First time experience: Started a fire!

Today is the Mid Autumn festival and we decided to do a BBQ at home on a night when da typhoon rabbit gave us a break so that I got to see the full moon hanging high in the skies..

We didn't start the fire but...



I proudly did... for the first time in my life!



BBQ meat, vegi and fish...

魚下巴

while the song I sang to the first fire I started was...



So it concludes the post on "Started a fire for the first time."

La recherche... Du Temps perdu

When cleaning up all them papers piling up, I couldn't find Nelson and Naren's article.  So I went on searching and searching till, haphazardly, I found on my desk journals I took when I went into the psychiatric ward for the first time... while I still didn't know (or believe) I was psychotic.

An especially interesting paragraph to come across drafted on June 17th, 2001... possibly the 9th day behind the gated doors.

"I only wish everything could just stop here. Just leave me alone. I wish the taping process, doesn't matter by whom, could come to an end. I want everything to stop. It, somehow, has turned to be a soap opera of some sort. It does not deserve... I don't deserve people's attention and energy. I am just a simple person and I am but an workaholic. That's all."

Same words still applicable for yours paranoid delusional with grandiosity to use today and many days before and after today.

Except today, so I also say to myself...

"Cut that drama part already... you want drama, go watch TNT.  How is it your business someone wiretapping you or not?  Ain't like you are endowed in the wealth, fame, or power kinda department.  Get the shxt done so that one day you can bring a penny or two in and I can spare a bit of money to do work in an AC condition.  Shut the front door, get done with your work, and go make the body feel more comfortable!" (Developmental outcome? 8-O lol sigh)

Taiwanese singer... 陳雷

Someone came to visit this post... Down with Meds -- A revelation of Ratology (Recovered): 歡喜就好

5-6 years after the rise of Ratology Reloaded, his songs remain... 讚啦！

Without interuptions, let me present to you the Taiwanese songs by the singer...  陳雷.

1 and 1/2 of 25 mg +-

The night I made the post on dosage adjustment... I realized that I actually took 1 and 1/4 of 25 mg Seroquel by mistake since there was still 3/4 of the 25 mg pill left in the pill cutter.  Since going down from 50 mg (2 25 mg pills) is almost like going down by 50 percent, ain't no way of doing dosage adjustment.  Why didn't I suffer more from the dosage adjustment and the withdrawal?  Guess, having been exceptionally overdosed for all these months, still quite a bit of residuals of Seroquel in the body.

That night, I took the 1 and 3/4 of the 25 mg pills to be on the safe side.  Forget about the fish on the cutting board when trying to fall asleep, I spent the next day feeling the entire body all tight... uncomfortable.

It was then did I decide... what about 1 and 1/2 instead?  Taking the middle value?  From then on to date, still dosage adjustment though at the amount of 1 and 1/2 of 25 mg +-... still the "unmentioned."

This is why... crying out loud... "Where is my cure?"  A cure that free me of the symptoms, the side effects of the medication, and the never-ending dosage adjustment!



Ratology Reloaded: 1 and 3/4 of 25 mg +-: So, after a prolonged wait (months), in the face of the ever intensifying fish on the cutting board and the fear for esophageal spasm , dos...

Where is my cure?

10 years ago, it was estimated that a cure can be found for Schizophrenia as Possible in 10 Years.  Alright... it's 2013... if schizophrenia can be cured, they gotta be able to cure me of my mental department!

We are here; we are waiting!

(Please view the clip from 57 second if it doesn't start from 57 second into the clip as I had it set up.)

From my first skype interview to the legal thing...

Had my first Skype interview just now... when discussing the potential of doing translation work, I told the interviewer that there are things beyond my bandwidth... no quantum mechanics and no nothing in legal, for instance.

After the interview, so I pondered to myself, no quantum mechanics... I can fully comprehend... but that thing I feel about legal documents... is it grounded in anything?

So I decided to look up a case online... such as RICARDO MARRERO, PETITIONER v. UNITED STATES... and...

The thing I feel about legal documents... there surely is a reason for it.  In no way will I be able to tasks alike.  Case closed.

1 and 3/4 of 25 mg +-

So, after a prolonged wait (months), in the face of the ever intensifying fish on the cutting board and the fear for esophageal spasm, dosage change again... decreasing from 50 mg to 1 and 3/4 of 25 mg +- (since there is no way to cut a 25 mg pill in equal quars).

