Podcast: I was asked to talk about running a cafe.

Thanks for the interview invite.
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Links to segments:

Tech vs. Cafe Industry Differences? (Skillsets. Regulatory compliance.)
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=573

Why switch into a chaotic industry? (Not ambitious.)
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=847

Is any past tech experience relevant to cafe work? (Scripting Google Ads. Google Sheets. Google Slides.)
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=941

Explain supply-chain management to a technologist. (It's caching. There are startups targeting this layer for small businesses.) https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=1329

How did you decide to start an offline business? (Prior industry experience. Real estate opportunity. Crowd funding.)
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=1455

Tell us about the coffee business, the segment you're in. (Value propositions. Kinds of product.)
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=1636

How does a minimalist operation do customer service? (We're positioned as a best-value-for-price hospitality brand. Prioritised accordingly.)
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=1877

What do you think about ghost kitchens? (Decoupling is interesting, but there are a dozen areas a business can specialise in, if you want to focus on that problem.)
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=2357

Do you sell on GrabFood? (Timing hasn't been right so far, but it is on our radar.)
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=2495

Talk about profitability. (We're playing a long game. It would be nice to learn enough about the industry to become a service platform for other hospitality businesses.)
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=2558

Talk about talent management. (We measure everything, so that we can manage it. Delegation. Training trainers.)
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=2691

Case study: CRM
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=3048

Rant: regulatory environment
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=3307

Building systems: (Happy to help if you want help.)
https://youtu.be/roDWQUnzxFU?t=3653

Conjecture: Tun Mahathir will be appointed the 8th PM, despite lacking a majority vote from MPs

Executive Summary:

The Constitution of Malaysia makes no mention of party politics in the appointment of the Prime Minister by the King (YDPA). The YDAP can in good faith appoint Mahathir to be the 8th Prime Minister, despite Mahathir lacking the vote from Harapan.

If the YDPA otherwise chooses to dissolve parliament, he must do so on the conviction that an election will change the composition of parliament to be significantly different from its current composition of MPs/votes. If he does not have that conviction, then he must believe that a general election would be a colossal waste of national resources, and then, he is left with only the option above.

Discussion:

I draw your attention to the often discussed pattern of the second-choice candidate winning an election. This is a pattern that is going to neatly model the YDPA's options after interviewing all 222 MPs.

Firstly,

(1.1.) IF Harapan acts as it says, and all its MPs vote for Anwar as PM,

(1.2.) AND, IF PAS+UMNO act as they say, and all their MPs vote for Mahathir as PM,

(1.3.) THEN*, there will be no individual candidate who commands the "confidence of the majority of parliament".

At such a junction, the YDPA has a choice between calling for the dissolution of parliament (general elections must follow), or in appointing a PM based on other reasoning.

Second,

Here is one possible form for that 'other reasoning':

(2.1.) Based on (1.1.) if the YDPA thinks about who Harapan MPs would place their confidence in, under a state of anarchy, or under a condition where Anwar (Harapan's first choice) is not allowed to be PM (because of 1.2.), and the YDPA is going to effortlessly conclude that the answer is Mahathir. (Sure, we can debate about Wan Azizah.)

(2.2.) Based on (1.2.) if the YDPA thinks about who where PAS+UMNO MPs would place their confidence in, under a state of anarchy, or under a condition where Mahathir (PAS+UMNO's first choice) is not allowed to be PM (because of 1.1.), and the YDPA is going to effortlessly conclude that the answer is "null: no such individual candidate exists".

Following such reasoning, the YDPA may observe that Mahathir is both [the FIRST vote of confidence from PAS+UMNO], and [the SECOND vote of confidence from Harapan]. And based on THIS REASONING ALONE, the YDPA is entitled to act reasonably within his Constitutional mandate, and to appoint Mahathir to the role of 8th non-interim Prime Minister of Malaysia, because it may be inferred that Mahathir is the individual who commands the "confidence of the majority of parliament" bar none.

However,

(6:03am)

Note that (*) is not a necessary conclusion, as it simply assumes away the existence of non-Harapan-non-PAS+UMNO MPs. We don't exactly know where the others are voting, but it seems likely that they will vote for Mahathir, and that he will be appointed the proper 8th/9th Prime Minister, with a simple majority of votes.

---

End of main discussion.

---

An, aside...
(4:13 am)

Another pessimistic, and deplorable, possibility is this.

