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It’s 2am in the morning and I’m fully conscious, while I’m not supposed to. So what better way to put myself to sleep (state of lesser consciousness) than to talk about consciousness itself? …it’s such a boring subject that I suspect its sole purpose is to put you to sleep!!

I was on the phone with my girlfriend earlier at about 1130pm. I was terribly sleepy and actually fell asleep in between our conversation. Let me describe the experience: I said something… and then I felt my consciousness slipping away - my eyes were closed, the thoughts in my mind started to dissipate, I started to lose the sense of time and then I felt like my brain was shutting down - nothing.

Next thing I knew she said I fell asleep. At that point I felt that my brain was ‘restarting’. I knew the meaning of her words, I heard them quite clearly, but aside from that I seemed to have lost all contacts with all of my remaining senses. I did the most sensible thing to do: I went to sleep!!

I had a dreamless sleep (deep sleep), I woke up because I felt like to have a piss. It was 1am. By the time I finished doing the deed, I was fully aware - which lead me to write about this silly topic.

What the hell is consciousness?

IMO, consciousness is all about experiencing existence. One is conscious if one is aware of one’s own existence. So I could say:

"I am conscious because I am aware of myself."

But herein lies the problem: if I could be aware of my own existence, it also means that I am aware that I am aware of my own existence. Which also means that, I am aware that I am aware that I am aware of my own existence.

See the problem? …infinite regress

Being conscious is like seeing your face in the mirror, the mirror is your consciousness - the image you see, is you. Without the mirror, you can’t see your own face.

However, put another mirror into the equation, and you will start to see your faces reflected back and forth, repeated over and over, between those mirrors. The number of images depends on your placement of the mirrors. If you put them perpendicular to each other and put yourself in between them, you will see 3 reflections, and so on.

This other mirror, is like other people’s consciousness. It reflects your image, back and forth. Our brains are designed to work with each other (the social brain theory). Could it be that our consciousness depends on each other? In other words, the consciousness that we know now is a collective consciousness instead of individual consciousness.

An axiom can be deduced from this analogy:

"I am aware that you are aware" -> which can be expanded to: "I am aware that you are aware that I am aware that you are aware" and so on…

…yet another infinite regress problem

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Another way of probing what consciousness is all about, is by figuring what it’s NOT all about. That is, if we know what losing consciousness is, then perhaps we will know what consciousness is.

Sleeping is one exercise where we deliberately (sometimes not) lose our consciousness. Perhaps the purpose of sleep is to keep us being conscious - because sub-consciously we are ‘reminded’ all the time about losing consciousness.

Which brings me to the conclusion of this boring topic: writing about consciousness is one of the best way to lose consciousness (it will bore you to sleep!!)

I posted my analysis about australian property market a while back: http://helloworld.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/2006/07/australian_prop.html

I wrote that analysis about a year ago, the ABS (Aussie Bureau of Statistics) just released their latest survey, theage newspaper (www.theage.com.au) made a brief news about it, one line that struck me is this:

According to the latest census, Australians are richer in terms of assets, yet accumulated more debts than before.

I haven’t seen the actual figures of Australian housing debts, but this will definitely impact property market negatively. I also read news about investors being left out in the cold after the collapse of westpoint, fincorp & ACR (http://www.domain.com.au/Public/Article.aspx?id=1182623958940&index=NationalIndex&headline=20,000%20victims:%20Who++39;s%20next&s_cid=FDMedia:FDMedia:Age:CPB:whosnext:020707)

Those facts suggest that a downturn is imminent. However:

I just had a conversation about the taxation system in Indonesia. Apparently they are getting tougher and tougher. This may lead to flight of capitals (it’s a well known facts that nobody pays tax properly in indonesia - except for… well, me  - in case any tax man read this, haha=)

If this trend is repeated throughout the region (this really depends on each country’s government financial strength, the richer a government is, the less likely it will tax its citizens more). Then we’d be seeing capitals flowing out of these countries, and Australian properties can be seen as safe haven. Consequently, this may sustain or even exarcebate the high property prices in Australia.

