Heaven and Hell, Work Activities, Social Activities
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven", wrote John Milton hundreds of years ago in Paradise Lost. For reasons of my own wish to understand, I've recently delved into a few texts relating to Borderline Personality Disorder, a place in which the changes from Heaven to Hell are certainly far too extreme and too explosive. It is bad enough (and then wonderful enough) to be on the receiving end of it. I can but only imagine what it is like to have it within. Tilly Grove's short piece "What I Wish You Knew" gives excellent insight to this world, although I cannot help but note that the article is motivated by a criticism of the book "Stop Walking on Eggshells". Said book is actually quite good in my opinion, well-written for a popular audience, well-structured in terms of explanation and helpful actions with insightful remarks from BP people and their non-BP associates. There were more than a few occasions where my own eyes were opened - wide, in shock, and in sadness - to this world. But I will draw a hard line where people describe the resulting behaviour as abusive; that requires a conscious and rational mind, which is not always present in these circumstances. Although I will certainly agree the effects can be the same. I was asked the other day whether my recent dental requirements came from being punched; haha, no, only in the emotional sense.
I wrote a short piece last night, "The Engineer's Curse", a reflection on my third viewing in the past year of "The Wind Rises" by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Even if it is not my favourite film from said director and studio, it is one that brings a great deal of personal and professional reflection. My conclusion was somewhat more upbeat, noting that in certain environments (and the University-HPC space is one of them, despite a myriad of other problems) where the engineer can work with the researcher to "turn dreams into reality". It was a beautiful moment of serendipity today that I was tasked with writing up a case study of Sam Blake's contributions to breaking the Zodiac 340 Cipher last year with our HPC system and, I must add, perhaps a little bit of my training in the tools. In addition to this, and outside the normal work hours, I have been powering away at masters-level assignments cluster and cloud computing; they haven't been so bad at all with a good understanding of most of the principles. Nobody will be getting a failing grade (except for those who neglected to submit anything). I wish I could say the same for my students at the University of Rojava. They are, of course, in much worse conditions, but that is not what I am grading them on.
Last weekend was very busy, socially. I made a rapid visit to Andrew and Charmaine D., for their housewarming and was plied with some fine wine before heading to the city - and behold, encountered Renée and then Tony P., and friends on the way to the comedy festival, all of whom I hadn't seen for literal years. Reaching the city I ventured to La Camera where my generous and loving friends, Jac and Damien, were treating me for a belated birthday gift of fine food and fine art. The latter was the performance "Because The Night" at the Malthouse Theatre. It was a combination of a loose interpretation of Hamlet, combined with multiple sets, like huge pieces of functional installation art, which audience members could interact with as poltergeists (in cloaks and sort of bunny masks), in silence and even touching props that weren't in direct use by the actors as they engaged in what must have been heavily improvised scripts. In a nutshell, it was brave, beautiful, and quite brilliant. I look foward to seeing this sort of theatre again and I rather suspect with the locale of my new home I'll be spending a lot of time in the arts. Next stop, I suspect, will the be the Goya Exhibition. This entry was originally posted at https://tcpip.dreamwidth.org/315311.html.
I wrote a short piece last night, "The Engineer's Curse", a reflection on my third viewing in the past year of "The Wind Rises" by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Even if it is not my favourite film from said director and studio, it is one that brings a great deal of personal and professional reflection. My conclusion was somewhat more upbeat, noting that in certain environments (and the University-HPC space is one of them, despite a myriad of other problems) where the engineer can work with the researcher to "turn dreams into reality". It was a beautiful moment of serendipity today that I was tasked with writing up a case study of Sam Blake's contributions to breaking the Zodiac 340 Cipher last year with our HPC system and, I must add, perhaps a little bit of my training in the tools. In addition to this, and outside the normal work hours, I have been powering away at masters-level assignments cluster and cloud computing; they haven't been so bad at all with a good understanding of most of the principles. Nobody will be getting a failing grade (except for those who neglected to submit anything). I wish I could say the same for my students at the University of Rojava. They are, of course, in much worse conditions, but that is not what I am grading them on.
Last weekend was very busy, socially. I made a rapid visit to Andrew and Charmaine D., for their housewarming and was plied with some fine wine before heading to the city - and behold, encountered Renée and then Tony P., and friends on the way to the comedy festival, all of whom I hadn't seen for literal years. Reaching the city I ventured to La Camera where my generous and loving friends, Jac and Damien, were treating me for a belated birthday gift of fine food and fine art. The latter was the performance "Because The Night" at the Malthouse Theatre. It was a combination of a loose interpretation of Hamlet, combined with multiple sets, like huge pieces of functional installation art, which audience members could interact with as poltergeists (in cloaks and sort of bunny masks), in silence and even touching props that weren't in direct use by the actors as they engaged in what must have been heavily improvised scripts. In a nutshell, it was brave, beautiful, and quite brilliant. I look foward to seeing this sort of theatre again and I rather suspect with the locale of my new home I'll be spending a lot of time in the arts. Next stop, I suspect, will the be the Goya Exhibition. This entry was originally posted at https://tcpip.dreamwidth.org/315311.html.