The adjustment... live it like how I have to live it before... just the reloading of the same old scenario... unmentioned cuz no need to mention no more. 8-X lol sigh



Ratology Reloaded: My biggest struggle--again: I really don't wanna have no nothing to do with this struggle again... why... all these months... just let it be 2 whole pills... as lo...

My biggest struggle--again

I really don't wanna have no nothing to do with this struggle again... why... all these months... just let it be 2 whole pills... as long as enough cognitive capacity to do some work now and then.

With the intensified fish on the cutting board... might have to jump back to the sea of suffering... pill cutter here I come!

Really 苦海無涯 (there is no end to the sea of suffering)... just kept on getting sucked back to da aqua... (Geez... I really have low tolerance for suffering... This also accounts for suffering? But do it yourself and you shall know... 8-O lol)



Ratology Reloaded: My biggest struggle: This past two months or so, every night, I have to fight this biggest struggle in my life... cutting pills (8-O lol) The task of cutting a...

A cup of coffee--a benchmark

Finally took a trip outside of Taiwan again... just thought... since there is an opportunity, might as well go and do my walking somewhere else...

I actually had no set plan on where to go and what to see... just going with the flow... perhaps, making it to find the City God Temple 城隍廟  in Shanghai--a temple I had thought might exist, was told to exist not, and finally found out that it really exists after I came back to Taiwan 3 years ago.

There was one thing I wanted to do at the beginning of the journey... My friends' family were flying to Taiwan on the same day although we were not taking the same flight and going to the same airport.  Knowing that their flight will take off 2-3 hours earlier than mine, I had in my mind this big plan... sort of... to go into town and have a sip of coffee at a coffee shop.

Possibly due to the fact that they know how not too useful my body is, they were worried and wanted me to have a cup of coffee at the airport instead. lol

Yet, I bid them farewell when they were getting on to the airport bus and ventured on to my final destination... an unknown coffee shop... where I'd be sipping my cup of coffee... people watching.

I knew what was to come... the empire of my body strikes back albeit my rehab efforts.  The weight of the luggage, however minimal I packed, still would do damage.  I was prepared and I was prepared to find all means to minimize the damage.

I found myself a coffee shop and sat down to leisurely have my cup of coffee... not the first one, not the second one... I made my efforts to search for a coffee shop and, en route, walked a bit more around the Shatin Mall.  Which one to choose?  As per the order of my body...  the Pacific Coffee.

On August 16th, 2013, thousands of people might have visited the Mall, many more a person got a cup of coffee from this shop, quite a few of them sat on one of the seats while I was there or not... The same day when that cup of coffee that I drank and the whole 9 yards it entailed happens to be yet another benchmark I made this year.  Surely, there was setback in my bodily condition... yet with minimized repercussions... which could be "repaired" within a few days.

I, like what other travellers do, I walked with luggages hanging at the Mall.  I sat down at a coffee shop, drank my cup of coffee, watched the people around, and did some work.

So it is... a cup of coffee... a benchmark. (Man... I surely am ambitious... ain't I? 8-O lol)

Screw

While working on my translation job, I saw this sentence... "one screw having problem... community of the same destiny."

I saw the word screw... I thought of the chair from which I fell from... all because one screw having problem...  I surely was screwed by the screw and never came to appreciate the power of a screw till today (though the accident took place over 6 years ago).  8-O lol sigh

Yet, the screw did screw the whole system... with the chair collapsed onto the group in one piece... the community of the same destiny... How is it my business to get screwed by the screwed screwed? An alternative version of my can't mind my own business disorder?  8-O lol

Regardless, first time to really understand the importance of a screw... sort of like... over 6 years too late? I surely am a slow learner... 8-O lol

At the same time, the funny thing is that... I had never seen that screw... whether it was broken or got loose...  since what happened was someone used a stable to replace that broken screw.  Reminding me of the notion of the entanglement between particles that never existed at the same time...

And, the reality is that, without that screw, that'd be no Ratology Reloaded and neither this book I am working on... which sort of make this book... the story of a screw. 8-O

Learned helplessness

The last three papers I took notes on all talked about the phenomena of learned helplessness.

One thing I have to say about being psychotic is that I am 100% sure that I am doomed to falter in the face of the mental God since delusions can never be fully caught.  Such inevitability surely can lead to the unfolding and manifestation of learned helplessness... Yet, as a not-so-physically-capable psychotic starting the mental career as a depressive, knowing the certainty that I am doomed to fail, all the plausible theories about how learned helplessness is developed, and thinking that failing less is good enough, what can I do to escape the entrapment of learned helplessness?  And, what could others in the same shoes do?

Interesting question... 

