Outward Bound

I had my first ever Outward Bound School (OBS) experience yesterday.

It was kinda fun. I tried a lot of things I've never done before, like kayaking, only it was a tri-yak with three people on it (instead of three yaks, which would undoubtedly have been a whole lot more interesting).

But the thing I most want to remember is climbing the stupidly tall tower. Just because I'm a tall person doesn't mean I'm not scared of heights. (I'm more scared of grounds. It's the grounds that kill you.) And I assume that it's a pretty primal fear for most people, but a lot of people get over it, which is great for them. But even with a rope securely leashed to my crotch, I still am very aware of my own mortality and how one tiny mistake could mean that I won't be able to be aware of my mortality any longer.

So the side of the tower I was climbing up had a rope net a third of the way, then a totem pole with those rock-climbing handholds screwed onto it, then five logs in a zig-zag pattern the rest of the way up. The whole thing was probably four to five stories tall.

I got up the rope ladder okay, but transitioning to the totem pole was tough. It was the first time I looked down (I had to, to climb on top of the log that the net was attached to) and the height already terrified me. It took me some time to work my way onto the totem, and even then it was stupidly terrifying, because some of the handholds unscrewed themselves when I grabbed on to them.

The thing is, once I conquered the totem pole (with a lot of encouragement from my friends), I wasn't very scared anymore. And contrary to what you all are thinking now, it wasn't because of the support and teamwork, or because I had faced my fears and conquered them and mastered them or whatever romantic reason. The way I saw it, was that I was already so high up that if I really fell I'd die anyway, regardless of whether I was four stories up or five. So I had nothing to lose anymore.

And I want to remember this for two reasons. One, is that I've never climbed up anything so high before, so that was a really cool experience for me. Two, is that life is crap at telling stories. There's no profound morals or feel-good happy endings. There's just what it is, decent plot or not.

And nobody but me is going to change my story.
The Edna Man

Readings

You can read a book. You can read the stars. How do you read a person?

There is so much more than just reading a face or a palm or an expression. I believe that every soul is a story; a living, breathing narrative of existence, a walking autobiography. They are the things that are said and the things that are unsaid, the meaning of the dialogue and the paragraph of their body language punctuated by gestures and gesticulations or the silent pulse of inaction and stationery. But people are not open books; they are complex, interwoven papyri of human experience, laced with symbolism and laden with subtext. They are so much more and if and only if you care to read between the lines you'll find the most realistic characterization that can ever be written; that in the legend of their life you might find forgotten mysteries and subtle subplots, dramatic tragedy and divine comedy. Maybe this sheet was intentionally left blank; maybe a death was not a word but a sentence; maybe it was just a phrase they were going through; maybe every catastrophe was just an apostrophe in the latest chapter of their life; maybe they had their appendix removed; maybe they like referring to themselves in third person; maybe they rode a railroad plot until it flew off a cliffhanger; maybe you'll find out what titles send shivers down their spines; maybe they have a couple of tricks up their jacket sleeves; and maybe you'll discover what is hidden and what is not behind the flaps. And like all books, there will be those which you just want to Fahrenheit 451; there will be those which come and go, browsing on borrowed time, passed around and never yours; but there will be the one which you find in a secondhand bookstore and fall in love with and want nothing more than to share a quiet evening together curled up in front of a fireplace forever and ever until your pages are dog-eared and tattered and yellowed around the edges.

And when the story ends, do you believe in an epilogue?
The Edna Man

New York, New York

I can't eat small apples anymore.

I just spent two glorious days in the city so nice, they named it twice. I have kind of fallen in love with the city, from its wide spacious sidewalks to the insane variety of random people you see on the streets, in the subways, and everywhere else. There's always so many things to see and so many things to do, it'd take a lifetime to know the city and its people.

Times Square is so much more than I expected it to be. It's filled with all the bright billboards and overwhelming lights and crass commercialism that is so famous, but when I was walking around at night I realised that it's not as loud as I imagined it to be. It's overwhelming if you don't like the lights and the advertisements, but it's actually a pretty quiet city. There weren't cacophonies of car horns or stampeding horses, and the buzz of a million people actually disperses up into the acoustics of the skyscrapers, so I never felt claustrophobic sound-wise.

I can happily cross another thing off my bucket list: Watch a musical on Broadway. Thanks to some extraordinary luck on the part of the Yale-NUS Random Number Generator, I scored free tickets to the showing of Wicked: A New Musical on. Freaking. BROADWAY. AND IT WAS AMAZING. I HAVE NO WORDS AS TO HOW AWESOME IT WAS. EXCEPT THESE WORDS RIGHT HERE. I've heard the songs before, but without the story, so I've had to piece together that plot and who exactly was singing what. So seeing it on stage, with the actors and the singers and costumes and the amazing props, backdrops and scenery, was FANTABULASTIC. I totally get all the songs now, and I loved listening to my favourites being played live. I had shivers at the climax of For Good, the part where both of them harmonized a high note in the third chorus. If I had anything to complain about, I'd say I walked out of the theatre with my mind blown. I was sitting next to Aleithia, who had not watched a musical before, and she was quite stunned as she walked out as well.

I got to talk a lot with Molly, one of the Dean's Fellows, as we roamed the streets of New Haven before going to the musical. She's a lot older and more mature than she first appears. I think living by yourself for four years grows you up a lot. She's really nice, and I like her. (Hi Nessa, if you're reading this, don't worry, I like you too!)

Dinner was organized by food expert Austin Shiner, and Austin Shiner never disappoints when it comes to food. We trained out to Harlem to try authentic African-American soul food, which was a whole set of delicious good food for the soul. Fried chicken and barbeque ribs and spiced rice, oh my. And delicious banana pudding with ice cream as well. I loved the food, and being surrounded by international students swearing in Hokkien as an excuse to learn Singlish really added to the atmosphere.

After dinner, we went to this awesome improv comedy show found by Chris Tee. It's at the National Comedy Theatre on 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenue. I have never watched improv performed live before, and I was completely floored by how incredibly brilliant the performers were. I was laughing my head off almost every minute, at almost every line that they said. I can't imagine how far I still have to go to even get near that level. It was also really nice to see female performers, because there are so many stereotypes about women in comedy and how it's like their driving. But our host, Jen I think her name was, was really energetic and a really good host, and I would like to see her actually perform instead. We tried to chat with them a bit after the show, but I think they were more keen to clean up and clear out, so we didn't get the chance.