It could be that Perikatan Nasional's failure to-date is a feint. Perhaps Perikatan Nasional's tea party with YDPA was simply to communicate to YDPA a request for private interviews with all MPs, so that MPs from Harapan could vote for a PM without observation from the Harapan whip.

If this turns out to be the case, it would be evidenced by a misaligned vote, that is, if the King's count shows a majority of MPs voting for Mahathir to be PM. Because, Harapan's whip currently says that Harapan is voting for Anwar.

If this actually happens, then a return to the old Malaysian order becomes clear again. Mahathir will be PM, and party lines will be reformed as soon as (a) the private votes become public or (b) parliament is back in session, and you can actually see who's voting for whose policies.

Right now, no one knows if Perikatan Nasional has secret allies in Harapan who are waiting to deploy their vote against Anwar, to the King. This probably explains why Harapan's press conference on 26Feb was so cagey and boringly resolute

Another, aside...
(5:57 am)

Technically since parliament has not been dissolved, the 'interim PM' role is the actual 8th PM role.

Constitutionally, the 'interim PM' would be an unnumbered PM, only if Parliament had been dissolved, and the interim-PM appointed before the formation of a new parliament.

This is hairsplitting, but true.

Yawn 59

20JAN2020 - 26FEB2020

2020 is moving along nicely. But, there's a lot to fix. Supper time...

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/commented/ WTF. I thought Singaporeans were smart. Turns out they are still Malaysians after all.

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IT'S JAVASCRIPT CLONING DAY

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Consistent with my earlier comments: I would still bet Maszlee's circus in the MOE was on specific instructions, in order to usher in Tun's glorious return to the portfolio - a self-appointment which was not initially supported by popular demand.

/

egg: like a stiff porridge
steak: rare
milk: fat
alcohol: whiskey, neat
warm drink: soup


egg: medium
steak: minced
milk: human
alcohol: none
warm drink: coffee, black, not bitter

/

Looking forward to lots of desk time today. I hate unnecessary desk work, but for the current job, this is still possibly important.
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#dailyMath : [two scoops of protein powder] ~= [protein from 260g of raw beef]
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End of day : domestic affairs to attend to, four hours; 17% of day; extravagant; deprioritisation is in order; on the other hand, perhaps there is some balance given that we haven't done groceries in a week. New emergencies at the office... will have to take a break from software, to attend to hardware.

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Context switch from writing software to fixing fridges initiated. Giving myself eight hours to get my mind in shape for the operation. :( :) 🙃

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/commented/ It is a pity, that many of the accused are not willing to say, "sure, please proceed with investigations, and accusations, it doesn't matter even if I have a valid claim to innocence, because due process requires that we provide a voice, and support for accusers, in order to correct systematic biases at large'. Perhaps this is what it takes to, 'be a man, and to do the right thing', to put a Petersian spin on things. :) Shall bookmark this thought for irritating people at parties. #revisitingoldthoughts

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A number of productive conversations. But none that help me get my work done in the short term. Over to me... not that I dislike working with others, but none at present will do my work for me. :) First move, is to note that failure is acceptable, second move, is to figure out the economics of the task, third move, remember to eat while working...
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She: You allow yourself too many distractions.
He: Wouldn't be in this line of work if I wanted only one thing at a time.

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On small appliances: Telemetrics aside, even a monitoring circuit with LCD alert would be better than nothing... another possibility is to link it all via ethernet to a central data logger. Enterprise solutions have this, but there's no plugnplay option for small timers.

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Like this post ONLY if you're a Chinese who doesn't celebrate Chinese New Year...

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TIL:
KUL-SIN >$> KUL-CGK

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Me: (Shows an ex the Gru meme on polyamory and having friends.)
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She: That is a HORRIBLY INEFFICIENT way to make friends.
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Me: Maybe I don't really look for friends actually... I just look for lovers, and the ones that leave sometimes offer friendship... so why would I turn down a positive return? I think it works out nicely... 🙄

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Flip car batteries. Charge. Networking meetings. Eat. Work.

