In the old days, if someone asked why the ocean was blue, they may get a satisfactory answer, “God made it so”. Now we are usually satisfied with a longer explanation like this, “The light of a particular frequency range hits our eye, and then the brain somehow makes you feel the sensation blue”. But how? Where is the missing link between the brain and sensations that happen in the space of experience?

4 months ago, I couldn’t run for 5 minutes and hated the idea of running. Now I can go for a 5k run and enjoy it. What happened here? I discovered how to run. It turns out a lot of us try to run too fast. We end up burning out before our bodies warm up. The key to enjoy running is to be kind to yourself and use an easy effort.

I recently got skin infections from Muay Thai training, which took me a couple weeks to recover from. After a few doctor visits, I still don’t know what exactly it was or if it was a mix of things. Eventually with the mix of antibiotic and antifungal treatments, I’m recovered and back into action. Here’s a post on how to deal with and reduce the risk of skin infections in contact sports.

I was fortunate to work closely with a philosopher and got introduced to some ideas in philosophy. I came across this mind-blowing idea called Idealism. This post will require a large amount of open-mindedness. It’s about what consciousness is. I will talk about the common misconceptions of Idealism and why I disagree with some mainstream ideas. Then I will try to introduce Idealism. Some of the following ideas will seem very controversial to a 21st-century mind, but I think they offer a plausible and useful point of view, if you take it slow.

How It Started One day I wondered, what if I’m supposed to be left-handed but got taught to use my right hand for everything? Also, could handedness be a myth? From there, I started an experiment of learning to write with my left hand. This is perhaps the most useless side project I’ve done, but I loved it a lot! The Method A few months ago, I discovered this lovely granny’s handwriting method.

This month I’ve been fascinated by meditation. At the end of last year, I got interested after I heard that meditation is the best way to learn about our minds and reality, from Yuval Noah Harari in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. I’ve been following Sam Harris’s meditation course. I think it’s profound. Motivation To always know that I don’t have to react to every thought and feeling that crosses my mind.

Joshua FoerNature vs. Nurture Inspired by Joshua Foer’s TED talk, I became interested in learning memory techniques. Here are my main takeaways from his talk. Great memory is learnt. The memory champions use the spacial memory and navigation parts of their brain to remember, while untrained people don’t. The trick to remember is to engage as many senses and meanings as you can. The Mnemonic Peg System I came across the Mnemonic Peg System while reading about how to remember dreams better.

Lucid dreams are dreams where you know that you are dreaming. Once you realise you are dreaming, it opens up a whole lot of possibilities. You could fly, time-travel, create objects out of thin air, move things with your mind, or teleport to the beach. You could also ask your subconscious mind to help you solve problems and come up with creative ideas. Many great inventors and artists get inspiration from their dreams.