Wandering around Wall Street and the Financial District was not as interesting, but we got to see much of the city and the architecture that you wouldn't normally see, I guess. We saw the huge bull, and I was very amused how anatomically-correct they cast it. Also, the subway system is way too complex and convoluted for my liking, but at least you can read the station names, unlike in Japan.

I also visited the Museum of Natural History, and though it was big I didn't get a chance to explore it all. But I do urge anyone who is visiting to PAY FOR THE PLANETARIUM AND GO IN, DAMMIT. You see things on television and movies, but nothing throws you into the vast nothingness of space than a huge dome with special visual effects that make you feel like you can just reach up and pluck a planet from the sky. The show hurtles you through the wonderful beauty of space, and just amazes you with its astonishing majesty, through starfields and sun flares, past satellites and solar systems, all simply spectacular. I think I spent the whole thirty minutes watching it with my jaw open. Literally.

And that was my trip to New York. I'll be back next week, and hopefully it'll top this week, but I don't expect it to.

Empire Building State of Mind,
The Edna Man

The Lecture Hall

It's after breakfast. Here I sit, in a comfortable seat, with my jacket pulled tight around me. It's cold. I was a delicious breakfast.

A flash of lighting. The janitor comes in to turn on the lamps.

People stream in, sit down. The rumble of conversation grows louder, rolling over the tables and chairs like a wandering percussion band. Laptops pop open like umbrellas, each student sheltering under its wide screen canopy and huddled in the warmth from its heat ports.

The slides flash. There is a downpour of typing, a rainfall of fingers on keyboards like droplets onto the ground. The slides flash. A storm of frantic hammering and the pursuit to catch the information in cupped hands before it all drains away.

The sound washes over me. It's too comfortable. It was a big breakfast. The professor is a radio, her music becoming ambient background in the cafe I find myself in, eyes slowly drooping, with the patter of raindrops and the atmosphere of almost calm serenity, I realise with a jolt that there's no hot chocolate on my table.

I jerk awake.

Things come back into focus. There's a graphic on the slide now, and the rain has slowed to a drizzle. I can't fall asleep here. I can't. But who needs hot chocolate anyway...

The shower surges again as I drift back into the cafe.

-----
Maybe I'm the chance of rain,
The Edna Man

Fame

Wow, I haven't written anything for a long time.

I'm sitting here in my room in Berkeley College in Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. It's pretty surreal, since I've been anticipating this day for slightly more than a year now. Maybe I'm too tired to fully appreciate the fact that I'm here, in the United States, with 150 of my classmates, all of whom are about to embark on a grand adventure to the frontiers of the unknown, that it hasn't hit me yet.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about the last ten days, moving into my residential college and meeting and reuniting with a whole bunch of people. And I guess that's what I wanted to write about today.

Unlike how it was in my last educational institution, I know a lot of people here at Yale-NUS. Like, a lot. I can name probably everyone of my classmates in my First Class,  all the Dean's Fellows and practically all the members of the faculty. I'm like a walking Pokedex.

But here's the thing: I know a lot of people, but I don't know them. I don't know what their favourite colour is; I don't know what might make them cry on a bright summer's day; I don't know what they are interested in, or how they would go about making a quiche, or anything about their hopes and dreams and faults and fears. I can identify people, but I don't know them.

And that's the big problem: it seems like everyone knows me, but I know nothing of them. It doesn't help that my conversation skills still leave a lot to be desired, and it has become very apparent in these past few days. I suppose I can blame the fact that my brain is exhausted from lack of sleep, but it's also obvious that's not the only reason. I'm running out time; once people settle into their cliques it'll be very difficult to do talk to anyone. It'll be the "belong everywhere, and thus belong nowhere" thing again. Why do I keep walking into these things?

It also seems like I've got so many different personalities to interact with different people, and I don't know who I am anymore. I'm also very scared, scared of interacting with the people I like the most, the people I'm most interested in, for fear of driving them away. I hate myself for it, but I can't bring myself to the alternative.

Why do I want to be liked by everyone?
The Edna Man

The Rise and Fall of the Geek Era

I am very impressed with the direction of the Marvel Cinematic Universe lately. It's doing something new and edgy: having a story arc across multiple movies and not have it be a trilogy. That's exciting, because it's more similar to how comic books actually operate and I guess will give people more insight to the world of graphic novels.

However, that's before I read this article on Cracked.com, and it seems that in the near, foreseeable future, we're going to run out of awesome movies. And that's going to be a crying shame.

Because there's more than one kind of villain in this world,
The Edna Man

Only Human

Am I a bad person?

Heaven knows I try,
But the seven sins fly by
Sticking needles and pins
Into the skins of my conscience
And as the world spins, I cry,
"I'm not a bad guy!"
But I lie.
I don't know why,
But I've heard the song that goes on and on,
And the words are blurred as they sing along:
Different is wrong!
And you won't belong,
Because you are not strong to be one of the herd or the throng.
Does that make me a bad person?

Perhaps I am different, make no mistake,
It might be a given, but I can't take
It when some slimy, suffocating, self-centred snake
Slithers in and sprays his toxic ego across the room,
As he says with blasé in all of his ways,
"I don't give a damn,"
Because nothing else matters.
And he runs this scam without a gram of respect,
As life hands him platter after silver platter,
Surrounds him with chatter and alcoholic drinks
Until he sinks into a pink fog of stink,
And to myself I think, I hate this guy.
Does that make me a bad person?

Does that make me a bad person,
If I am quick to judge
People who are happily willing to fudge
Details to spend money that isn't theirs,
Or vanish unawares while others need you upstairs.
I'm putting on airs, I should not begrudge;
But my ethics don't budge; they rarely bend
And in the end, should I even take cares
In the affairs
Of the people I call my friends,
If their goodness is all pretend
And their conscience is aloof;
Do I at least have proof
That their morality is not so black and white,
But scattered between fifty shades of play,
Because, to them, this might be just a game.
One that's still tame, but all the same,
No one's ever around to claim the blame.
If that ignites an angry flame,
Does that make me a bad person?

Perhaps it doesn't make me a bad person.
Perhaps it only makes me human.

Perhaps there is no difference.
The Edna Man

Worldbuilding Prototype Alpha

So. Worldbuilding.

Xi Min and I wanted to attempt on a scale unprecedented. We wanted to bring worldbuilding to Yale-NUS. We thought that, with some of the world’s best and brightest, we could really do something with this idea.