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Social life is a constant struggle of surrounding yourself with people whom you want to organise with. Fellowship is an ends-in-itself only from the point-of-view of a drone. From the point-of-view of civilisation, fellowship is simply a means to the ends of competitive advantage. May the new year rid us all of emotional baggage, people who won't carry their own, and woolly-headed empaths who don't verb good... sic

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Mnemonic design: I think I've finally found a way to improve on Trello. Two years before they wrote that app, we'd already built a virtual post-its board with AJAX calls. But I find that in preparing myself for work, the abundance of such tools is not well represented by the way the core applications display their data. I think, various tools should ring an empty space. The empty space represents short-term memory, and tools from the surrounding ring (representing mid-term memory) should move to occupy the empty space, ephemerally. I think this is a winner.

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FML. Go astern, tack, move on. Sorry, mixing my metaphors.

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I never know who to talk to at midnight, when working alone. Lack of effort on my part, I know where there are people...

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#storiesitellnewfriends
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Me: Sometimes I fear I may be a harasser. Here's the worst I think... girl X, last we were in the same room, she wouldn't leave my table until I gave her a hug. Then stopped talking to me. Once I saw her and puckered my lips near her cheek, but did not contact. She shrank away. She's so beautiful but afraid of the world. I've known her since we were 16. She's got a great job now. Still afraid of men. I'm sorry to be part of the problem.
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She: What’s there to be afraid of men? It’s women who are terrifying.

/

Spoke to a lot of people about their relationships today. It's a reminder for me to avoid regret. You could do a 2x2 matrix of [quick, slow].[long-term, short-term]-decision-making styles. All of these are good for me, none of them are appealing when lacking the self-knowledge or internal consistency to barrel through any mistakes made - mistakes are necessary, in the passage of time. They should be celebrated. (Come to think about it, that's science.)

/

Language Developers:
Year N: SO SMOL, this is great language.
Year (N+3): SO POWR, more features!
Year (N+6): MOAR POWER, even more features!
Year (N+9): WOAH BUGS, monkey patches!
Year (N+12): MOAR BUGS, feature: STRICT MODE.
Year (N+15): MOAR POWER, MO FEATURES!
Year (N+18): MOAR BUGS, feature: STRICT_ER MODE.
...
#javascript?

/

Need to manage neurotransmitters more carefully.

/

HVACR: had a good week.
JavaScript: had an OK week.
My head: hurts.
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After sleep I should figure out Proxy and Reflect once and for all.

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1km breaststroke done, at jogging pace, so able to think about software architectural decisions at the same time. A happy experience.

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Trim portfolios regularly. Delete all toxic dramaturges. Claw back resources. Reinvest. Build things that don't break as often, from parts that don't break as often. Improve or die.
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Relatively caffeine-free day. Maybe had half an espresso between all QA tests. And it is already nightfall. So on to forced feeding, maybe more caffeine, and work.

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GF: So here in Indonesia, we have detected zero cases of the new virus.
Me: Yeah, I saw that...
GF: The reason is that we don't have the equipment to test. 👻

/

A late night's work. A scattered day. I am humbled by the limitations of my accomplishments. And I am dismayed that others do not seek as much, or more, than what I seek in this dimension. Of course, they also otherwise seek things in dimensions I am not prioritising. But that's just economics, I suppose. Science, and dismay.
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Also, focus on software development amid the fracas of daily operational bugbears, last-minute networking sessions, and my own poor knowledge of my computing environment, has seemed greatly aided by the usual supplements: B-complex, fish oil, creatine, and caffeine. Presuming macro-nutrients are all on-point. A kilometer in the pool, a well positioned set of lamps, and stimulus from said networking must have helped too, I gather.

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Jakarta reminds me of Penang sans terraced housing hell. Or KL before they tried to gild its snout.

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('on teaching through imposter monsters') I rarely 'feel like an imposter' for more than a little while, as I find people and cultures easy to absorb and copy. Usually if I don't fit in with a crowd's longer-term expectations, I prefer the view that the crowd is insufficiently enlightened.

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Next task: upgrade our testing framework to be more friendly to future automation.

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Any idea what the price is for a coronavirus testkit? Just curious, as some Indonesia officials were citing stupid numbers like USD 74,000/test. Shouldn't it be down in the USD5-50/test at maufacturing, and triple that at distribution/sale?

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/ commented / I think if your endpoint is Prepped Food Delivery Service... then you must be looking at prepped food. And the missing link is, 'real time inventory automatic updating' for prepped food services... because most small places don't have enough volume to make estimation accurate enough. Example:
- SKU fresh red chilli, stock in 1kg, used in recipe A (15g including waste), B (150g including waste), and C (45g including waste).