Thought broadcasting

Something new to share with you on my cuckoo head concerning thought broadcasting...

In 2005, I started my blogging career because I was sick and tired of the thought broadcasting symptoms... like... I might as well broadcast thoughts myself if I am gonna be so delusional as to think that my thoughts are being broadcast (let along the everyday belief that people are recording my verbalized speech and words typed out).

This blogging version of thought broadcasting is more conservative though since I retain a faceless presence (though, if one really want to find my face, they surely can find it something associated to this google account... just donno why anyone would wanna work so hard).

Just occurred to me earlier that, in the past year or two or three, there has been some strange change in MO.

I do think-aloud... I think therefore I talk...  at large or not... beyond my control... of course... (unless simply some serious disruption in the function of the subvocal rehearsal mechanism.  period.)

Come to think about it... ain't that taking thought-broadcasting to a totally different level?  With the presence of the face, body, and everything else.

So what kind of implication does it have?  Given that it's real that the thought is broadcast with the presence of the mouth on the face running these thoughts etc, which partials the uncertainty effect out, what's to be handled is the core of the issues.  It's because when the core is addressed, the thought broadcasting symptom, my though broadcasting through my blog or durch my mouth... ain't no nothing gonna matter.

Am I sure?  Consider it as 賈雨村言 Jiǎ yǔ cūn yán la!

(Though, this self-talk thing reminds me of some thing I observed once every so often... When smoking at large, I see and hear every so often that kids or young adults would run their mouth out loud with comments... as if I were not there.  This remind me of what this pal had me said once about a similar scenario, something like... "How the parents teach their kids today... they'd better make sure they are not in the wrong side of the town.")



Ratology Reloaded: Delusional: How do I know that I am still delusional? This is a question I have to answer myself time and again... On a scale of 1 to 10, I score a 3 ...

Is that Venus on 6/24/2013?

Saw this big bright object after sun down around NWN tonight... albeit the constraints of my shaking hands (side effects of the med) and the aging grandpa Canon, I managed to find ways to capture this object...

Thought it was too bright to be a star (my bias) and almost too bright to be a planet...

Then, after all due diligence in my googling efforts, I found out in various sources that the unidentified flying object (UFO) to me could be Venus since Venus could be spotted after sundown in the NWN sky...

From Is that Venus on 6/24/2013

One thing that got me bewildered is... when blowing some pix up... I found out my intelligent technology called my grandpa Canon was seeing things I don't see... the purple circle in the center of the possibly known as Venus?

In the eyes of my grandpa Canon, it seemed to see the purple thing consistently.  One thing I wonder is... since all these pictures were taken using digital zooming, could it have something to do with the zooming... like my grandpa Canon is rubbing off on me and is starting to see things (Though I am down with hearing things only... 8-O lol 8-X)   Since these sort of reminds me of jelly donuts and the camera was starting to do the "change battery" thing. It's possible that the camera might be really hungry and started to see images of potential sources of energy.... unless... simply old age and need to get the eyes checked?


Or, this is what the possibly known as Venus should look like when blown up?

Tried to google this up but I don't have enough background knowledge to figure out what keywords to use.  At the same time, gotta say that I am really liking my grandpa Canon that's almost as old as my age as a physically-not-so-able.
 

Time traveling

There are so many movies about time traveling... like Source Code, MIB III...

I also found a new way to travel back in time... literature review (if not reading in general).

Almost like the stars observable by the Hubble as depicted in the following film... what you see are how things were at all different points points in time... with many occurring billions of light years ago.

Take the model of working memory of Baddeley and Hitch first proposed in 1974 for instance, if you start from reading Baddeley and Hitch's (1974) and keep on reading all the way to 2013, you will see the following (with the episodic buffer added at around 2000)...

From Baddeley, Allen, & Hitch (2011) Binding in visual working memory: The role of the episodic buffer

You can choose whatever sequence you like to read up the theory and the related research... Chronologically... you see how things get built up in time... the process of becoming. Even better, you can randomly chose the time you want to go back to... not being constrained by the forward direction of the time dimension!

Come to think about it... perhaps, everything could be used as a means to travel in time... music, pictures, films, rocks... everything that can take you above and beyond the restricted notion of how things should be?! Reminding me of the time when I went into a phase of constructions... from my castle to time distortion.

Living with psychosis: Agent J vs. Boris The Animal

Watched Man in Black III yesterday and thought this is sort of like (hopefully) what it's like to live with psychotic symptoms... though it took J only one time to get it...