And did we ever. We got eight people (actually more than that, but Google Hangouts only fits ten) and built a world from scratch. We’ve got half a hollowed-out doughnut tumbling through space, with icy areas and tropical areas, and a simulacrum of seasons. We’ve got about ten different civilizations in a huge land grab on our map, with amazing premises like a race of green genetic accidents which can photosynthesize independently; a civilization of dolphin riders who also make excellent cookies; a race of creatures who can see in multiple electromagnetic spectra; and a cat-owl-elephant caste society who have nine lives and get reborn in a blaze of fire, like phoenixes.

What I liked best is that everyone was interested. To varying degrees, of course, but everyone was contributing and tossing ideas about like a lettuce leaf in a salad. It was pure cognitive bliss, for be. The discussion about the shape of the world was best. Nobody had preconceptions, not many had expertise knowledge, but we all came together to hammer out the doughnut-shaped planet that we know of today. It was astounding.

And so we will bravely move forward, not just charting unknown territory, but bringing it into existence as well. Not just pushing the envelope, but cutting its stencil out of a sheet of paper and gluing the flaps down in the right places. We will continue creating, bit by bit, continent by continent; and we don’t rest on the seventh day, either. We will play Sid Meyer’s Civilizations like the game it was meant to be played.

And we will look at it, and say that it was good.

The Edna Man

Meeting People

I had a really happy day today. I met and talked with so many people.

First off, I went for a university fair at Nanyang Junior College with Jasmine and Naz. I'd been walking past it for years on my way to Boey's house and I had absolutely no idea that it was NYJC, until today. Life is weird sometimes.

Anyway. I had a lot of fun talking to people about my school, and then rambling on about my experiences with the occasional joke or funny anecdote. I got the chance to entertain a reasonably-large audience and also a couple of questions, which I thought was really nice.

I had lunch with Jasmine, who again refused to let me pay. There is an important life lesson here, Future Me; I can't write it out, but it would do you good to remember, so I'm writing about it without actually writing it. If you need help remembering, Future Me, it's not about not paying, but that other thing. Stare out the window for a while, it'll come to you. I hope.

I got back to the office just in time to bring some people out on tour, and all my well-placed jokes went off, so that was nice. My small group disintegrated along the way, so I attached myself to Xi Min's group and got to talk with this girl from IB as well, and evangelised about worldbuilding to her, and also assured her about her interview and stuff.

Then it was off to Newton Food Centre to meet with a bunch of students from Hokkaido University, who were here on overseas exchange. It was a blast talking to all of them, and sprinkling my little bit of Japanese, and learning more about Japan and their lives. There was this moment I was talking to one of them who said he watched some anime before, and I was trying to tell him about 5 centimetres per second, and I knew he wouldn't get the English name, so I was trying to remember the Japanese title, and one of the other guys knew it, and when the name was mentioned there was a great revelation, and we connected, just like that. I find it miraculous, that we two from different parts of the world can come together and connect over this animated film from his country. It's amazing.

There was supposed to be something here about life and communication and sociability, but it's way too late and I somehow don't feel about talking about it anymore. You've got a whole bunch of remembering to do, Future Me.

EDIT 24/02/2013: Hi, Even-Further-Into-the-Future Me, Future Me here. Except that now I'm Present Me, and you're the new Future Me. Anyway. You've got one less thing to remember, because I'm doing your job and writing down what the previous Present Me (who has been demoted to Past Me) was supposed to write (or have written; it's getting way too tense in here).

So. That thing about life and communication and sociability. I realised that I like talking to people, but I don't like starting a conversation with people, especially new people who I have not met before. There's always that fear, that worrying anxious fear of the unknown; and what is more unknown than a friend that you haven't met? He (or she) could turn out to be an enemy, for all you know. So I guess that's why I'm awkward, or at the least perceive myself as being awkward, because that's riding at the forefront of my consciousness all the time. If you would liken conversation to a fire, then I'm not the tinderbox which would get it going. Compared to a great many people, I'm no match.

But once it gets going, I'm probably a good quantity of dry, flammable wood. I'm interested in people, I think. People are a puzzle, and I like puzzles. I like seeing how things work, how things fall into place to create intricate systems that go. I like to see how people's lives, their experiences, their behaviour and philosphy, all come together to make the person that's sitting across from me today.

And that's where I make the mistake of so many psychologists, social scientists and census statisticians. Listen up, Future Me, because you're going to need to remember this bit. A lot of people are telling you ("me") that I "judge" other people a lot, and this is not necessarily untrue. That is not to say that everyone doesn't do just that, every day, at one point or another, or to varying extents. The human mind evolved to work that way; it's just that before it was categorizing things into "I can eat this" and "Run away, this can eat me", but society has changed a lot since then. And so you go around thinking you're very smart in putting all the pieces of peoples lives into a kind of timeline of cause-and-effect, filled with lots of holes here and there because you don't have the whole story, but you think you have enough paragraphs to confidently write a blurb about his or her life. Listen up, Future Me, because you're going to be wrong. Life is way more complicated and complex than you can confidently account for. And humanity is exactly the same thing. They're both a labyrinth of confusion where effect doesn't always follow cause and logic is merely a suggestion. Remember this, Future Me. I can't always be writing to you.

Nice to meet you,
The Edna Man

Airport Romance

So here I am, sitting in the airport, waiting for a flight to come in. I actually realize that I’ve never been alone in the airport for a long period of time without any near-future objectives. I’ve always had to be there to take a flight out, or send someone off, but I’ve never had so much time to myself at the airport before.

I love the airport. I love hanging around, watching the people as they come and go. I like thinking about their stories; the stories of their lives. Who they are, where they come from, what they do, where they go. I like trying to guess their nationality or ethnicity, based on their appearance and clothing and language, if I manage to catch a snippet of it. I like seeing people coming in from the arrival hall, and then see their daughter or mother or cousin or friend, and then break out into a smile of relief and honesty, and they’ll often embrace and chat and stuff, and it gives me hope that the world isn’t as crappy as I think it is.

It’s also liberating, in a way. If you wanted to go anywhere else in the world, this is the place to do it. And the idea that from this place you could travel to some exotic country, where you can sit down in a metal tube with wings and get slingshot around the world, where when you open your eyes again you see something completely different, that is just such an empowering feeling.

And there’s also the mystery. You could take a plane to anywhere and wind up in a different country, with a different people living in a different culture and speaking a different language to order different food. And it might be anywhere. You wouldn’t know until you get in under the clouds again and see where you wind up.