System can easily track quantities of A/B/C sold... but the error between that, and how much actual red chilli stock is left, makes it more useful to eyeball check every 8 hours.

So you can get around this if you make your telematic hardware cheap enough to (a) visually or (b) weightishly or (c) volumetrically using ultrasonics or something...estimate EACH vegetable container's contents... but can you?


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/commented/ Most "passive income" sources have a risk/reward ratio that is too high for my liking. The risk of learning nothing is almost guaranteed, you make a small IRR, but you have to minimally manage the manager anyway, regardless of the moniker, 'passive'...

/

Superficial review of Jakarta, as a tourist:
.
- People, culture, and architecture in Jakarta are more diverse (read: interesting) than the same in KL and Singapore. Time (read: labour) is cheaper, and so more goods and services are bespoke rather than process-controlled. This is reflected across most landscapes.
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- Distributor and HORECA prices of alcohol are roughly the same between J and KL, but non-service retail outlets (read: liquor stores) are much more expensive in J than in KL, probably due to increased regulation and reduced volume in this segment.
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- Cigarettes are only a little cheaper
.
- Apartments are built American-style, and corridors are separated from units by a single door, not a grill and door pair (which is more popular in MY and SG, perhaps for ventilation).


/

On quantitative models of labour productivity:
.
(The first save-point stopped at the line above, and someone said, 'so meta', and I thought that was pretty funny... anyway...)
.
- the 'volume of worker-time units transacted' (V) in an economy is not a sufficient depiction of its vibrance over a period
.
- an additional factor is, the 'utilisation rate of worker-time units transacted' (U)
.
- with (U * V) we can derive something like the tuple of { 'worker-time units transacted but unutilised' a.k.a. wasted time on the job (W), and 'worker-time units transacted and utilised' a.k.a. time well-spent and also paid for (P)}
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- when we talk about labour productivity, what we're really looking for is P; maybe (P - W), but there're infinite opportunities to refine this, idk
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- when the asking price for time is high, then V and/or U drops, resulting in a drop in P; this is roughly what we tend to complain about in Malaysia, and the opposite seems to be true in Jakarta
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- however, I am obviously pulling this out of my ass in between a taxi ride to and dinnertime ambulations at an agri-tourism hillside resort of some sort, so I am sure it could do with a lot more refinement
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... ah, social obligations... being the form of social life...

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Pensions paid in nominal terms are subject to inflation risk - large inflation can render a nominal pension into a fundamentally trivial income. Pensions paid in real terms (the amount you get each month is adjusted for inflation, so that you always can buy the 'same basket of stuff') amount to a growing liability in nominal terms. This mean, if you're a government, and if you have in mind to promise to pay out all your pensions in real terms, you might as well call it conditional universal basic income (conditioned upon government service).
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As to why things are not always structured this way, beats me... I only think about stuff like this in between real work...

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Who the fuck at Volvo Malaysia is handling their events agency? I have complaints about their cold calls.

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Getting things done: less thinking about how the outcome is structured, more thinking about the present state of the body, and how to move it according to a relevant process, incrementally. #trainingDay Otherwise, dissociation/dysphoria between future and present waste a lot of time.

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/commented on KWSP 6% return with low volatility/ Nominal returns. Most of the holdings are local equities. If either equity fundamentals are weak (window dressing by fund managers; price propping by large shareholders), or the government takes on large debts to boost economic activity, etc... the logical expectation is that the Ringgit devalues and inflation renders all annual returns as a boring figure... well, just saying, most people don't talk about this. Therefore, politics.

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Between travelling 2000 miles for a date in some other city, and trying to set up my friends on Valentine's day, I think I'm done with social work for rest of the month. Nahhhh... commercial work, by definition, lies in the set of social work...

/


She: So you like the quiet ones.
Me: Not exactly... as they say, better to be stupid and silent than to speak up and remove all doubt.
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It gets harder as I get older to find loud people who appear to be intelligent, mainly because anything that sounds smart when it is said loudly, sounds smart exactly once. And then if I hear it again, I remember that I've heard it before, and then the speaker sounds stupid.
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Pretty bad definition of stupidity, huh?

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Breaststroke kick, Dolphin kick, Dolphin kick, Breaststroke catch, repeat - eh, this seems more balanced than a neat breaststroke.