Considering those opposing forces are moving together, I would bet that property prices aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. However, this also depends on commodity boom, when it’s over - we may see a slight downturn.

Speaking of downturn, there are reports in sydney that people are forced to sell their homes for less than what they bought because they’ve defaulted on their loans (theage). However, such cases are isolated in poor suburbs. Nevertheles it is a downturn.

Last words: when property becomes a choice for investment, it inevitably becomes a medium for speculation. And where there is speculation, prices no longer reflect real values - merely projection values (i.e: if you feel that a property is going to worth AU$700k in 3 years time, you won’t hesitate paying AU$500k for it, even though the market value is just AU$400k).

Speculation distorts market values. Unfortunately how and which direction it will take the market is also a matter of speculation.

I had a little chat with a friend of mine yesterday. He was trying to market his software product, he asked my opinion about it. I suggested several options, one of it was to have a sales team promoting his product. Apparently it didn’t work (according to him).  After some thoughts I concurred with him though there is still some reservation on my part - I still think it can work. But as economic rules, if it costs too much and there’s a cheaper alternative - you take the alternative.

Which brings to me the marketing side of software industry. The software industry itself is an interesting field. As a service based industry it is an industry that thrives on expectations. But unlike other service-based industries, its end products are intangibles.

So what do they sell exactly? …well, the answer is: software, sounds simple but in actuality is dreadfully complicated.

Software marketing is like selling vague promises (all kinds of marketing are some forms of promises - however, if you see a car being advertised at least you know that when you buy the car it will look as the car in the ad. Not the case with software). IMO this vagueness should be exploited. A software marketer should promises everything the product can achieve, without necessarily explaining how to achieve those results.

Wouldn’t that confuse the customers/clients? Yes it will, but that’s where the money is made. The sales team should only focus on selling, and leave customers complaints to technical team.

In other industries customers’ complaints are undesirable, but I think it is exactly the opposite in the software/IT solution industry. When they don’t complain, you know you’ve lost your customers. Complaints, so long as they can be resolved, are actually good.

Just have a look at the games industry, what software are they selling exactly? — just a piece of software that represents somekind of obstacles/challenges that should be resolved by the users. When it comes to software, it’s like selling puzzles: you give them the entire picture, then give them the pieces and they will try to build that picture out of the pieces, and you charge them fees to help them build the picture.

Once more I’ve been accused of being complicated. The funny thing is, as usual, the accuser did not point out where the complication is… she simply said that I am complicated.

And I agree with her. I am complicated, there’s no denying it. It’s just that this sort of complication is relatively simple for me to handle. I am used to all sorts of complications. Some people can’t handle complications - fortunately for me, I am not one of them.

This is not the result of me trying to make life difficult. It is quite the opposite. Life is complicated as it is, to think of it as something simple is simply foolish. Every second that passes by is one second closer to death. And this, is a prospect we all know we must face - yet most of us prefer to bury our heads in the sand.

What is life? what is consciousness? what’s the meaning of life? …such questions are deemed to be too complicated to answer. And any answer is open to interpretation… and subsequently open to debate. Yet, we know that these sort of philosophical questions are valid questions - and those that raise interest, well, at least for me.

I am not going to answer those questions by the way. Unless the subject is at least as complicated as I am, there’s no way I can explain to him how 10 billions+ of his neuron (and their subsequent neuro-transmitter) inside his cranium works.

Complexity is inherent in our universe. Our left brain-hemisphere controls our motoric system on the right part of the body. The image that is captured by your retina is actually inverted, the focus of your lens falls just ahead of your retinas. And the image that is captured by your left eye’s retina is processed in your right brain-hemisphere.

That is simple biology.

Now, to the complexity of society and it’s subsequent ideological structural support systems. We live in an era where democracy and free market capitalism are championed - and yet, so little people I know really know the essence of democracy & free market Democracy is the process in which society choose the people who will get the blame. Free market is the process in which goods’ prices are determined by the greed of the market.