And as you see the huge numbers of people walking around, living their lives; you get this sense of the vastness and the intricacy of our human civilization. Like, there’s no way so many billions of people crawling over the surface of this tiny rocky planet could have come up with this kind of system that works like clockwork. It’s amazing, really.

It also lends hope to the idea that somewhere out there, there’s the one for me.

The Edna Man

Apocalyptic Roundup: The Best of the Year which Didn't End

I guess the world didn't end, so I've got to write this. Here's to 2012, one of the best years I've had so far!


1. The Totally Awesome Birthday Surprise
For the first time in my life I had a surprise birthday party, and it was mine. Thanks to my parents, who outsourced the idea to Xi Min, who organized it, you sly old codger you; and thanks again to everyone who came down and played hilarious Pictionary on disposable paper table tops late into the night!

2. ORD LOH
I've done my sentence, but committed no crime. After two years of learning how the world really works, I come back out into the world with this inane notion that things will be different. I am proven both right and wrong. Nevertheless, I am overjoyed to be out, and so happy that like alcohol at the airport, I'm duty-free!

3. The Japan Trip
Oh man, this is going to be one of those highlights of my life that I'll look back on when I'm 60 and tell my grandchildren about. This was such an awesome trip in an amazing and beautiful country. I saw so many new and different things, tried many new kinds of food I never would have tried back home, and met so many amazing and friendly people. I am definitely going back sometime in the near future, but I am very thankful I had the opportunity to visit a different part of the world.

4. Experience Yale-NUS Weekend
I found out that I got accepted into Yale-NUS while I was in Japan, and once I got back I immediately had a two-day stayover camp to experience Yale-NUS. And I have to say that I was completely sold by that experience. Not because of the professors, or the deans, or the admissions officers; but because of the people, the bunch of amazing and wonderful and overall human people that I met that night. I had the most enjoyable conversation through to 4am that I have ever had while I was awake.

5. The Intern Life
Working at Yale-NUS has been like, the best job I have ever had. My office is just full of wonderful people, insane in their own ways, but it makes going to work fun and exciting. My colleagues are more than colleagues; they're friends as well, and I know I'm going to be really sad come next year when I have to be a student and not an intern anymore. But in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy every day of work I have, giving tours, ordering mugs, making designs, reading articles and sitting at the coffee table, laughing and chatting.

6. Licence to Drive
I guess I'm more grateful for this than other people might be, because it took three tries and enough money for a trip around the world to get a small plastic card which society decides is the only way you can be certified of piloting a four-wheeled automobile worth a hundred times as much. I do think that I'm one of nature's pedestrians though, and considering all the traffic on the road, I'd rather take the bus.

7. Singapore Toys, Games and Comics Convention 2012
I don't recall this year's STGCC being as awesome as previous years'. Nevertheless, I had a good time wandering around the comics stands, and was quite happy to find some of the titles I was looking for. I also remember some of the best cosplays this year, including a Power Girl, a Poison Ivy, and an awesome dude who did a very simple, yet very effective Clark Kent/Superman.

8. Anime Festival Asia 2012
I enjoyed this year's AFA more than the previous years', perhaps because I knew a lot more and could recognise a lot more things. Madoka movie was excellent. Cosplays were generally really good as well, but it reminded me that there is a lot more in that world that I don't know. I think what I really enjoyed most was the concert; I knew more of the artistes performing, like fripSide and LiSA (LiSA!!!), and I even managed to get into flow's songs, even though they were at the end and I was exhausted by then. I got my dose of orange Mirai-ness, so I'm quite happy.

9. The Team Fortress Photo
If there was anything that was as exciting as it was frustrating this year, it was this. Try getting a bunch of people to come together in a virtual world, where everyone is able to kill everyone else, and get them all to stand together to take a photo, without killing anyone. What should have been a fifteen-minute shoot ended up being a two-hour ordeal (STOP KILLING THE PHOTOGRAPHER DAMMIT), but in the end it was a great screenshot at the crossroads of our lives, where we couldn't all play together at the same time.

10. The Girl in the Red Dress
Last of all, here's to that girl in the red dress who I brought on tour around RC4, whose mysterious smile sparked something in my heart; thanks for suggesting to me that maybe, sometimes, there might be such a thing as "love at first sight".



The Year in Entertainment

Anime: Baka no Test no Shokanjuu, Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari, Steins;Gate, Kanon, Infinite Stratos, Fate/stay night and Fate/Zero, Carnival Phantasm, Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie

I finally finished watching both seaons of Baka Test and they were hilarious. I didn't they could build on the stupidity and running gags of season one, but they did. Both Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari were mind-melting surrealistic mythological mashups which had really, really nice animation. Steins;Gate was a good time-travel story; Suzuha obviously best character. Infinite Stratos was a waste of perfectly good technology for an international harem. Fate/Zero was AWESOME, and is totally worth being outcast as an otaku for. Carnival Phantasm was another surrealistic comedy; I got the parts which involved Fate characters but didn't understand much of the Tsukihime references (race episode is BEST EPISODE). Finally, the rewatch of Madoka in the form of the movie was undeniably brilliant.

Books: Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad trilogy, Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy, Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex, Misha Glenny's McMafia, DC's Final Crisis and Final Crisis: Aftermath

I finally cashed in on my Kinokuniya membership and bought Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan, Behemoth and Goliath, and again I marveled at a world so fantastical yet utterly believable and amazing. Deryn is a tsundere. I borrowed the latest Artemis Fowl book, and I didn't feel it was as good as the earlier books, but an interesting continuation of the Artemis saga nevertheless. I also borrowed McMafia, the only book on this list which is non-fiction, and though I haven't finished it yet and the narrative weaves in confusing and not-easy-to-follow ways, it's provides fascinating insights to the global network of organized crime. I finally finished DC Comics' Final Crisis even though I'm still missing the last Countdown to Final Crisis book (curse you, frantic apocalypse hoarding). And Terry Pratchett once again produces a brilliant story laced with satire and symbolism in the form of four-inch-tall creatures, who are perhaps more human than they appear.

Movies: The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, Les Misérables

All those years of fanboying finally paid off in this year's releases of The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises. Looper was a decent time travel action story, but in the end the grandfather paradoxes just messed with my brain too much. I finally watched Les Misérables in its entirety, and I must say that the music is good, Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway are awesome but Russell Crowe can't sing for nuts.

TV Shows: The Batman

I managed to get my hands on all five seasons of The Batman somehow, because I wanted to rewatch it for the epic reimagining of some of Gotham's iconic villains. Even to the end of Season 5, where I think Batman's integration to the Justice League wasn't very well done; the villains still stole center stage. The show boasts the best Joker voice behind Mark Hamill, the best Riddler and the best Mr Freeze and the best... well, all the villains, actually.