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I just figured out how to instruct our visual design team, whenever we get around to being able to afford one. In order to preserve both agility, and depth of expressivity, the corporate design language will have to be fractal in nature. This simply means that low-cost, low-detailed outlet fittings will sit seamlessly beside high-cost, high-detailed outlet fittings. Initial approaches to designing new outlets will simply involve picking and zooming in on a degree of complexity. It doesn't really matter if you think about it as a borg cube, or as a fern garden... I suppose. Also, this means we can start formally building out our design language with just a few simple building blocks, as long as we pick scalable axioms. I'm looking forward to this very much. If we look back at our design elements so far, there are already several starting points suggested from our various uses of modularity, in the furniture, and in the menu.

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Awake and actively ingesting the sound of the petrol grass cutters outside. Studying. Not a signal to be ignored (too costly in terms of energy) but an object of meditation. Once fully comprehended, when sounds have been mapped to a mental model of what each nick and zing mean, in haptic and optic terms, then it will be good to consider those parts of the brain stimulated enough to proceed.

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I have decided on the following working notion of compatiblism between empathy and reason. Empathic reflexes should be regarded as a good fallback mechanism for social communication, when formal protocols fail to establish good signal to noise ratios. However, empathic reflexes cannot be regarded as efficient at high-performance, and so anyone who aspires to work on only high-performance settings must treat formal protocol as the gold standard of techniques for establishing society. As for the difference between empathic reflexes and empathic techniques, the latter should count as protocol, whereas the former should be held to the same grade of epistemic moral cartography as a random number generator... :P

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/commented on hiring fresh graduates/

1) background checks? No. Trial by fire is more informative

2) GPA<2.5 OK? Yes. Reliability under fire is more valuable.

3) Three preferred traits?
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- turns up to work on time, and on pace (do your warm-ups before office hours)
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- comply with senior staff instructions until you match experienced staff performance AND display the political acumen to get all colleagues to support your noncompliance UNLESS you're simply encouraging colleagues to reduce output and increase cost without other payoffs
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- document everything, and I mean everything, in Slack, or whatever tools are required.

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That's it... no more middle distance swims until I figure our combat side stroke...

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Awake. Stitched together my physical model of the world, so now time to get up. I need to make a habit of noticing how current streams of data in various sense modalities become unhitched from the physical model, during sleep, so that I can actively retune the model upon waking. Failure to retune at waking tends to result in too much delegation of work to the subconscious, and that tends to result in a poor physical model, in conscious memory, and that just screws up work i.e. operations in general.

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Dude: (approaches with pitch deck)
Me: (eating in public)
Dude: (in Chinese) I'm not selling anything I just want to tell you about...
Me: (raises palm to face dude)
Dude: (continues talking and flipping his deck while I read an article on my phone, scrolling with my thumb... for about twenty seconds)
Me: 你很没有礼貌
Dude: Oh!
Me: 你很没有礼貌.
Dude: 你说没有 limau?
Me: 礼貌. 你很没有礼貌. 你明白我说什么吗?
Dude: Oh. 明白, 明白
Me: 我已经叫你不要说话, 你还要说话. 没有礼貌.
Dude: Oh, 对不起, 对不起.
Me: 没有人叫你说话，你不可以说话. 明白吗?
Dude: 明白, 明白...
Me: OK ah?
Dude: Ok, ok...
Me: 好好 做工 ah?
Dude: Ok, ok...
Me: 好好赚钱 ah?
Dude: Ok, ok...
.
I am not sure which is more despicable, me, my sense of theatricality, or my grasp of the Chinese language...

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Never reported a dangerous driver to the JPJ before. Always a first time, I suppose. Also finally getting around to calling in the 25-40 stray dogs hanging around Jalan Perindustrian Puchong.

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Two weeks of time and two weeks wages written off... gotta get it together and keep moving. Gotta make up for lost time. Catch up on sleep. Reopen funnels. Catch up on work. Reallocate finances. Brrr...

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I spoke to a girl I love. I'm pissing her off because I don't give her a special-enough feeling. I recognise my error. I've updated all my personal profiles to tell prospectives that no one should depend on me for special feelings. Dependence on others for feelings of wellness is a feebleminded trait that I cannot encourage. I do not actively exclude such people from my world, but I think we should all strive to be better than that. If you believe that you deserve someone who makes you feel special, delete that idea of the other person, and simply believe that you feel special. That is progress. Do not remain shackled to some primitive predisposition of evolved physiology or culture. You are better than that. All of you, are better than that.

