“In acquiring one’s conception of the world one always belongs to a particular grouping which is that of all the social elements which share the same mode of thinking and acting. We are all conformists of some conformism or other, always man-in-the-mass or collective man.”

- Letters from Prison, by Antonio Gramsci

Being Audiophilic

Sound is one of those things you’d never know that there’s better until you hear it. Every time I thought I’ve found something “good enough” and decided that anything more will just be pretentious, I’m surprised by something better.

About half a year after I upgraded my portable audio, I know I can’t go back to simple mp3 and stock earphones. This reminder came with Jeff Beck’s Ol’ Man River, one of my all-time favorite tracks.

Good audio equipment is essential to music. I believe that one reason for most people’s preference for short and simple pop music and their claim that they can’t appreciate anything more complex is their inability to actually hear it.

When music is heard on an mp3 player with poor earphones, it sounds like a pancake. The sound is flat and singular, with all instruments fusing together. On good equipment, the layers in music separates and engulfs you, the sound becomes three-dimensional.

Perhaps it’s a need to find this separation that feeds the common misconception that good sound quality means a booming bass. When you can hear the bass separately from the rest of the music, it instantly makes music sound better. But that’s not what good sound quality is about. Good sound quality comes with clarity and the ability to separately hear each instrument in a piece of music. High fidelity is hearing music as-is, in the way you would in a concert hall, and not with artificially enhanced bass.

Old man river, that old man river,
He don’t say nothin’, but he must know somethin’
That old man river, he just keeps rolling along.

Keep on rollin’ along.
Old man river don’t you stop your way.
Keep on runnin’ from the north, the south, the east or west,
you gotta roll it …

On Decentralized Control

I’ve been reflecting on how my insistence on more guidance and standardization of policies for the group may really just be a stubborn control-freakish attitude leaning towards impossible communism. Am I harping on the operational and missing the big picture?

And I thought my personal philosophy is to keep an open mind on most things, believing in ”it really depends on the circumstances”. I may criticise, I have my idiosyncrasies, and there are some things I’d probably never accept (like eating insects), but I thought I’m mostly for “to each his own”. Besides, I hate details – that’s why I hardly remember any.

So it’s getting me rather confused, and uncomfortable, that I always seems to be the one advocating for more control, particularly on the details bordering on operational.

I have to reconsider the circumstances under which decentralized control can happen. After all, decentralized control is what I really favor.

1. Decentralized control cannot happen when people have different levels of understanding of the same subject matter.

How should a leader delegate the same duties to his followers if some have sophisticated understanding of the subject matter, while others take on a simple-minded approach? The first step before decentralized control can be achieved is to elevate all within the group to a level of sophistication that is agreed as the basic requirement for all. Certainly, the eventual approach may differ in sophistication, but if the choice of  approach is based on similarly educated considerations, group understanding can remain consistent.

2. Decentralized control cannot happen when purposes are not aligned.

It is not possible to expect all people in a decentralized system to act in the interest of the group and to fulfil a group requirement unless the group’s direction and requirement is clearly articulated and communicated. Before incentives and the expectations of people can be aligned, there has to be a carefully defined purpose for everything else to be aligned to.

3. Decentralized control cannot happen when people do not base decisions on the same principles.

Even with common understanding and aligned purposes, some key principles and “factors-to-consider” must be established to ensure that people within the group do not make contradictory decisions. It is likely that similar to the bible, some ten commandments that cannot be violated even under varying circumstances have to be defined.

4. The Devil is in the details – effective decentralized control cannot be achieved if important details are not ironed out.

Before a consideration or issue can be throw out the window as an ”operational detail too minute to be decided on a group level”, it should be carefully considered for its implications. After all, in the business of risk, it’s hardly the obvious that cripples – major risks are mostly mitigated before they’re even taken up (at least that’s what I hope happens). What we should be careful about are the minute details that could blow out of proportion.

I believe that only when the above four requirements are in place can many locus of control within a group be effectively established while allowing the group to operate as a group. Decentralized control does not mean having many headless chickens stuffing themselves in their own plot of land despite them being better informed of local conditions.

Therefore, group guidance and standardization policies should be developed with the aim of putting the heads (with brains) on the chickens so that they may decide for themselves based on common principles in a manner that is aligned to the group’s purpose. Such a system should even consider some details such that minute decisions in future do not require group consensus.

Ultimately, I believe what I favor is a group structure that is fleshed out with a clear distinction between the details that must be decided at the group level and that which may be decided individually under key principles and in alignment with the group purpose. It is upon this group structure that decentralized control can be achieved.

Controversial People

Someone once told me that I have a thing for controversial characters. Probably true, considering I liked my presumptous piano teacher who thought I was positively retarded, and I happily worked a full 3 years for possibly the least-liked professor in school.

What I’m missing now, is really those annoying, crazy, slightly-out-of-place characters who will jump in out of nowhere and instigate some adventure. The people I work with daily are brilliant, but it will be better to know that I also work with people who count the number of species of snails in Singapore during the weekends, or train to extinguish a candle with a single pebble throw.

I miss having people I can amuse myself with, then complain about later. Those opinionated people who dare, not to be different, but to be themselves. Those who dare to do what they really believe makes them a better person, even if it makes the world hate them. I miss all these people you’d love and hate.

