Okay, its 1:30am and I have classes 11.5hrs from now. Sounds like a bad idea to be awake. Sounds even bad to be fiddling around in this virtual dimension.

So what happened is - I've been on and off blogging so many times. And right now I got a Deja Vu that I did this typing, and that i typed "Deja Vu" right here. Okay, that was random, but all the more I should complete this.

Truth is, I never really made a solid post. Usually my thoughts get stashed away in virtual space, especially when I start to doubt my sanity. So I go on goodbyehasalast.com only to discover that my last post was more than a month ago!!!...

Okay. That was overreacting. Its not that surprising anyway. But whatever it is, even if you don't find me here in 10 mths, be and rest assured that the LZW that you know and I know, or I think I know, is still the same silly guy that you knew X years ago, even if you are reading this post Y years on now, on a random day in 2012 when you realise that the world didn't end and you decide to check out on a old friend of yours.

Right now I feel fine, albeit being slightly tired. Wouldn't know about myself Y years from now though. Previously I messed myself up at the start of this sem but its not worth mentioning. School's good. Im in NUS Arts Fac by the way. Majoring in Econs. Well im just saying - I know that you know, but just in case there's an old friend that pops by - at least he/she'll know.

So im generally fine, im good, im healthy, my six packs have decided on team work instead of being individualists, enjoying the days, worried about my grades.

This post shall end here. Or not.

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I actually meant to seriously blog today to consolidate my thoughts. I know im dumb, but somehow in my life I would spawn many random* thoughts and ideas and questions in my head whose answers are extremely elusive.

*Really, truly, random. I think.

But fate has it that I would read another Philosophy mod this sem and suddenly, either some of my past questions were proven to have no answers, or were answered, without me asking anything, and I feel thrown into this deep pit in the realisation of my stupidity and ignorance.

It all started with a French gentleman named Rene Descartes who lived a few hundred years ago. That's how the English looks that on the screen, but really in my head I just keep hearing my Prof saying "Reh-ney Dey-cart". That's how it sounds like.

He famously wrote about his Meditations. In the First Meditation, he decides to demolish all his thoughts and doubt everything. It ends when he concludes that he can only be certain that he is thinking, which is his starting point for everything else. He decides to examine everything with detail and only when it cannot be doubted will he take it as being real.

Never mind if you didn't know about Descartes.

Anyway. As a young kid I was diagnosed with colour deficiencies. The doc told me I couldn't be a pilot, a florist, etc. I was furious about the pilot part.

For many years, I hoped that one day, maybe, I could prove that I am not the one with colour deficiencies. Maybe its the other way around. The ones that are not colour deficient are the ones that are, and vice versa. This insane thought bugged me truly for years. How would you ever know whose colour perception is really wrong? Afterall, I know at least 10 people who are red/green deficient, and maybe we're the ones that are right, but some doctor who knew his stuff said otherwise.

Then came The Book. The book that contains colour dots with hidden and coded numbers that I would never fail, to fail to decipher. I don't see numbers in that book. Seriously.

But then again, I have seen some coded dots where, people with red/green colour deficiency would see the number 79, people with normal colour perception will see 20, for example. Tried and tested. And what could be so absurd about this? It means that colour is subjective! Its like fashion. And I am outcasted/handicapped just because I am different from the majority.

This is entirely from my point of view. But isn't that convincing? If you, with normal colour vision, woke up the next day and 99% of the world's population turns red/green deficient, then you become the one that is colour blind! And the general population will come up with books with coded numbers in dots where only red/green deficient people can see - and you, with normal colour vision, become an outcast.

Even colour, something that we know so close, could be so unreal. But am I insane?

Lets talk about something else. I hear a guitar strumming, and I hear music. I enjoy it. You hear the exact same thing and you think that's noise. Same thing on colour. How do we ever know that our sensory organs give us similar experiences? Or it is obvious that it never does - since everyone is different?

You see - I know for sure that the taskbar on the bottom of my screen is blue. But does my blue equal to your blue? I have always wondered that too. My prof says that it does seem impossible to know the answer when the question was raised in lecture today.

Lets examine the problem - how do we know we're seeing the same 'blue'? We can compare it. We could say, oh, its the same colour as the sky in the morning, although the shade of the blue is slightly different. Or we could say, oh, its a light colour, its the colour of Sonic, or megaman, whatever.

