You have never left my side

You have never left my side.
You were there in my darkest hours,
When the Tornado-demon hovered by my ears,
Convincing me that I have been left utterly alone.
That I was worthless dust, left by the wayside,
That my friends have fallen away
And all that I can look forward to is for the next storm to pick me up
And scatter me into the cornfields of Nebraska.
But I know that not all my friends have fallen away
Because the ones that remain have become my support.
In my heart I know, though my emotions had withered to the bone,
And consigned themselves to the realms of the Damned,
That you are present in every Tabernacle;
That in every feast I taste the fruit of your goodness
And work of your hands;
That whenever the demon should incite me
To close my doors from my brothers and sisters,
I should throw them wide open.
And so let this worthless dust be scattered into the prairies
Let it tell of your succour and help.
As my feeble senses fail, so shall your glory fill the lands
Down to every canyon and dank alleyway;
Lasting joy in the face of grief.
Ach, let it be so.

Postgraduate Journal 3.12.6

Faithside: This semester has actually been pretty good on my side, despite the emotional low point miasma that stuck around when the semester started and I hauled ass right back to the school residence. Part of this is because I resumed my old practice of joining daily mass in the church across the road from my residence hall. I first joined (and committed to) daily mass in a panic during a particulary severe depression pang when I was working in Nebraska, whereafter the affliction was cured within two weeks. For this I credit the very reassuring presence of Jesus in the tabernacles and also the connections that I have built with members of the Nebraskan and Singaporean faithful who have stayed by my side and have been real champs. In November the church remembers the faithful departed and I have found joy in telling people the story of Tina and keeping her in the realms of the remembered. I am also especially grateful to Amanda and co. and their newly-fromed Ubi Caritas group in Yale-NUS College, a place where the spirit of rigorous enquiry and willingness to tackle big scary questions of faith has been nurtured and maintained. Guys, if you are reading this, I heart you all; this semester is gone too soon!

In other news, (1) daily Rosary was instated on the NUSCSS side, to the point that a small group of us, myself included, are doing it out of sheer force of habit. October was the month of the Rosary, not November, but it does not seem to matter any more to the diehards. (2) I have started a three-year programme of marking daily readings in the bible, because I heard an extraordinary claim that church readings cover the entire bible in three years, and I just have to see if that is really the case.

Scienceside: I have now a co-supervisor from Physics, a very kind and agreeable old professor dude, and am now caught in the thickets of computational physics. I actually prefer being snagged in the brambles of calculation than sucked into the quicksands of experimentation. One reason for this was that experimental people I have had to work with seemed to have scant interest in finding out how things actually work, and seemed to be bent on making things work by sheer power of will and by working themselves into a state of delirium (in which case anything at all can be thought plausible). The more important reason was that I sucked at experimental work while at the same time was passably good at calculation, having dabbled in computational techniques since my undergrad days. But even then, calculations sometimes don't work, and in fact at this moment none of my projects are working, and I have increasingly found myself compelled to cram undergraduate theoretical physics in order to understand the inner workings of my software, with its myriad weird error messages, (contra)indications, and acrobatic tricks.

I have been taking a course where I have learned to do computational physics from scratch. It started with some simple linear algebra and then swiftly degenerated into a mad scramble to write a working program with C that does high-powered stuff like Quantum Monte Carlo and the Metropolis Algorithm on Ising models and Schrodinger Equation solvers. Sad to admit but sometimes I fail to produce a working code (the Hydrogen molecule project has been especially disastrous), and the physics students are all pwning my arse at every turn. But I am positive, because my stated mission for this PhD adventure is to punch way above my weight, and this semester shall be no exception.

My first attempt at Monte-Carlo

A visit to an old friend, the park official

Don't look so alarmed, Park Official Du. I know you're expecting me. You're not? Well then, please don't mind me having taken your seat while you were away for the day. It's just my little joke. Do you remember me? We met in college, during millitary training. Wasn't it fun? I have noticed your new pet project in the park has just been completed. My word, how the media loved it. I must congratulate you for having made it so well. It's not easy these days in this society, and you know that.

Don't look so glum, Park Official Du, managing the park is hard work, but I'm sure it (wink) pays off. Will you be so kind to help out an old friend? You know the economy these days, people burning out their cash on Shanxi coal mines and now grounding themselves like ships on coral in the stock market. You know it's tough surviving in society nowadays. Nice to have someone you can trust, eh? It's my nephew, they still aren't releasing him for the hit-and-run case, which you must have heard by now. I would have made them see reason, but they're already eyeing my own books. Some foolhardy cretins must have been trying to frame me again; I suppose they are about to use my good-for-nothing nephew as an excuse! Maybe I can't take care of the police very well now, but I'm sure they'll still listen to you, Park Official Du.

The past ten years have been a dream, but on the whole my family has never been very wealthy people. All we have, you might know, are each other, and a set of stainless steel cups which is our heirloom. It pains me but I must part with it, in gratefulness of having ever known you. No, please don't refuse it, I have made my decision to give it. I insist.

Besides, we still have a lot of these cups back home. You can have more of it if you'd like; yes, yes, you really can. It's been sitting idly with us all these years, and it will be such a shame if someone else got hold of it and accidentally... dropped it... on a glass bridge, for example. Yes, like the one that you built. It just wouldn't look very nice, don't you agree? (laugh) Oh, don't mind me, Park Official Du, it's my strange sense of humour again. It's a joke, as always. I'll leave you now, and hope to be seeing you around again.

[original article]

Misa de Cristo Rey (Working Title)

A sneak peek of Sanctus

I composed a mass setting after being seized by the Muse for a few times over the months. I would like to dedicate it to the Parish of Christ the King in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I got the first brainwave. The name "Mass of Christ the King" seems to be taken, though. Should I find a new one?

Will anyone be using it? Will all this effort end up in something again? It's hard to tell, as always. But I have to start moving before I can find out at all.

Bubska

When you hear my petitions, Bubska,
Dance our dance, that no man will ever see
Sing my song, which only Eternity shall heed