No wonder J is J, and Is am/are only mes.  All that J needed was to reload the scenario once while... 8-X

(Dear symptoms, don't be mad at me... just an analogy... the learning of how to dodge your mighty power)

From Altemetrics--impact of research

What it be like, one day, on your CV... you will list how many people visited your blog, tweeted it, FB it in addition to all other good old elements?

A notion addressed in the Chronicle of Higher Ed: Rise of 'Altmetrics' Revives Questions About How to Measure Impact of Research.

This world surely is evolving where I am... sort of like... sleeping (since my body and head take the liking of putting me to the sleep mode whenever possible. 8-O lol)

Regardless, instinctively, I know... albeit the rise of the "Altmetrics"... it ain't gonna do nothing to the pitiful not-to-many-ingredient state of my CV post my terminal degree...

Forget about the issue of bots, time on page, etc that might need to get resolved first... (the equivalent of valid data)...

Adding all hits I have gotten from the following 6 active public blogs (though far less actively in Ratology Reloaded and Technologies in Ratology since 2010 or so)... the total hits on these 6  blogs are 67,418 between May 2007 and 6/6/2013... although some blogs got started later and do not have as many posts etc.

What this tells me is that... even if the "altemetrics" turns to be a common measure for everyone's work and contribution to the society (not restricted to the measurement of research impact), 6 years for this many hits on all blogs combined?  Shit out of luck. Think I'd better hide the stats.  8-X lol

Metacognition

Was doing some literature review on metacognition...  and I came across the book titled... "Early Detection and Cognitive Therapy for People at High Risk of Developing Psychosis : A Treatment Approach."

Though I don't have the time yet to read through it, the notion itself... is one I would strongly endorse... though who gives a rat's ass about my endorsement... especially like... the psychotic chick with faulty metacognition endorsing the notion of metacognition in action? 8-X lol

I don't know how the detection could be done prior to the psychotic onset... Yet, since existing research has found metacognition to be beneficial for learning in general, at an early stage, teach them to think metacognitively and give them the tools to learn to think metacognitively... everyone... 

Surely, today, I have come to embrace the notion of how I am metacognitively wrong.  Yet, it's also my current "belief" that metacognition could be a tool to help us live psychotically... to monitor and control/regulate our disordered thinking... albeit with the reality that it is defective and some days it works better than others... to allow us to think less disorderly, if not simply to prevent us from thinking more disorderly each every day.

Why emphasizing the notion of "the tools to learn to think metacognitively"?  It's because psychotics have to be the one to derive metacognitive knowledge and skills from our own the metacognitive experiences in order to come up with the best strategies to intervene the outcome of our disordered-thoughts and out-of-whack metacognition. Although I have only the limited amount of conversation with other psychotic patients in more stabilized state about our psychotic experiences, I have heard people spoken of metacognitive experiences... like... "it's so funny that your think the people on TV are talking about you,"  which points to the knowledge that "what my reality is not the so-to-speak reality shared by the others.

This is something most of us (if not all of us) already do although we might not always get it done as well as we would like to, and we (at least mes myselves) just need to get better at it... the antipsychotic department of metacognition... as time goes on... as we keep on kicking...

Of course, the reason why I speak of metacognition is because it happens to be a word in my dictionary and part of my educational background.  For someone else, it could be called anything else relevant to their background... such as... my doing the "hells kitchen" thing.

It is my belief.  Yes.

My two cents before going nite nite.

Google stats and metacognition

I check google stats on a daily basis...  It is sort of fun to check out the postings people visited because, all too often, I would be lol by what came out of my mouth.

It is training though... the stats to check... because I have a tendency to generate theories and, many a time, the posts visited actually coincide with thing happened or outta my mouth earlier on in the day.

I check out the demographic info of the users... but... just for the fun of it cuz God knows where visits really came from though... God knows why I am endowed with this propensity to even entertain this notion.  8-O lol

I check the page view... seeing the fact... the limited number of page views on a daily basis... also taking into consideration that some people might simply browsed through the site without stopping or some might have been accessed by bots to entice me to visit their website.  I am surely aware that the contents can also get accessed through RSS feeds... but I have to refrain myself from continuing with that line of thinking since... what good does it do for me.

So, I have been reading up them articles about metacognition because in the writing I have been doing, I also talked about the metacognition kind of stuffs since I think it is something that has helped me to live psychotically.

There are times when I wondered though... why spending all the energy trying to learn to intervene from the metacognitive level?  Wouldn't it be but impose extra amount of stress?

