March 13, 2004

a tale of two blogs

i found myself smiling when i saw how serious my previous posts have been. i admit it. i wanted this blog to reflect the more introspective and more melancholic side of me. the other blog was to be reserved for those days when i have nothing in mind but a barrage of rants or a running list of things to do. or to buy. but then i realized that i could not possibly continue doing this without tearing myself into two. this is me, this is kerwin, this is my totality. blogging should reflect this totality. besides being a complete waste of time, space, and bandwidth, splitting myself (or my blogs) in two would just defeat the purpose of blogging.

but then again, maybe that's not the only reason why i decided to have two blogs. i found the other blog difficult to maintain and manage. what i had in mind upon riding the blog bandwagon was a simple site with just enough "flashy things" to create an atmosphere suitable for writing. what i had in mind was a blog site that would appeal to me and would make me want to write in it again and again and again. but i guess i failed on both counts. first, the skin i chose for my blog was simple enough for my tastes, but then i included a lot of things that were not really necessary. i got distracted with the idea of a super interactive mega site that i lost track of what was important: writing what i felt was relevant for me. second, although the skin was simple, it proved to be boringly simple. after a while its charm lost its hold on me. i visited it less and less often, and wrote on it even lesser still.

so i turned my sight on other blogs. i then found this. i worked on it a lot, changing the images that were present (no offense to the maker of this skin, stephanie), adjusting it so it fitted the title i had in mind. i already had a fascination with the title (and the subject) then, and even more so when i posted my first entry and even more more so when i arranged the format of the site. and now i think this is good enough for me. simple, elegant, type-worthy. your mileage may vary, of course.

now what do i do with the other blog? i guess it's time for me to move on. to make the halves whole again. i'm sorry brandnewwreck, but your time's up. i guess you're not so brand new anymore. you're just a wreck.

posted by kerwin ray :: 11:25 PM :: ""

longing for home

joseph in his blog said that he missed the philippines. well, i don't really miss the philippines, since i'm already here, but i sure miss davao. i went home last christmas, and three months may seem short a time to be whining about going home again, but sometimes things get lonely around here. not alone, there are always people here to talk to, to engage with, but lonely. like there's an emptiness inside that itches and nags. then again, it's not always like this. one of the greatest blessings in my life is having people who care and actually look out for me. and if they're not there, there are always the acads to think about (and God knows how much of that i've been balancing lately). but the thing is, these people have their own lives, and sometimes they're just simply far away. and there are times when acads do nothing to alleviate this emptiness (especially if what you're doing borders on the mundane and the nonsensical). it is during these times of inactivity that i feel this urge to go home the most.

unlike in manila, i don't feel detached in davao. this may sound deep, but really it's not. i just feel that everything connects there. i have my family, i have my friends, i have things that busy me (no matter how trivial they are), i have things that relax me. and everyone and everything is within my reach. i go home each day to find a family who loves me and whom i love back. my brothers may annoy me to no end, but i know that they care about me. my parents may constantly reprimand me (and most of which is certainly true), but beneath all these i know how proud they are of me. and of course my friends, if ever they come home from their respective universities, are just a phone call away.

of course, davao itself is one of the reasons why i want to go home. manila's the place for opportunities, but davao's the place to be. i don't know if i have said this already or not, but davao is really a beautiful place. i'm really glad that we settled there after years of treading new grounds. the air, the water, the people, the place... everything feels so peaceful and calm.

thankfully, it's already march. a few weeks from now and i'll be back in davao, frolicking in the beach while watching kuya scaring kenneth with his creepy "shark" attack. and of course, with me laughing heartily all the while.

posted by kerwin ray :: 7:24 PM :: ""

March 11, 2004

the butterfly effect

it was michael crichton who first introduced me to the idea of the butterfly effect. michael crichton is not my favorite author (stephen king's got the throne on that one), but, no doubt about it, he's one of the best technically proficient fiction authors i know. what do i mean by this? well, one thing that differentiates michael crichton's kind of horror from stephen king's kind of horror is that stephen king's "monsters" tend to be more supernatural in nature, while michael crichton's tend to be more technical in nature. guys out there who are fans of both would have realized this the moment they read king's the stand and crichton's the andromeda strain. both books narrate cases of widespread death. both books exploit the "contagiousness" of the disease-at-hand. both books discuss the effects of such an epidemic in a society. but king continues the next chapters by shrugging the epidemic off and focusing on the interplay between good and evil that ensues; crichton, on the other hand, continues by focusing on how the epidemic was contained. less on emotions, but more on technicality. of course, this is not the only example i can find. jurassic park's another, and michael crichton nailed my mathematical senses with this one. it was here i first learned the idea of the butterfly effect.

the butterfly effect, quite simply, refers to the astounding effects a small event can induce in a system, especially with multiple iterations. take, for instance, the butterfly example. a butterfly, so the math adage goes, flaps its wings and sends out the first ripple of effects: a spore gets caught in its wings and gets diverted somewhere, a traveller notices it and tries to capture it, etc. these events send out the second ripple of events, and this magnifies with every ripple. in the end, it can be cataclysmic in nature, such as an earthquake, or a satellite breakdown, or the death of the pope.* in mathematics, this can be related to the concept of fractals (example: snowflake). the system of angles seems stabilized at first. reiterate the fractals and slowly the system becomes unstable. it becomes hard to handle. in the end, it crashes. it burns.

those who know me would understand that this fascinated me to no end. i don't know if it aroused the mathematician in me, or just my curiosity with the unknown. perhaps both. you see, the butterfly effect is closely related to chaos theory, which borders on the line between the sureness of mathematics and the uncertainty of real life. the chaos theory simply states mathematically what we have come to know since we began thinking: you cannot predict everything. isn't it great that some branch of mathematics actually deals with the uncertainty of things? the brain of man never ceases to amaze me. really.

i have shifted from topic to topic like a butterfly fleeting on a bunch of flowers. hee. i'll stop here now. as a final note, some of you might be wondering: why the antibutterfly effect? well, see the entry on march 8. that explains a lot. to put it simply, i have found order in an otherwise chaotic life. :)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*just a side note: this is just a mathematical illustration, of course. to know more about the butterfly effect, check out this funny yet great site. it gives a detailed account on how a butterfly in new york can cause an earthquake in china. very interesting read.

posted by kerwin ray :: 5:54 PM :: ""

March 08, 2004

the antibutterfly effect

one flap of a butterfly's wings and the weather changes. one stroke of a pen and the nation crashes. one breath and the whole world collapses.

the butterfly effect. system becomes sensitive to initial conditions. system becomes unpredictable at very iteration. system crashes. system burns.

but my world does not crash and burn.

held by a kiss.
held by a hug.
held by an Atlas who dares not shrug.

posted by kerwin ray :: 7:37 PM :: ""