Here’s a little puzzle: we all know China is a communist country, and India is a true democracy. Both have over 1 billion population, both have similar resources profiles. And yet, the economy in China is expanding rapidly and India is stalling. Why? It looks as if we’re seeing a paradox. Is communism more compatible with free market economy?

That is simple socio-ideology talk.

Complexity is there in all aspects of life. If I am complicated, it’s not because I am trying to complicate things - it’s because things are complicated as they are. There’s something serene about seeing complexities. It renders us humble.

There are two kinds of BS (bullsh*t):

The ones other people tell you, and the ones you tell yourself. The latter tend to be harder to deal with.

Ok, I got a little bored and ended up toying with some philosophical ideas =) which is arguably useful

For centuries (or even aeons) philosophers all over the world had been pondering, arguing, and sometimes kill each other over the definition of reality. What is real? If you think about it, a stone looks like…. well, a stone. But in reality, the stone is only hard because the temperature is right. If you add several thousands celcius to its temperature, then the stone will no longer be a stone anymore, it will be a form of molten mineral. Similarly, if you look at yourself, and look at yourself 5 years before, and 10 years before, and 5 years from now, or maybe 10 years from now. Which is the ‘real’ you? the younger one, or the older one? Before you start to think that the world before you is real, think again:

Try to close your eyes, plug your ears, touch nothing. And then you see darkness, you hear nothing… where does the world go? This means the world as you know it, depends a lot on your senses. Without your senses, you are pretty much blind, deaf. *D’oh* isn’t it obvious? I think not. While there are senses that we can physically see, there are also other senses.

Imagine you are buying a dozen of roses for your loved one, and then when you start to count those roses… one two three… eleven!! yep, there’s only eleven. Then you ask the clerk and he will fix the missing rose. You know a dozen roses is …well… twelve roses, not just eleven or even thirteen (though I think you won’t complain if there had been more). This is also another form of ’sense’. Why I say so, because this ’sense’ is inherent in us. Most human who’s literate enough can count.

Such and such… There’s still more about this topic, but apparently I got really tired and it’s 1131pm already, my sleeping time… perhaps I will deconstruct reality some other time   =)

"Everybody runs, Fletch. Everybody runs. "

John Anderton - Minority Report (2002)

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Beep beep beep!! It’s 7am in the morning, you know you have to go to work. You get ready to run. Race to the bathroom, make your breakfast in a haste… heck you don’t have time for breakfast, you take it on the go.

The traffic sucks, it takes you 45 mins just to get to work, but today is especially a bad day, you’re stuck there not moving. Listening to the radio, you hear the news about the war, soaring petrol prices, and a daughter who slaughter her entire family. You wonder… what’s this world coming to? But no, the light turns green, you need to drive drive drive… keep running. There’s no time to think about the world.

At work, you look at your tasks for the day. They seem to keep accumulating, more and more. But that goes with the promotion. You’ve been promoted for the second time this year, things are going well, you are running well. But you see one member is lagging behind. You don’t like it, you’ve told her off before, seems like she doesn’t get it. So you asked her into your office, give her some nice lecture, and drop her from the team. Give her 2 weeks notice, she’s fired. You felt bad, as she was sobbing in your office… but no, no time to feel bad, you have to run. There are things to do - and the key to your constant promotions is your speed, you run very fast.

Lunch time, you go out to grab some fast food. Yes, the food has to be fast, otherwise it slows you down. You pass by this travel agent, offering a discounted holiday package to Fiji - for a second your mind wanders away… it’d be nice to have a holiday once in a while. But no, the reason you were promoted for the 4th time in 2 years is because you never take holiday. You never stopped, you keep running… fast.