Then, I realized that I was not thinking straight... the psychotic kind of straight...

Without the metacognitive intervention, the stats for my blogs--let along everything happens everywhere else in my everyday life--already provide more than abundant contents for the disordered processing at the cognitive level, which can lead to the fortification of my almighty delusional system.

In a sense, the act of checking out google stats itself is a daily training activity.  How do I do it?  I look at the stats and I have the metacognitive experience that... oopsy... I am thinking delusionally... and find a way to neutralize if not negate the way of thinking.  This is something I do on a daily basis and sometimes more than once a day since the release of google stats for blogger...  Is there a practice effect and do I get better at it after drilling myself on this same task for years? 8-O lol

I would say... yes... I think there is a practice effect... and the reality is that... I could feel that there is this part of my head that is about to fire up to participate in the collaborative activity of information processing... with its specialization in the department of delusion generation... except, at this point, this dosage, and this mental state, I can somehow block it if not stop it from joining in... at least at the conscious level.  Although, of course, I am far from 100% sure.  lol

Can what I learned be transfer to other context especially when knowledge transfer usually do not occur automatically?  Can't quite tell you either... whether my handling with other events in my everyday life is the result of transferring what I learned from the google stats training, independent learning, what I do with google stats is the outcome of transferring what I have learned from other scenario, etc.

Well, regardless, since the unrest mind doesn't feel like to rest any, guess... try to assign it to do something else if possible? 8-O

Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen

Was chatting with this friend the other day... someone I might have seen last on commencement day in 2005... a point, though mental, I was almost certain that, with hard work, I would be able to make myself someone of some kind though, to date, I remain to be in the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder. (So said the experts, the feel of knowing might be reliable but might not have predictive validity. 8-X lol)

Somewhere along our conversation, I told her that what I do everyday could be simply put as "walking" or "stop walking."

Though, in between and within the states of walking and stop walking... with the minor inconveniences in life as the inevitable background noise... carrying my private inferno on my back or not... trotzdem... das leben... for Ratology at walk affords me Handicapped at large (while simply incapable, you, all to tell).

Since nothing's new under the sun, your own Ratology at move shall also afford you your own version of at large... n'est pas?


P.S., I don't have the audacity to use Frankl's "Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen" since I ain't got no clue what it be like to do the Ja sagen in the concentration camp.  Therefore... Trotzdem, das Leben.

Tactics: Defects and workarounds

In working with that DWM and beyond book of mine, I came up with "tactics" to offer Princessa Ratonssita at all points on the time dimension (mes, myselves, and Is).  These tactics fall either under the "It's physical" or "In your head" categories.

The tactics are composed of the defect and the workaround components.  The defects are not equivalent to symptoms; rather, the defects are the unbearable weakness manifested in our symptoms.  The workarounds are the ways that I have identified to live with the disordered thoughts so as to minimize their impacts.  For you who live beyond June 19^th of 2007, you have to attend more to the defects at both the physical and mental level as well as their interactions.  So they say, know thy enemy and, admit it, we are our own worst enemy.  What is to be presented are just some examples of our defects and the means to work around them—just it would take too many more words to cover them all.  lol 8-X

 An example of the tactics under the "In your head" category is...

Defect: Visions of the future | Workaround: Flight 1549: What you see might not be the end result.

Visions of mishaps are one of the most annoying and intrusive symptoms.   They come into your mind either unannounced or get triggered by certain topics or sights of objects.
For a long time, I had this vision and delusion of air crash.  The heavy traffic over the Manhattan sky didn’t help.  Still remember vividly how it felt, one day, when this acquaintance told me, “I have joined the air force!”  The first thing came to my mind—crash.  While it makes me feel scared to “foresee” bad things, it also makes me feel bad because it is as if I were wishing bad things to happen to people.  Then, there came this day when that gentleman landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson, sort of next door, while all on board miraculously walked on water safe and sound.

From then on, when visions and delusions of horrors alike occur, I thought of Flight 1549.

For all these years, I still could not break the associations between the accidents and the whole flight chapter in my life—regardless the dosage of Seroquel I was/am on, and my mental state.  Yet, Flight 1549 offered me an alternative way to work with symptoms alike.  Essentially, well, even if I cannot defy the impact of them visions and delusions, I can always think of Flight 1549 and say to myself, “Even you really have some strange capability to see what lies beyond, look at Flight 1549, it’s not until after the event will you know the actual outcome.”

Sort of like... "there is more to them than meets the eyes..." So said the huge truck of my dream... my octopus prime (possibly your Uptimus prime).