But isn't it still possible that everyone could be seeing a fundamentally and consistently different 'blue' altogether? Like maybe one day if I switched bodies with you, everything changes - sonic looked brown for the first time, but it was the very blue that you ever knew!

But it also raises the question of whether is it the body or the "mind/soul" that makes the experiences, an distinction that was made by Descartes.

But isn't that idea insane as well? Its as though I could suggest that everyone's experience of white and black or day and night is different, which just seems absurd.

Another issue here is the Matrix. Truly classic random thought. TCRT. Turns out that there are many other people thinking about it too. Of course, there would be some that come out of the movie raving about how cool Keanu Reeves was, some impressed by the stop motion + 360 degree turn camera effect where Neo dodges the bullets, some people thinking if the Matrix could be real. And truly random people thinking about it for so long and without purpose.

If I am in a Matrix, it would follow that everything else is false? Isn't that were Descartes started - that the only truth is his thought, and because of that, he is. All the images that are presented to me could be fake. Even you. You. Even my prof. All these have been fed to me via a supercomputer or smth. We'll never know, we'll we? Isn't that possible?

Variations of that idea include me being a subject of a mad scientist, being a brain in a vat, or being under the influence of a 'deceiving demon'.

Just a few hrs ago I made a comment on the module blog owned by my prof that if the supercomputer/mad scientist really exists, then its pretty interesting to note that it/he had created my Prof to make me aware of their existence. What a cool idea. Or so I thought. I'll let you know if he had an intelligent reply to that on the blog or in class.

We'd never know for sure, wouldn't we? I mean - the Truth? Of course, now I have started to believe in the existence of God. But afterall that's what a free thinker could do. Believe in every God. I believe in the Chinese deities and goddesses as well, but I don't go too far into religion.

But why would I think a God, or a higher being, exists? Its just a kind of feeling. From the belief that the creation of myself, and everything else, and nature, is not purely coincidental. This is extremely subjective.

Another TCRT is my deja vu experiences. I seem to be experiencing the same things over and over again. I strongly suspect that I have experienced everything in my life but somehow I am repeatedly "zapped" back into the past. But isn't that an insane thought? How is it possible?

Could it be that, I been into the future, made a mistake, took a time machine and a good dose of "bad-memories-begone" and poof, here I am! Living my past all over again. Are those deja-vu experiences hints that the above are true, and hence I have to be absolutely careful in every life-changing decision that I make, lest I have to restart it all over again? Isn't it possible? Or am I completely insane?

Another seperate issue, or TCRT are my dreams, which are inextricably tied up with deja vu experiences. It is in my dreams I believe I get the deja vu from. Forget the scientific analysis of deja vu. I insist that the truth eludes.

And my dreams - its all cloudy and misty. Which feels like my recollection of memory. If my dreams could be made up, what about my past? Am I absolutely insane to think that way? Isn't it possible that I could be zapped into the present, of which every single bit of my past was programmed into my memory and made to make me feel like I have existed for the past 21 years of my life?

If that is true, then it would follow that only the present is the reality. Its as though the past was all a story that seems to be unmistakably real. But given the mad scientist argument, nothing yet could be real. So what is?

If you have been through with me this far, you should be awarded a medal of insanity as well.

But all along, I have so many questions about life. What is life? People could live their whole life happily without wondering about it. Why do I want to know - and what is there to know?

Now back to dreams. How do I know that I am not dreaming? Its an age old classic. But this one we know : that we're not when we have a seemingly higher level of consciousness and rationalism. Problem is, I could never know im dreaming when i am dreaming. I could only know when im 'awake' when I am. Dreams seem to defy reality - I could dream of anything under the sun other than cartoon characters, but it all makes sense in the dream. I don't go - "hey, how come rivervale plaza now has 4 storeys, normally its just 2. Something is wrong here...Aha! I am in a dream! That's why...".

Everything seems perfectly normal in a dream. Our experiences - its like there's an inner brain playing a movie to the brain, where its usually the eyes that play the movie to.

Okay im too tired to go on. I have more thoughts than that but its neither going to fulfill myself any further at the moment, and I have no reason to believe that anyone sane would read this far. Just kidding, really. You could be real bored, or really interested in my ignorance.

But really there are a few things I am clear about, speaking the Descartes way,

1. I think, I am.
2. I know myself better after this post
3. My questions were answered : there's no definite answer to my most of my questions.
4. Its 3.30am, Hurray?