Draw like you write and Write like you draw

Here’s a tip for the day.

When you are writing a thesis or dissertation or an essay, you need to learn to write like you draw. The way you hold your pen need to be like you are sketching. Serious…everything is in the attitude and in the mind…what happens when you do so, is that you write freely like a painter, sketching your words and thoughts out and captions…then you string them together later.

So when you draw, like a plan, be precise and concise and detailed and make sure its very readable…yup, like a proper piece of writing. Articulate with the right nuance, meaning line weights and correct pens or pencil and material use…

Simple Message to My Students

The other day one of my students commented that my blogging posts are seemingly more difficult to read. Apparently, it is “too intellectual”…or something like that…

I guess it is great to know if people read my blog. I mean, who doesn’t want an audience, right? Well, is my blogging pretentious, preconceived or conscious of itself? I suppose I have to be conscious as I’d expect some people to read it.

Anyway, today I want to deliver a simple message to my students.

I am not trying to be the best lecturer or the best academic or the best scholar or the best thinker.

I just want to be the best trainer.

I have to try to be the best trainer because by tring to be the best, I will encounter the worse of me. The worse of me will make me think that I am human after all, and that I could still make mistakes and I will step by step correct them.

I am talking  to students who wants to learn only.

Yes, we do have an audience, believe it or not. When we speak to a group of people, say students, half of them probably think I am bull-shitting and the other half would actually listen. But only a few would really want to connect.

The ones that actually listen will be doing so because they want to “cari makan” atau “cukup makan”. Enough to eat and get by or enough to know and find out whether it deals with the matters at hand. I am not saying that this lot is not good. No. They are being kind and all – to listen. But there is no connection. Don’t get me wrong – that is okay not having this connection…

The few who wants to connect is talking to me ( or relating to me) on a different plane. We could be friends.

It’s not like I have been teaching for a few years. Nope, I have been teaching for 11 years (excluding my PhD years). I have students who not necessarily under me before, who have now became my friends. A few are close friends.

When we decided to do anything in life, especially in a job where we deal with people, coach them or train them, it’s impossible to not invest emotions, passion and hard work in these things. You have to be a human to be a trainer.

Why don’t I just be a lecturer and just lecture and crit without having these investments?

I don’t operate like that. Whatever I do in life, it’s got to be all the way. That’s why I am sometimes kind of sensitive to things. I cannot just say I would commit and quit half-way. That’s why it took time for me to finally decide to be a lecturer for life, at the age of 37. ( Yup, I was still thinking about it even when I was a lecturer. At 37, I just started lecturing at UM after 2 years…)

To be trainer is not easy like being a 9-5 lecturer. To be a trainer, I need to learn new things and apply new skills fast. To be a really good trainer, even harder… Concentration must be very high. Correct application to the problem is essential.

Why Rafa is Stevie’s Best Manager.

When choosing the best manager you’ve played under you have to look back at which manager has given you the greatest nights of your career and for me that has to be Rafa.
The Champions League win, the FA Cup win, the game against Olympiacos, victories over Juventus and Chelsea – Rafa’s been there for them all.
He has taken my game to a different level and hopefully he can continue to do that.
The big thing about Rafa is that he’s a winner. He’s not a man who shouts or who is in your face, he’s a calming influence and a man who is very good at explaining all the different situations we may face during a game. Whenever we step onto the field there is nothing left in the dressing room, we have prepared for everything. He’s a great tactician.

Steven Gerrard 21 November 2008

Are you on the Right Track?

George said: ‘You know we are on the wrong track
altogether. We must not think of the things we
could do with, but only of the things that we can’t
do without.’
A character in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a
Boat 1

When do we know we are on the right track?

Hypothetically we are on a journey, and we have only enough to travel without burdening ourselves, enough to find our destination with whatever we are carrying (tools, means…) in order to get there. So if we carry things needlessly it will be a burden or a distraction or a nuisance…

Have we paused and think about what to bring? Have we think hard enough? Have we been focused?

Have we thought hard and long about the most necessary things that “we can’t do without”?

I do this all the time, carrying extra baggage and being a perfectionist and all. I never learn and its never too late to learn about this aspect of life that is important. Perhaps, it has to do with maturity. But if it makes sense to you, go ahead and unload all that baggage and travel light with enough things that you cannot do without in order to complete the journey…

And surely you will be on the right track because you had thought enough about what to do…for the next step…

Wittgenstein’s Logic

2.1

We make to ourselves pictures of facts.

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2.11

The picture presents the facts in logical space, the existence and non-existence of atomic facts.

2.12

The picture is a model of reality.

2.13

To the objects correspond in the picture the elements of the picture.

2.14

The picture consists in the fact that its elements are combined with one another in a definite way.

2.15

That the elements of the picture are combined with one another in a definite way, represents that the things are so combined with one another.This connexion of the elements of the picture is called its structure, and the possibility of this structure is called the form of representation of the picture.

2.16

In order to be a picture a fact must have something in common with what it pictures.

2.17

What the picture must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it after is manner — rightly or falsely — is its form of representation.

2.18

What every picture, of whatever form, must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it at all — rightly or falsely — is the logical form, that is, the form of reality.

2.19

The logical picture can depict the world.