Maybe I’m hoping to make up for a personal deficiency, or it probably came out of the holiday season – all those parties and overseas holidays just make you want to run away from the drudgery and go have some fun.

Even if fun means reading Les Miserables. I came across a great compliment to the womenfolk:

Woman feels and speaks with the tender instinct of the heart, that infallibility. Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is all of heaven.

- Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo

It sure would be great to be like that. Then again, that wouldn’t be being myself.

Convenient numbers killed common sense

Maybe, “expert judgment” should have the final say in decision making after all.

Today, I bought a pair of pants for my sister basing the size decision on objective measures. Eyeball technology told me it’s too small, but the size marking and a request to measure the waist band with a tape measure indicated it to be the right size. I distrusted common sense. It turns out common sense was right.

And to think that last week I was putting forth some sort of guidance to base decisions on empirical evidence where possible and rely on “expert judgment” only as a last resort. I should relate this anecdote to the folks at work.

Numbers can often just be convenient excuses for not thinking.

“When you take apart a lego house and mix the pieces into the bin, where does the house go to?”

“It’s in the bin.”

“No, those are just pieces. They could become spaceships or trains. The house was an arrangement. The arrangement doesn’t stay with the pieces and it doesn’t go anywhere else. It’s just gone.”

- xkcd.com

I’m at the cyclical low of self-esteem, brought upon by the discovery of having messed up at work.

When it comes to stupidity and inadequacy, I’m an all-rounder. I’m ignorant, careless, useless, fussy, critical, hypocritical, mean, paranoid, lazy and dorky. I’m so lousy I have to resort to a clumsy string of words that can barely express how lousy I am. I used the same word twice in a sentence, and the argument was possibly circular. Ugh.

Appreciating Convexity

The best thing about working life, it seems, is that it has given me a lot of time of my own. When I put down my work for the night and the weekends, I can explore, discover and pursue my interests. Strangely, it is when I sell my physical hours that I really gain free rein of my thoughts and the liberty to live in my mind. In contrast, schooling was always about filling my head with the thoughts I was supposed to have and knowledge I must remember. It was repressive despite the amount of “free time” I had.

Life has been good. I like my job because it gives me the autonomy to do what I think needs to be done, and choose how to do it, despite my junior position. Outside of work, I’ve been able to catch up on my book-reading, music-listening and movie-watching. I’ve even been able to pick up the piano again. I can take a walk outside whenever I felt like doing so, without feeling guilty about taking time away from some readings I’m not even remotely interested in.

Now, I have the liberty to reflect, to day dream and to read up on any nonsense that happen to pique my interest. Absolute time has less meaning. If I need to take a long time to finish a difficult book, so be it – I don’t need to find something straightforward to read just to feel the gratification of having completed a book. I watched Gone With The Wind in one continuous sitting. I’ve even survived the 7.5 hour extreme art house film Satantango. I  can listen to Eric Clapton’s extended 9 mins Wonderful Tonight 10 times a night, or to the full Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 twice in a row. On Saturday, I can practise the piano for 7 hours. On Sunday, I can spend an afternoon wandering around.

Instead of being told and assessed constantly about things I should/need to understand, I am learning to appreciate what I cannot yet understand. At work, I explain away convexity. After work, I embark on a search for non-linearity in life. That’s when I can fully enjoy the second, third, or even fourth order effects of spending my time.

A lot of my time is sold to my full-time work, but in my head I’m living more vivaciously than ever before.

Real Competition

Today, I learned of someone who deliberately went to a worse school despite qualifying for better ones just so that he could emerge top and win scholarships. After getting into a prestigious university overseas, he continued to enroll in courses he thought he could beat everyone else at. That was supposed to be the smart method.

A clever way to get the credentials, maybe. But where is the thrill in winning people obviously weaker than you?

I thought life is enjoyable only when you live and work with people smarter, more experienced and more knowledgeable than you. With people better than you as role models, you will be able to set a higher benchmark to better yourself with. Only when you realize that your best is not good enough, will you become better than your best. Besides, winning is fun only when you beat someone at least as good, if not better than you.

Although many things in life is relative, it is also relative depending on what you choose to compare yourself against. After all, just because you are smarter than idiots doesn’t make you smart.

Ultimately, what matters is giving yourself the opportunity to be better than yourself, not better than others.

All my love

Chopin is beauty epitomized.

All you hear in his music is beauty, all the loveliness that music is. His pieces are not simple. They are intricate and delicate, but they remain accessible, and personal. It’s the sort of music you play alone at home for your personal enjoyment. Yet, it has the level of sophistication for a grand performance in a large concert hall that will leave its audience touched, captivated and spellbound by his ingenuity.

Where on earth did someone find inspiration for music like that?

—

Beethoven is fascinating.

It doesn’t take a lot to realize that he puts his heart and soul into his music. His music is original, because it is him – his thoughts, his emotions, his life. You hear him being angry, or sad, or mischievous. The music changes from moment to moment, exactly like the thoughts in someone’s head. It’s almost as though he thinks in music.

If someone could write a diary in music, it would be Beethoven.

—

Mostly, I love Chopin and Beethoven for their honesty. Their pieces are not elaborately constructed show pieces (like Liszt), arrogantly masterful definitions of music (like Mozart), or hopelessly romantic cliches (like Mendelssohn).

They are brilliant, yet natural, works of art.