The annotated budak

I finally answer the persistent calls and hear things like, "Everybody's children are coming home but for us..."

If I do not tell you why I am doing this, you will not leave me in peace. But if I were to tell you, there will not be peace either. Why can't you let people resolve their own problems, for better or worse, without the added burden of emotionally invested inveighers?

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm   You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
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I am sorry (or maybe not) but I cannot and will not be the son you want me to be. Your grip on me, though unknowing and unexpressed in a way that augments its intensity, is such that I am forced to live in a world of half-truths and unconquered anxieties, for fear of being responsible for shattering what dreams were invested in my being – I did not feel it then, but now it seems like I exist for the sake of fulfilling a bounty of wishes heaped upon my birth. I need to accept that it's not possible for me to make you happy by doing what I do and being who I am, so I don't want to try to please you anymore. If that means I am a failure and disappointment, so be it. I am tired of this guilt-trip.

A book review for all those who thrive on organised messiness...

In praise of mess

Jan 4th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Why keeping tidy can be inefficient

THIS book may not change your life. But if you have a tendency to be messy and have already broken your new year resolutions to be neater in future, it will certainly make you feel better about your natural inclinations. Untidiness, hoarding, procrastination and improvisation are not bad habits, the authors argue, but often more sensible than meticulous planning, storage and purging of possessions.

That is because the tidiness lobby counts the benefits of neatness, but not its costs. A rough storage system (important papers close to the keyboard, the rest distributed in loosely related piles on every flat surface) takes very little time to manage. Filing every bit of paper in a precise category, with colour-coded index tabs and a neat system of cross-referencing, will certainly take longer. And by the end, it may not save any time. Your reviewer's office is easily the most untidy in The Economist (not entirely his own work, it should be said, thanks to the heroic efforts of his even untidier office-mate). But when it comes to managing information, there seems to be no discernible difference in the end result.

The authors of this book trawl the furthest reaches of psychology, management studies, biology and physics to show why a bit of disorder is good for you. Chiefly, it creates much more room for coincidence and serendipity. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin because he was notoriously untidy, and didn't clean a petri dish, thus allowing fungal spores to get to work on bacteria. He remarked wryly on visiting a colleague's spotless lab: “no danger of mould here”.

It can also help make sense of things. Hearing depends on random movement of molecules: when they coincide with sounds from outside, they are strong enough to stimulate the inner ear. A bit of background noise on the phone enables our ears to filter out echoes. A slightly mushy photograph can be easier to understand. Music and art depend on mess.

Procrastination makes sense too. America's Marine Corps, the authors repeat (several times), never makes detailed plans in advance. Leaving important things to the last minute reduces the risk of wasting time on things that may ultimately prove not important at all.

The authors are witheringly contemptuous of the bogus equation of tidiness and morality—for example in corporate “clean desk” policies. Disorder and creativity are so closely linked that any employer who penalises the first sacrifices the second, they argue. America's professional organisers, a thriving and lucrative cult of tidiness coaches, are merchants of guilt, not productivity boosters.

It's all fine, up to a point. But the book has two weaknesses. One is that it overstates the case. The case for tidiness in some environments—surgery, a dinner table or income tax returns—is really overwhelming. The other is that the book is a bit repetitive and disorganised. Even readers who love mess in their own lives don't necessarily like it in others.

- - - - - -

Maybe it's worth recapitulating some earlier thoughts from here:

... I truly believe the ability to organise projects, meet deadlines, develop winning ideas and create the impression that one is worth every CPF dollar while maintaining a desktop (real and virtual – you should see the latter too) that defies logical analysis and the 1st law of thermodynamics (you can't imagine how much energy that chair saps and destroys from its occupant) is a mark of genius. Don't ever trust those with spanking clean corners; just imagine the amount of time they spend hiding and filing everything away from sight, when they could be actually doing something productive instead. Like thinking of new blog entries...

... The unending war between neat freaks and clutterites is an ancient feud. Like other moral crusades, the very fate of civilisation... hangs on the victory of pure, unadorned homoscapes over the permissive pluralism of heterogeneous desk derbies. As The Economist has noted, "clean desk" policies requiring employees to remove all evidence of work from their desks by the end of the day are imposed by several large corporations, despite the absence of any proof but dogma and uncited 'studies' that filers work more efficiently and productively than clutterers.

Leave that mess alone, I say. It's a sign of a beautiful mind – the unteachable ability to pluck disembodied associations from the natural build-up of physical thought. A tidy scene is the most fleeting of installations, an anomaly, a de-creative vacuum demanding a radiation of spontaneity from more mayhemic minds.

From Ananova. I always knew working in the press is second nature for ducks. It certainly beats getting pressed and waxed. And here's another guy who's not afraid to show his duck!

Duck works on newspaper kiosk

A Chinese newspaper seller is attracting customers by using a duck as his assistant.

The bird stands on a chair at the kiosk and uses its beak to collect money and pass newspapers or magazines to customers.

Every time the owner, called Wang, dozes off, the duck quacks to wake him up, reports China Daily quoting Southern Metropolis News.

Wang, whose kiosk is in the city of Guangzhou, says he has raised and trained the duck and will never kill or sell the bird.

Dolichopodid fly

  Dolichopodid fly 
  Originally uploaded by budak.

A long-legged fly resting on a mossy tree trunk by the Venus Drive trail. These dainty little flies dwell in moist microhabitats such as the vicinity of forest streams, mangroves and freshwater swamps, and thus serve as bioindicators of habitats in good health. The large eyes probably aid in both flight as well as detection of food (some prey on other insects while others feed on nectar). Their grubs are semi-aquatic, living in mud or wet soil, and feed on other insect larvae. Art spotted this fly, and more trivia on their genitalia and other priapic details can be read here.

Another animal that likes to stick itself on tree trunks is the colugo or so-called flying lemur. So I guess it's appropriate to plug here Norman Lim's new book on these gliding ghosts of Sundaland's lowland forests. A goodly number still survive in Singapore, despite the threat of occasional bastards who deserve to have a durian pushed up their rectums.