Music: Kurt Schneider mashups, Lindsey Stirling, The Sing Off, Gangnam Style, Les Misérables, Book of Mormon, Matilda the Musical

Kurt Schneider stepped up his game this year with a number of awesome mashups with other start-up artistes, most notably Victoria Justice and Max Schneider's Maroon 5 medley and that beautiful mashup of Payphone and Call Me Maybe. Lindsey Stirling wins my Pretty Musician of the Year award this year by really just producing great music, from the Skyrim theme to her African rendition of Rihanna's We Found Love. The Sing Off, the a capella American Idol, was a beautiful find near the beginning of the year, and still never ceases to amaze me. Gangnam Style gets special mention, because it's rare that a song enthralls the entire world in such a fashion. In musical news, I love Thérnardier's song Master of the House, because it's just so witty and rhymey and unserious about itself. Matilda the Musical I chanced upon because it's got lyrics written by Tim Minchin, and it's pretty good, though I don't understand the story much because I don't think I ever read Rohl Dahl's Matilda. Finally, The Book of Mormon takes centre stage as Best Hilarious-M18-Feel-Good-Religious-Satire Musical of the Year.

Games: Sid Meyer's Civilizations V, Borderlands 2, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bioshock, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, DC Universe Online, Dungeon Defenders, Super Monday Night Combat

I think Bioshock is one of the best games ever made: excellent story, animation, immersion and gameplay. I'm about halfway through Skyrim right now and it's been excellent as well; what I love about it so much is that there's always something new to discover, and the quests are immersive and the world is richly detailed and designed. Civilizations V, I never would have imagined, is actually uncontrollably addictive; and it's very interesting and educational (though very complicated) as well. BlazBlue is probably one of the first few games I've tried to pick up properly, but I still can't play any character other than Noel Vermillion, who is so freaking adorable. I found DC Universe Online to be amazing in terms of gameplay and execution, and the fanboy in me just loves recognizing all the characters; but because of the lag I couldn't really play it well. Dungeon Defenders had a pretty interesting concept: a tower defence and first-person shooter hybrid; levels made it a grinding game though, but it was pretty fun. Super Monday Night Combat was my first foray into other online shooters after Team Fortress 2, and it was another hybrid game: a first-person shooter and Multiplay Online Battle Arena (DotA) hybrid. It was a pretty cool concept, but again, people just became noob-haters and I gave it up. Finally, Borderlands 2 is pretty awesome; the developers kept everything good about Borderlands and threw in some new stuff (like an engaging plot) to make the game just so much more awesome.

YouTube: Two Ronnies, Thank God You're Here!

Thank God You're Here is an improv-type show where they throw actors into a scene they've never seen before, and they have to (to put it bluntly) bullshit their way through the performance. It's based on an existing improv-game, but of course blown up and embellished for a television audience. It's brilliant fun, but of course look for the Australian run of the show because it's hilariously better, and it ran for way more seasons. Also, I've been watching a lot of Two Ronnies sketches lately, and they're mostly side-splitting. It is sad though to see how they've aged; the fat one lost so much weight and the small guy grew fat. Nevertheless, their material is pure gold, one of the best the British comedy machine has ever produced.

-----

Well, that's it for 2012. It was such a nice number, too, for a year. Guess the Mayans long counted wrongly. Oh well, onward to lucky 2013!

Happy New Year!
The Edna Man

Intoxicating

I don’t drink. Not by a long shot.

I’ve never really enjoyed the taste of alcohol. It’s the same reason I’m not fond of chilli. How can the masochistic infliction of pain on one of the most crucial and sensitive parts of your body be considered culinary? I can see why you might want to drink it, perhaps in the coldest winters when a long pull of vodka will put fire in your belly and hair on your chest. But otherwise, you’re throwing a caustic liquid down your alimentary canal – how does that even make sense?

But let’s ignore the taste for a while. Let’s say they manage to invent an alcohol which is tasteless, or you take it intravenously. It should be fine if you ingest small quantities – I had half a glass of wine yesterday, and nothing happened. Sure, small doses of red wine are supposed to be an excellent antioxidant and help your heart and whatever.

But yesterday was my first time seeing people truly intoxicated, and it… terrified me. I saw how it really lowers your inhibitions and, perhaps, clouds your judgment. It honestly scared me.

I believe that every single human being on the planet has a tremendous capacity for evil, existentially speaking. I don’t see it as much as an “original sin” thing as much as it is a “human nature” thing. It’s just how we are, regardless of the existence of a divine presence or not. And one of the reasons we’re not rampantly killing or murdering people in the street every day is because we have a socially-constructed set of rules and regulations with enable the conscious mind to act within a generally accepted, lowest-common-denominator standard of insanity. (And it never works all the time, even when people are sober.)

And then alcohol comes in like a sneaky joker in a game of cards. The “get-out-of-jail-free” of life, but instead of jail, it’s social conventions. And you lose control one of the most important things in life: your mind. You take the backseat in your brain and put a bottle of whiskey in front of the wheel, and expect him to make it out of the inner-city maze of the social commute when that bottle knows all the theory but has never seen a car.

It’s like your consciousness is the single guardian of all the screwed up stuff in that Pandora’s box of murder, rape, pillaging and queue-cutting that we call our heads. And when you down six shots in a row, you give him a day off and tell him to come back tomorrow. How do you rationalize that kind of thing?

You can’t, because you’re drunk.

Soberly,
The Edna Man

Photogenetics

So today I had my first photo shoot.

No, I didn't go taking pictures of cosplayers with a tripod and wide-angle lens. I was the one being shot at.

I still don't know why my boss picked me to be in the shoot, since, you know, I have a face that launched a thousand ships. Away. Fleeing in terror at the sight of my horrific visage. But I was chosen, so there you go. I'll be plastered all over the official documents, student handbooks, curriculum guides...

I get why people want to be models now. You don't really have to do anything much, just act natural and listen to the photographer's instructions. Not really a very tough job. Of course, it might be different in the fashion industry or something. I don't know.

But yeah, I basically got paid to hang out with my friends for a day. And stare awkwardly into their eyes.

Developing,
The Edna Man

Anime Festival Asia 2012

So AFA Singapore's fifth anniversary and my third year at AFA.

I originally wanted to write a blow-by-blow account, but I'm too tired so I think I'll write my overall impressions of the main events.