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Going to try one more magic trick before bed. Here goes nothing. Nomachine...
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Conclusion, X2Go server implements an open-source version of NX3, Nomachine's past generation protocol... and (X2Go server + for example, the lightweight LXDE windows manager) allow multiple remote client sessions via any client that supports the protocol (X2Go client) is one option. So finally, I think I actually know how to push our desktop environment servers to AWS or DO... and run thin clients on site... sigh. Took ten years for me to get here because there really was no reason to do this, except that now, I'm in a very resource-constrained situation, and any edge is going to help.

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Enforced waking. Enforced work. Roll on...

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I'm not sure how many people realise that coffee is calibrated to be LESS delicious, specifically so that you don't drink it all down in one gulp. What you serve totally depends on the audience :P

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I think I need to adjust my stress-testing protocols for new relationships. Sometimes I load too much stress on the candidate up front (resulting in too-fast failure), sometimes not enough (resulting in too-late failure), so more calibration is required. Improve and reiterate...

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Meat driver up. Enforced waking, feeding (need to improve on feeding).
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Later: time for enforced physical exercise. Perils of desk-oriented work.

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Since the only reasonable threat to UMNO has now been contained, we should be unsurprised that the rest of the UMNO is quite happy to proceed with business as usual.

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Update: as of 2pm Tuesday, the Agong's decision to personally poll each and every MP on their supported candidate for PM is the best news I've heard in my life. This is the sort of protocol-oriented leadership Malaysia needs more of.

Update: as of 11pm Monday, Azmin's aide has gone to a Bersatu (wtf?) leaders meeting, coincidentally, Azmin has put out a statement saying he was trying to stop unnamed parties from making Tun handover the premiership before the natural end of his term. Nah, gostan lagi lah... where is your god now? Maybe UMNO will dissolve and form a new party with him. :)

Update: as of 7pm Monday, just read the Sarawak Report instead :p
http://www.sarawakreport.org/2020/02/malaysias-meltdown-moment-inside-story/

Edited: as of 2pm Monday, #MalaysianConstitution-al events:

Sunday.

In summary, we live in a republic, which means elected reps are "free to frog" across parties.

43.2.a : anyone, even a non MP, can stage a coup on Cabinet

40.2.a : this requires a *judgment call* by the Agong, who is supreme leader

( 40.2.b : is the same but about dissolving parliament )

So that's probably what happened Sunday.

The Agong's response, by spirit of (40.3.a)... though not required explicitly, was to talk to AnwarAzizah on Monday. (I like the current Agong.)

Monday.

43.4 : if Tun has resigned (1pm) the cabinet, it may imply that the Agong has already decided not to dissolve parliament. (So it sounds like the Agong is not yet stalling a coup, but that does not mean he can't stall it later.)

If Anwar and Tun are positive, you may see them recommending a dissolution of parliament, then stepping out to form a(nother) new party (de facto, Pakatan Harapan ex-PPBM)... this we wait and see.

Also if you guys wanna cheap coffee, I come and swipe the discount cards at my office. I have booze at home if that's preferred.

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Crushing the enemy: If Mahathir ends party-oriented politics in Malaysia, it would be the best work he's ever done. We shall see what comes of this. I think even if he forms a unified government, I guess Malaysia will return to fiefdoms after his demise.
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Logistics:
Interviewing 222 MPs at 2-3 minutes each, means 2 days at minimum, but it could drag out to a week. Tuanku only needs them to name one individual each. Parties are not in the Constitution. The Constitution only requires a PM, who then advises the YDPA on the appointment of the Cabinet.

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My friends discussing my merit as the prime minister:
You'd incite too much hate and trouble.
.
Me
I wanted the job as a kid. Always joked that I'd convert and form UMNOx.
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Friends:
But you're too antagonistic.
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Me:
Hate is a big part of my brand. To deliver organisational development, I prefer playing CEO, CMO, CIO, CTO, COO in that order. But for a lazy job, CIO / BOD is just fine. Also always did say, I don't vote if I don't think it matters - but call me when we start a war (probably would have to be a war I'm aligned with).
.
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... I guess I'd prefer to be a wartime leader than a peacetime one. But I suppose it depends on the culture of the society I'm in. I also always structured my commercial career to be training for BOD jobs... I don't think I care much about anyone's day to day business, it's just homework.