Dinner time, you’re still at the office, you order this nice noodle box from the restaurant across the street. They deliver your favourite noodle right on time. You want to go home, but you don’t feel right, you know if you stay back just for half hour, you get more work done by the end of the day. So you stayed back, consequently the rest of the team stayed back. Some of them leave, and they are the same people. You smile, you know, those people who left, they are just as good as you are, but they don’t work as hard. That’s why you are promoted ahead of them. But it’s a dry smile - you know you’ve sacrificed a lot, running takes a lot of energy.

7pm, it’s time to go home. You go to your parking spot, there are just few cars left. You neve felt good to leave when there are lots of other cars parked. So you drive your car home. The ride home seems faster than the ride to office. But the phone rings, you pick it up… It’s your girlfriend, shit! you forgot that you’re supposed to take her to movie. But as usual you get away from 3rd world war, …by offering her something of value. Which makes you wonder if she’s with you, or with your money - but no time to wonder, you have to make the next left turn. And get to your home.

830pm. You get out of your bathroom, that warm shower you took somehow recharges your energy. Time to slow down. You lie down on the couch, watch your fave TV shows, do some cleaning, read some book. Then your mind wanders, the target. Yes the target, you have set yourself some standards… and they are high. You are proud that you’re on track. Quite ahead of schedule actually. You want to retire early, you don’t want to live this kind of life till 60.

10pm. You are tired, time to go to bed… tomorrow you need to go to gym to keep your shape up. Then you need to make it up to your girlfriend, dinner at 7. You wonder if you can make it, as things are picking up at work. You say your night prayer before you sleep. You need to rest, before you run again tomorrow.

Just before you sleep… there’s a little voice in the back of your head "is it worth it?" It asked you very gently. But no, you don’t have time to answer it… you need to get some rest, you know you have to run again tomorrow at 6am.

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Everybody runs, the people around us, the people you know, the people you don’t know. You can see them run everyday. Those who don’t run get left behind.

Some are running into something, some standards they set for themselves, trying to reach those goals faster. Some are running from something, from a terrible past, from the law, from their own insecurity. And then some who runs, just because they like to run. Some are running like they’re possessed by demon, some are running leisurely enjoying the view, some are running in groups, some are running by themselves… all kind of runs, you see in life.

How about me? You asked….

‘Think I prefer to walk

Is this the time of the year when we (chinese) eat mooncake already? I didn’t have a clue until I found some at home. Here’s a picture of the mooncake(s) I have at home, it’s from breadtalk:

It has nice packaging and stuff like that. Naturally, I was tempted to eat it - so I opened it and found 4 mooncakes inside! And now here’s the problem: each of them is of different flavour. From memory: there’s green tea - single yolk, white lotus - single yolk, sesame? - single yolk, and I can’t even remember the last flavour. There were too many of them!

And so this is when my mooncake saga began. First of all, I’ve never eaten anything than just ordinary straightforward plain mooncake. Having four different flavours made me think which one is the nicest… but then again, there’s a problem eating from the nicest to least nice one - it decreases the utility of the mooncakes (it means less satisfaction as I will start from the nicest to least nice - the utility value will decline each time). So there’s the first problem, do I eat from the most nicest to least nice? or the other way around?…. or… Oh stuff it! In the end I couldn’t care less, I’ve never tried any of them anyway, how would I know which one is the nicest?

So I picked one that seemed promising: a green-tea flavoured single yolk mooncake. At least that’s what it said on the label… which got me thinking: Now if there’s "single yolk" instead of just plain "with yolk" - does that mean there are some mooncakes with double-yolk, triple-yolk, or even half-yolk? Typically a mooncake is split into 4 parts with perpendicular cut on the surface. Imagine a ‘double-yolk’ mooncake - what would be the position of the yolk? Next to each other? or One on top of another? I would have thought the latter would be more appropriate - that way, when cut into 4 pieces, each piece will have the same amount of yolk.

Anyway, enough of the silly mooncake discussion. I tried the green tea mooncake in the end. And quite unexpectedly - it tasted just like any other mooncake! Either that or there’s something wrong with my tounge (Like I can’t taste green tea?). In the end… I found all mooncakes are so overwhelmingly sweet - it literally overcame any other flavour. Nevermind… I just made my own green tea to reduce the sweetness of the mooncake.