Movie. A large part of this AFA was spent watching the Puella Magi Madoka Magica movie, which was excellent. The animation was great, though I'm probably not veteran enough to see if it was better than the original. It was nice to relive the entire retelling of the story, and of course, make new links with my preordained knowledge of future events. The only gripe I have is the Claris opening theme thrown midway through the second movie. It didn't seem to serve any purpose to the plot at all, and seemed to be included only to make the movie longer. But overall, the story was brilliant, and I am super-hyped for the third movie next year.

Merchandise. I spent more at this AFA than the others, I think, but I'm quite happy with my purchases. I got some really nice art and a bunch of Mirai stuff which makes my heart beat orange so it's okay. I also noticed that coming back from Akihabara, AFA merchandise looks very... spartan. It just compare - the size, the scope, the quality, the price; I think I was spurred to look at every single booth here because I knew that I would never be able to do the same in Tokyo.

Cosplay. There were some really good cosplayers at this year's event. (I say that every year.) I think the organisers chose Expo for this year's event partially because there is so much more open space for cosplayers to set up and do their thing; they really crowd out the place at Suntec. Naturally, there were a lot of costumes I could not recognise, but I realise I do recognise a lot more then when I first came. There was an incredibly cute Guilty Crown cosplayer. Oh, and I met one of my OM girls, and she was cosplaying as something I didn't know; that was a surprise.

Concert. It's been barely six months since my LiSA concert in Tokyo, but I was really excited for the Saturday Anisong concert. I both admire and feel sorry for Babymetal's members; I don't know if they know that what they're doing is not metal at all, but I do admire them for sticking through it and giving it their all. I found m.o.v.e. to be particularly entertaining, the guy especially (he was hilarious), and I'll be checking out some of their songs in the future. I think I should have listened to more fripSide before the concert, but I danced out during the Railgun songs I knew; pity about the mic problems though. Yoshino Nanjō is really pretty, and she was the only artiste of the night to have a costume change! LiSA was explosively awesome, and I now remember the WiLD CANDY chorus dance moves I learnt from her Japan concert. LiSA always has so much energy, it's electrifying. I am not too familiar with FLOW, and I was really tired out by the time they took the stage, but I rocked out to the songs I recognised. I was sitting next to this Malay couple and the guy apologised for bumping into me during the m.o.v.e. segment, and commented that he had waited nine years for them to come to Singapore. So along the course of the concert we struck up a conversation, and I think I asked a couple of awkward questions (naturally), but they were really nice and promised to add us on Facebook.

Company. I only mention this because of its unprecedence: Xi Min invited Austin to come for the Sunday festival for a "cultural experience". I was pretty sure Austin wouldn't be terribly interested, but he followed us around and kept asking Xi Min stuff. I tried to explain a couple of concepts to him, like Japanese anthropomorphism and the idea of "moe", but I don't think I did them justice. I think a lot of cultural things need to be experienced to be appreciated; you can tell a person exactly what a hot spring is supposed to look, smell and feel, but ultimately it's in diving in (not literally) that you really understand. I also thought that Austin might have been expecting a more detailed and structured approach, similar to how they do it on travel shows on television, but this is pure conjecture on my part.

Miscellaneous. There was a point in time today when I left the Madoka movie and wandered into the hall, only to find myself at the back of a crowd at the LiSA meet-and-greet session. I couldn't really hear anything the translator was saying, but I could see her, and that's all that matters, right? Anyway, it was nearing the end, and when she was done she wasn't led through the back way, but out through the crowd, and as luck would have had it, she left at the exact opposite side of where I was standing. Graaah.

Musings. During the concert I had an idea about a lightstick battle; just having a standing army in the darkness break open their lightsticks in unison as the camera panned across them. It captured my imagination, such that during some of the songs I didn't recognise, my mind kept coming back to ways to use lightsticks as weapons, even though I tried to keep my attention on the music and the epileptic strobes. I wonder if this is caused by my continuously multitasking with music when I do work, which might subconsciously influence my brain to think of other things when music is on. Also, during the concert, I was suddenly seized by a desire to be one of them, one of the artistes on stage; not for the fame or fortune, but for the sheer exhilaration of performing and getting people hyped up with you, so now "Be part of a band performance" is now totally on my bucket list.





All in all, AFA 2012 was a blast, but I'm really too tired to think straight anymore.

Bye-chi!
The Edna Man

Skyfall

 Daaaaamn.



Watch this video. Fully. In its entirety. There are shorter videos out there, with just the highlights: the jump, the chute, the family. They don't do it justice.

Today, a man walked off the edge of space, broke the sound barrier, and parachuted to Earth.

Alive.

"I know the whole world is watching now. I wish you could see what I can see. Sometimes you have to be up really high to understand how small you are... I'm coming home now." --Felix Baumgartner

This guy. History won't be made like this for a long time.

I have an incredible fear of heights. It's probably natural, a survival instinct hardwired into my genetics, but I mean, I get vertigo when I have to jump chasms in video games. And I've taken leaps of faith before. A couple of metres off the ground, onto a slide. Two storeys, at least. Not bad, I would think. I always noticed it's the act of jumping that is the terrifying part. Once you let go, once you're in free-fall, it's easy. It's almost fun. It's the jumping that my brain refuses to do.

Then, there's this guy. Thirty-nine kilometres into the sky. He looks down at the Earth, and at that resolution you can't define any object. It's all just hard, painful, bone-breaking rock. You can practically see the curvature of the planet, at that altitude. And he looked down, and I would believe he was imagining the breathtaking, life-changing plummet to the cold, unforgiving land below. Then he rips off a historic one-liner: "Sometimes you have to be up really high to understand how small you are..." and his brain threw his body off into the void.

Thirty-nine kilometres. If I could drive my learner car straight up, it would take me an hour to get to that point. If you took Singapore, and pulled it out of the South China Sea, and stuck Jurong into the ground vertically, the guy jumped from somewhere around Changi Airport. He took four minutes.

As I watch the video, I'm wondering what the people in the control room were thinking. This guy just threw himself out of a capsule from the stratosphere. My first, irrational, thought would be, "HOLY CRAP SOMEBODY CATCH HIM". But they were all sitting there, cool as cucumbers, watching a guy plummet to possibly certain death.

And then, your thoughts turn again to the man in the pressure suit. At that altitude, you can't tell how fast you're going, because there's nothing to take reference from. You might notice the ground getting closer, but since it's so big, it doesn't seem to be coming at you very quickly. You're just floating there, like swimming, but without water, while around you the friction is heating the air and a cone of atmosphere is forming behind you.

