometimes.
Therefore, we became less determined upon frustrations.
Therefore, when it became clear that he would need to go through a lot of applications to secure the approval to be the direct of the company, we kind of decided to stop there…
Before we come to the end, I do want to be fair to ourselves too.
The whole situation is still a long shot.
The relations with the investor is more complicated than what I could describe here.
The revenue-generating activities are still a bit unsecured. We had some pipelines and we had quite a few interactions and we faced difficulties, such as lack of willingness to spend despite the clear demand etc.
This commitment did pose some potential roadblocks on other aspects of our career and lives, such as when we evaluated whether to take another offer etc.
So at least, the situation is not exactly that we just gave up a start-up with good perspectives, due to laziness or whatever, which you might come to feel from what I wrote above.
1.So really, it is not the lack of opportunities, but rather how we choose to do with them
It is easy for everyone to complain lack of opportunities — I can at least do as well, most likely better, if I had his/her background, education, beauty, platform or even luck.
However, as we all slowly realize, everyone has their own opportunities.
Everyone also has their own good and bad luck.
Everyone gets to enjoy their own periods of smooth growth, and everyone inevitably experiences their own frustrations and set-backs.
But it is really what we choose to do that makes a difference.
Are you willing and brave enough to take the risks and put in the hard work to go for it?
And many times, the former could be so much harder than the latter.
At least, congratulations to myself! I just lost the right to complain that “I did not have the opportunities”.
2.Start-Up is hard
It is a hard path.
Even with so many things to start with, this was a still a very hard journey for us.
We were doing it in our spare time.
We can only imagine the hardship and stress for anyone who is full time on this and who is dependent on the success of it.
We logically assessed that we could have a good chance of succeeding comfortably.
We were completely wrong.
3.“Want” or “Need” leads the way
It is hard to have something extraordinary unless we have to have it!
We have to have it either because we have enough passion or we have enough need.
These are the good things.
In a way, how much one can achieve is determined by how much “Want” or “Need” he has.
For someone who has nothing, it is clear that he has to go out and fight.
For someone who already has something, the choices become less clear — he will need to evaluate the options: settle with what he has or go out there to fight for more with 1)more hard work he has to put in and 2) the risk of losing what he has now.
Sooner or later, what he has will reach a threshold where settling becomes the clear choice.
And the “Want” or “Need” determines the threshold for everyone.
4.Good buddy is invaluable
It is going to be harder for someone to accomplish something alone.
Therefore, a buddy who you trust and trusts you, share the same belief and is on similar level of “Want” or “Need” is invaluable.
There is a high chance you can work together and increase the odds.
If you recognize one, do not let him go. At least, stay in tough and watch out for potential opportunities.