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Enforced eating all day. Enforced solo expeditions on (tactically) hard problems. Brain freezing up a lot - not sure if it's creatine + caffeine intake, or lack of sugar, or just lack of ventilation. Just a lot of pain :P

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Looks like another focused training day. All food, and work, and pain... political situation is going to be too boring to be of interest for a bit. Looking forward to snap polls if neither Anwar nor Tun get a majority...

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Everything you need to know about Malaysian politics:
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(A) the right-wing: a racial supremacy party and a RELIGIOUS supremity party were in cahoots to form an opposition government, so they swore, by the law, in the form of statutory declarations, to do X
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(B) in less than a week, they explicitly reneged on oath
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🤷

/

Your grandfather:
- holds a live broadcast
- starts on time
- one person on screen
- clear audio
- tells everyone he can't move until everyone else forms a majority
.
Your noisy cousins:
- hold a press conference
- starts one hour late
- fifty people on screen
- no proper mic (broadcaster's fault)
- announcing that "we all have to do the right thing"
- no specifics
- press conference ends immediately

/

Reflection: Love

I miss a girl, but I'm not supposed to tell her. So I'll just essay myself. I've done the usual review of how many people are in relationships to outsource the labour of coping with themselves - the parts of themselves they can't or don't want to cope with on their own. So if your partner is like that, and you agree to that deal explicitly, then you should stick to your contract. But some partners are not looking for that, and it's a different contract. And sometimes your partners want a certain deal, but you don't offer it. Fair dinkum, market hung.
.
I miss many girls, actually, many of whom I'm not supposed to speak to - sometimes I am provided that guidance explicitly, sometimes I have to guess around inexplicit behaviour. The latter is normal in dealing with common people, I suppose. Some won't see me, some won't speak to me, some won't listen, others may not know I love them, others may not know I exist.
.
When I love someone, it tends to stick in memory for a while. When I'm not allowed to tell someone I love them, I usually bookmark it in my head, and over the years I will review these people. That is the point of calling it love. And it's okay if each person defines their usage of the term differently. Most people are disgusted by at least one other person's definition of this or that. We just agree to co-existance of a sort, and when we don't, bloody wars emerge.
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I've been fortunate that my personal life has rarely lacked for security. Boredom is my dominant emotion, and as a result, I build relationships mainly to INCREASE risk to my person. That is why, I run a business, and that is why if anyone talks to me about seeking security, I frame it from the point of view of whichever business I am presently working on. Because commercial ventures are the risk-averse vehicles, which offer a counterpoint to my own social life, which is primarily risk-seeking.
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Tbc

Reflection: On the economics of friendship and intimacy

(I identify as male, theoretically pansexual, heterosexual in practice, preferring polyamory, but often committed to monogamous relationships for a limited duration.)
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In my younger days, I received offers of friendship from various parties and usually accepted such offers from attractive females. I can trace this bias back to at least the age of four or five! Women I met at that age remain within my social network, and I remember my first meetings with some of them. For the earlier years, I didn't always realise that my circle of friends was affected by it, but by the time I was 24-years-old, I was quite conscious of this bias, and proceeded to own it with intentionality.
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Before that age, some of these friends would share their opinions about beauty with me, some would share their accounts of sex. And then I lost some of these friends when I began to reply with my own opinions about their beauty (or lack thereof). And I lost some others when I began to query their interest in having sex with myself.
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My learnings about how people seek friendships is incomplete, as from a young age I was fairly independent. My father remembers reports from my fourth-grade teacher complaining about my self-satisfaction during recess. Every so often, it is good for me to review my deficiencies here. Even in sexual relationships with women over the past decade (I am thirty-seven this year), I often manage to piss-off my counterparties. When I am unaware and accidentally, and provocative regarding their beliefs and values. And when I am aware and intentionally doing so.
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Yet I am grateful to the women who have lent me their time, thoughts, and touches, over years and years. While I will probably not be a better friend or lover, than I have been in the past, I hope that on average my strategies about this portfolio of relationships will not cause significant damage to anyone. I remain greatly concerned for the welfare of many friends, whom I have dearest from among the lovers.
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And always, I am forced to query myself, if there is any value to my friendship, given that I have extended it within the context of my bias. A young friend who worries me very much discussed such relationships with me, last Christmas. I came up with some detailed questions for her, but I don't know if she will listen to me again. Some come, some go, some easier, some otherwise. That is to be accepted.
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Oh, tomorrow is St. Valentine's day...