What do you think he was thinking of, in those four minutes and nineteen seconds of utter and complete freefall? What would you be thinking of? There's that nagging at the back of your head that you have to pull your chute sometime during the decent; but would you take a moment to step back and enjoy the view, knowing that you're never coming by this way again? Would you be contemplating man's insignificant existence in a chaotic universe, or would you be screaming "YOLO!" silently in your head? Would you be thinking of how many views this stunt is going to get on YouTube? Or would your scumbag brain niggle you with the possibility of your oxygen running out, or your visor cracking, or your chute failing and leaving the largest blood splatter in human history, or...

Originally, I thought it was really ironic that Red Bull would sponsor this event. But after all, flying is just throwing yourself at the ground, and missing.

Gives you wings,
The Edna Man

The Fox and the Grapes

So I was bringing people around on tour today of the temporary campus, and my tour group was somehow mostly made up of girls. Anyway, there was this girl in a red dress who was quite pretty and kept giving me this really mysterious, crooked smile which sparked something in my heart every time I turned to talk to the group.

But being the awkward guy that I am, I have no idea what I should do now. I wander around the large dining hall, talking to random people and giving advice and answering questions, but I spot her out of the corner of my eye, and she's looking at me too. Great. She's sitting at a table talking to her friends, though; not like she's going to come up to me and ask me questions. I notice she does get up eventually, but goes to talk to a professor before leaving with her friends through the main doors.

I mean, whatever, right? It's probably not love. It couldn't be love. How can you love someone you don't even know? Girls like her don't go for guys like me anyway. She could be a psychopathic axe murderer, for all I know. I don't even know her name. I can't even really remember what she looks like.

Sigh.

Dissonantly cognitive,
The Edna Man

That... Something Moment

So you're in your early twenties - well, you could be in your late twenties or late teens or even early thirties, but for the sake of argument here we're going to go with early twenties - and you're hanging out in a public place with your relatively similar age group friends (let's assume you have friends) and the conversation somehow, invariably, inexplicably, inevitably, comes around to relationships; specifically those of the social kind; and even more explicitly those of the interpersonal, bipartisan, non-platonic kind.

And, theoretically, these friend are relative strangers, a phrase which, in certain contexts, is an oxymoron: they are people you know and presumably have a friendship with; they are certainly not mere acquaintances. And as such, there is still much about these friends you do not know about, so regarding prior knowledge of such relationships, all bets are off. And as the conversation swings around like an out-of-control drag racer on a windy, windy mountain road, these friends regale you with their takes of romantic debauchery and epic trilogies of love lost, and their trials and tribulations and breakups and split offs.

So there you are, sitting there hypothetically, and know you have to say it. The joke is there, hanging around that mischievous part of your mind like a kitten with a whoopee cushion, waiting for your words to bring it to life and create nervous laughter in the world. This is the only chance you'll get: the timing is right, the words are in place, it's the perfect punchline.

"I never have these problems!" HAHAHAHAHACRYCRYCRY

Which brings be to the crux of this thought experiment: what do you call This?

"Mixed emotions" is an obvious first contender, but it does not do this phenomenon justice. It has been said that the best example of having mixed emotions is seeing your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your new Lexus. So mixed emotions comes with a implication that you feel both emotions simultaneously. But This, This is different. In This, there is a realisation component, a time factor where the words are processed and the other meaning is slowly eventualised.

One might next turn to the term "bittersweet", but again the word does not connote the emotion precisely. Inherent in the lexicality is the presumption that the "bitter" part comes before the "sweet" one; yet the dread realisation here again is the latter emotion. Bittersweet also defines a simultaneous emotional circumstance.

The last refuge of the confused analyst would be in the word "tragicomic", bringing to mind the stereotypical theatre masks - the happy, smiling face and the sad, moaning visage - which have become symbolic of the stage. It is perhaps the closest and most accurate term thus far - defined as "a situation having both tragic and comic elements", our poor, pitiful joke has certainly earned in that respect. Yet it is still lacking a certain something.

Maybe it's just schadenfreude.
The Edna Man

If Life Was a Movie

If Life Was a Movie, parody of If This Was a Movie by Taylor Swift

I'm just a geek, your typical nerd
Wasn't born with the cutest face
Shy and dorky; slightly awkward
Socially weird, and lacking grace

You're the beautiful and popular girl, baby
Sociable, innocent, pretty smart
Wouldn't spare a second glance at me, maybe
So how am I to win your heart?

I could bump into you, accidentally
Pick up your stuff, and, flustered, say sorry
Watch as your train departs into the night

Stand at the prow of ships, say we're flyin'
Cryin' over your corpse if you're dyin'
Guest star in a real famous show somehow
And if life was a movie, you'd be mine by now

I can't breathe; it's like I'm suffocatin'
How did you find out that you're my crush?
Playing the montage of our perfect dating
And something I said kinda makes you blush

So, I'm hoping that it's true, I don't have a clue
I'm stuttering now, out on your front road
Grab my collar and pull me close to you
Kiss me on the lips and the soundtrack explodes

Chase after you past airport secur'ty
Dance with you on both sides of a palm tree
Stand in the rain outside 'till you came out

Show you that your boyfriend is a huge jerk
Turn up unplanned at the place that you work
Holding you close after you've had a fright
And if life was a movie, you'd be mine tonight

If you like me, if you love me, if you really care
You would toss your head and let the wind blow through your hair
When we run we're gonna know our fate is sealed:
Together in slow motion in an open field

I'd try to
Fall onto you in a game of tag, an'
Brandish my sword to vanquish that dragon
Stare at the sky, and wish upon a star
You'd know wherever you are

Propose to you with thousands of flowers
Kiss you upside down with spider powers
Random pedestrians burst into a song

Confess to you with a bunch of placards
Save you from the villain and his dumb guards
Seranade you from your bedroom window
And if life was a movie, you'd be mine I know

You'd be mine somehow
It's not the kind of ending you wanna see now
Baby, where's the happy ending?
Oh, I thought you'd be mine by now

-----

How many romantic movie clichés can you recognise?

I don't think I did a extremely good job with this one, mainly because country music has an incomprehensible meter and stupid stressed syllables in all the wrong places. Also, while I am relatively in tune with romantic movie clichés, describing them in ten syllables is really quite difficult.