The moral of my mooncake sage is this: nevermind the packaging, or the gimmick, fancy things seem to promise more than they deliver. Believe me, they all taste almost the same anyway. Next time around you find something ‘new’ with nice packaging and fancy flavour (maybe a mooncake & mochi hybrid? who knows…) that arises your interest, don’t get your hopes too high. Chances are that they are not as nice as your ordinary straightforward plain food that you used to eat.

Anyway, happy mooncake eating day!! I don’t even know when the date is… but you know what I mean.   Cheers.

After reading the article below:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/greed-is-good-but-patience-provides-the-better-returns/2006/09/22/1158431899114.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

It got me thinking about one fundamental problem in our daily lives. Valuation.

If I show you a nice house, how much do you think it’s worth? I’m sure you’d say: "that depends…". Well, you’re right, that depends on a lot of factors. How big the house is, how close it is to amenities, the neighbourhood it’s in, the built quality - and so on. But still… that doesn’t answer my question, what do you think it’s worth? $200k, $400k? or even half a million dollars?

What most people would fail to notice, is that the value of the property - most of the times are decided not by the things we can see. If you’re the owner of the house, of course you’d like to be assessed as much as possible, but if you’re a buyer, you’d like to get it at the lowest price possible. Obviously, the buyer and the seller needs to agree on a fixed price before the transaction can go ahead, how do they do the valuation. In the case of property, it’s not that hard… you look at other similar properties in the vicinity that was sold recently and compare the prices. Voila! you have the price of the property.

Simple isn’t it? (if you’re not a property player I’m sure you’d say yes).

Now, let’s consider stock market. How do you know about the value of a stock? Whether it’s overvalued or undervalued? The wisdom is simple, buy undervalued stocks and sell overvalued ones. If you can do that all the time, you’d be the richest person on earth in less than one year. Here’s the crux of the matter however, valuation IS about predicting the future. A stock may worth $105 now, but aside from God alone (and I don’t think God buys stocks!) who knows what it will be worth 3 months from now? Of course, there’s always some genius making guesses based on the company assets, earnings forecasts, market capitalization… and so on. But one fundamental problem with stock market are, that the players in it are human beings. And predicting the course of decision of a collective human being is like predicting which horse will win the horserace. It is at worst gambling, and at best - calculated gambling (which is still, gambling, nevertheles).

And as with gambling, you have winners and losers. Only in this case, the winners of stock market can always say that they have a methodical way of picking stocks. But, if you ask the losers, they also have their strategies too!

I guess, at the end of the day, a good rule of thumb is: the value of something is how much someone is willing to pay for it. All you have to do is to analyse that ’someone’ (be it your customers, buyers, or even other stockholders) - you have to see the object from their point of views. Most people failed to notice this - they cling to their own perception instead. The closer your analysis about their perception, the better your valuation skill is.

I am trying to post pictures in my blog. What better pictures than the new BMW Z4 M - a 253Kw sex machine roadster - effectively a boxster slayer…. here they are:

This the front picture, the difference to the standard Z4 I can spot are those big brakes with cross drilled discs, a different bonnet design with two additional lines, indicating a bigger and more potent engine inside.

The rear end looks much better than the standard Z4 mainly due to the dual exhaust with 4 tailpipes. Different bumper design and that M badge makes a difference.

The only negative about this machine is it’s price tag of AUD$130k + stamp duty, but then again, perhaps to potential buyers this is a positive sign - making it that more exclusive. It’s about the same price as a Porsche Boxster S - only with more powerful engines and equipment levels (satnav is a standard in this one).

PS: I’m not getting paid by BMW to do this =)  if I have the choice to buy - I’d go for an mazda mx-5 for 40k something and put the rest 90k in the bank!! (Save the money to buy a ferrari instead ^_^)