Per Ardua Ad Astra

This marks my first time composing a blog entry away from the restricted confines of home! The liberation experienced is quite enjoyable, except for the lack of Internet access where I’m staying at the moment.

Anyhow, Relativity 101 is supposed to be a ’simple’ crash course in helping a friend to understand relativity. Sorry Pei, since it’s been soooo long since that day in the library. But at least it’s halfway to the finish line now. Unfortunately, my procrastinating and change of plans led me to start off Relativity 101 by combining brain power with Jason Lim Yuen Hoe, who is the creator of the aforementioned PseudoBlog. We made a simplistic division of labor where he tries to explain the historical context behind relativity and special relativity itself.

Why bother about historical context, you may ask. Well, if you can come to understand what forced physicists to accept the ether medium in the late 19th to early 20th century, it’ll help a lot to understand the genius and grasp the concept of Einstein’s ideas.

All right, time to get things started.

But first, a note of caution. WARNING! Basic understanding of physics concepts and geometry is required, to the highest level possible. If you do not even know what Physics is, please stop reading right now. Drastic alteration to mental perception of the physical world may be a permanent side effect, which is the desired outcome. Failure to comprehend the text presented may result in insanity as a worst case scenario or continued ignorance and misguided perception of the physical world as the best case scenario. In case of confusion or feeling of stupidity, please put forth any queries without hesitation as these symptoms may be widespread.

To start off your foray into relativity, click here to start!

P.S.: If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m left with the daunting task of making general relativity as idiot-proof as possible and then presenting it. More to come along soon. Can’t do much on the go with Word Mobile at the moment, especially when I don’t have ready access to WiFi as I go about. Yup, by the time you read this, I would have probably come back from out of town and uploaded this entry to my blog through my PC.

I’ve originally planned to blog on something else, but this piece of written work captured my attention from the moment I first started reading it all the way towards the end.

Here’s On call in Hell, the featured article of the day on Newsweek.com. Not even the doctoring you see in ‘Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World’, ‘Black Hawk Down’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’ or ‘Band of Brothers’ could compare with the gory description of what Richard Jadick saw in Fallujah. From the account, he totally deserved the Bronze Star for his what he did there.

Now you know why I don’t want to become a doctor. Too gory, and potentially traumatic (perhaps it’s just my overactive imagination, or maybe not). Besides, never really liked having the fate of someone’s life literally placed into your hands, at least not in this way.

For those of you who are now on the way towards becoming one, be thankful that battlefield triage is only a distant concept in doctoring here. Unless you are so desensitised to the priceless value of life till deciding who lives and who dies on the spot is as easy as choosing what to watch at the movies.

Yeah, I need to resync myself. Over the past few months, my biological clock has been displaced by 6 hours. Yep, now my clock is in sync with Muscovites. That’s not really a problem, but I haven’t seen sunrise nor sunset for quite some time, and Brandon’s Cambodia holiday trip photos made me miss the dazzling clash of gold and azure when the Day/Night Terminator passes over us daily. I really need to get away from the hustles and bustles of life, but wait a darned minute!

I’m supposed to be on HOLIDAY!

Yeesh, holiday or none I’m still scurrying about there and here getting things done on time (in some cases, way overdue!). Why don’t I sleep earlier? I would, if not for the fact that I work the closing shift, I have to wait my dad to get off the PC when I get back (yes, the Exec doubles as a PC too, but it’s not made for Internet multitasking!), and there’s tonnes of updated stuff on the Internet daily. Have to keep up, or go under. And there’s stuff to do too, in the afternoons. Somebody just shoot me…

Well, in summary my evenings are now devoted to serving Starbucks customers (there goes my jogging routine). Nothing much to note, except that there’s a new drink (called the Cinnamon Streusel latte) and new sandwiches. Not very ‘Starbucksy’ of me, but I think the best pairing would be Auntie Anne’s cinnamon pretzels. Nice stuff, but unfortunately I have to cut down on my food expenses at Starbucks.

Why?

Well, I still get my Employee Beverage to enjoy at work, but unfortunately fuel prices isn’t the only thing going up. It has been in the pipeline for quite some time, and it’s finally official. Starbucks food has just gotten more expensive by average of RM0.50 I think(thankfully cake and drink prices remain the same as before). The maddening part is, the prices went up, but our wages still remain the same! Perhaps we barristas should gang up and use the management’s explanation to the customers back against them.

Here it goes: "Dear sir/madam, due to the rising cost of raw ingredients and logistics over some time, we have no choice but to regulate the prices at a higher rate" or something like that. You know what? "Dear Management, due to rising logistics and living costs, INCREASE OUR PAY!"

Oh, and about Coffee Tasting (which is long overdue), the steps are quite simple. First, you cover 3/4 of the cup mouth using your fingers, and inhale the coffee aroma through the 1/4 of the cup mouth left uncovered. It’s basically because the olfactory senses gives an idea to our brain what we’re gonna taste. Then you go on describing the smell (almost impossible if you’re using paper cups, because the plastic and cellulose overpowers the aroma). Then you take a sip or rather slurp as the coffee is extremely hot, and to get the coffee over all the tastebuds of your tongue. Finally you describe the taste and identify the coffee. Note, you don’t add anything to your coffee (sugar or milk) as that’s ‘not the way’. Rather, you taste ‘plain’ coffee and its ‘pairing’ which is usually cakes, but could also be pastries. The idea is that both respective tastes will ‘cancel’ each other in your mouth to give a null effect, hence the name pairing. How well they pair depends on how well they ‘cancel’ out each other. How you taste the cake? Smell, and pop into your mouth. Chew, and add coffee. Then you gauge the pairing. Congratulations, you are now able to impress your buddies when you go to Starbucks for their brewed coffee! But, you’ll need to know how to describe the coffee smell and taste too. Maybe I’ll go into that, but that’s for another day.

To end today’s entry, my long wait is finally over! Not quite, but it’s sufficiently over to be over. It’s another story for another entry, but suffice to say, I have my own handheld AND phone!

As for my AJacian AJCian friends, hope you guys and girls got what you wanted. To echo CCM, not to worry all right? =)