Aww man, life, this is why we can't have good things,
The Edna man

The World According to People with Colourblindness

They crawled out of the twisted, auburning wreckage and tumbled behind a dune. "Dammit," John swore, "I can’t believe that son of a beige got us."

"We got creamed," coughed Rachel. "His bomb must have sapphire to the cargo bay and when he pearled the trigger it blue us white out of the sky."

John looked around at the desert, stretching away into the sunset. "Well, unless we can salvage some coins and convince a passing Bedouin to celadonkey to us, or a camel, or something; it looks like we’re marooned here."

Rachel sat down beside him with a deep cyan wrapped her arms around him. "What a cerise of unfortunate events this was," she murmured. "Maybe if I knew then, black when I was younger, that money isn’t everything, that I don’t really need to be vermilionaire… maybe I wouldn’t have ecru-ed all that debt, and maybe we wouldn’t be on the run from the law and the coppers."

John laughed. "Damn, Rachel, you sound so jaded! I can azure you, everything is going to be just peachy." He stroked her hair gently. "We’ll get the cash out of here, and next thing you know, we’ll be cinnabar somewhere having a long, cool drink; or indigolf course on our private island, kicking back and getting a tan."

John sat up. "Remember I told you how I red many books about survival when I was an ultramarine in the navy?"

Now it was Rachel’s turn to laugh. "I know how fawned you are of repeating that," she greened, her teeth gleaming as she put on her best mocking voice: "'But the taupe brass thought I had violet tendencies and kicked me out,' etcetera, etcetera."

John grabbed her by the waist and lifted her off her feet as she squealed with delight. "You know I’m magenta-lman," John said. "And no matter what, whether we die olive tonight, or whether we grow together to a ripe gold age, I will give you the lavender affection and the luxury that you deserve."

"You are such a j-ochre, John!" Rachel cried happily. "Put me down and get your ebony fingers off me!"

John put her down but pulled her in close. "You carmine, Rachel. And you always will be."

Rachel squeezed him tightly. "I love you too, John." She sighed as she pulled away. She knew her lilac-ed conviction but John was too capricious and blond-ed to notice. "But I pink we should see what we can rescue from the jet. The fire’s dying down but ivory that the smoke will give away our position."

The thick pillar of smoke rose into the air as they picked their way gingerly across the hard limestone and the glowing ambers. "Let’s see if we can mauve that wing out of the way," said Rachel.

"That looks like a Cerulean feat," said John, folding up his sleeves. "This is a job for bronze over brains." Rachel a-gray-ed.

The crumpled piece of metal was fuchsia-side to reveal a large trunk. "What do we got?" asked John.

Rachel rummaged through the luggage. "There’s a couple of umberellas, but it’s not like it’s going to rain anytime soon," she said. "There’s a ring of khakis for, I think, a Porsche, and – yellow? What do we have here?"

Rachel pulled out a sheaf of papers, slightly charred but mostly intact. "They’re maps!" she exclaimed. "This one’s a celeste-ial star chart… this a map of England! They’re all mixed up!" Rachel cried in frustration. "This is so purplexing. And they’re not oranged in any kind of order!"

John scuffed around in the wreckage while Rachel rifled through the maps. "You could give a pewter me," he offered, but Rachel just shook her head and said, "I’m puce-d to doing this myself."

“So what chartreuse-ing?” John asked, eventually.

"I think this one shows the surrounding area," Rachel said, spreading the map out across the trunk. "There’s an aqua-ifer in that direction," she pointed. "If we make our way there, we can follow this road jasper our normal walking speed, un-teal we get to this town here by midnight!"

John saw that there was a silver of hope left. "Let’s go, ma cherry, and maybe turquoise and girls of this little mining brown can russet us up some grub."

-----

I tinct, beyond a shade of doubt, everything pales in comparison to colours. We take it lightly and know it cannot be im-prism-ed, but hue knows what the dark, secret in-gradient is? If you are at achromatic, candlelit dinner and you ex-spectrum, not wine, what pigment of imagination is saturating your thoughts?



Or, you know, synesthetes.
The Edna Man

Imagination and the Multiverse

We know that the capacity for human imagination is limitless. It is one of the few things that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is such an amazing ability to be able to surpass your perception of the current reality and look through time, to see the past, or to dream the future. We can see things that do not yet exist, or that cannot exist.

We all have this talent, this capability of imagination. Some people use it more frequently, some people focus their inner sights only on certain things. But it is usually employed to fathom the unfathomable, to see that which does not exist in one's perception of the here and now.


There are many different versions of the multiverse theory. I don't know whether it's a higher dimensional plane, or a bunch of parallel timelines, or something which might not hold based on quantum physics or mathematics. But I do believe that the multiverse exists, and this is how I think it works.

Every choice we make in our life splits time into multiple possible futures. From the large, conscious, life-changing choices like who you choose to fall in love with; or the small, arbitrary, subconscious decisions like which foot you step on first when you leave your house. The choice you ultimately make shunts you to the reality you currently exist in; but the other one could have easily existed as well, couldn't it? And I believe that it does, in some form of parallel universe.

(There are some who would argue that I have not gone deep enough, that even the random location of each electron and the vibration of each subatomic particle in each point of time and space would vary across infinite permutations, creating a "plane" or "volume" of existences. To which I say, true, but these are choices which we have little to no control of, and the chances that they will affect us are infinitesimally small.)

So, assuming the existence of parallel universes, here's my theory: our imagination lets us "see" the events in these parallel universes. It it not a mental process in which we "create" images and ideas from nothing; it is a "sense" and a means of perceiving the events which don't exist in our here and now. We look through the windows of our imagination into another world.

That's a vaguely heartening thought, isn't it? That somewhere in this crazy, mixed up multiverse of ours, there are worlds where magic is a real and everyday society hidden from plain sight by illusions and memory charms. Worlds where giant sentient androids disguise themselves as common vehicles and wage a secret war for our planet. Worlds in which cities are mobile, leaving large tank tracks in their wake; where genetically-modified beasts roam the landscape and turned the tide of a world war; where death is merely a second chance at love and life; where the greatest of kings is a tsundere and her knights are all girls.

It is also, perhaps, a very sobering thought. That the extents of human creativity and the marvels of human invention that we know of today are nothing more than copies of another world who has already made them; replicated in ours by a man who peeped across realities and copied their ideas.That we are not the gods we think we are, the creators and sculptors and engineers of divine inspiration or inexplicable intuition, but pale imitators of other worlds.

But that is not to say we should stop dreaming, for it is the best thing we have right now.

I see,
The Edna Man