Mark Twain's 176th Birthday

Today's the birthday of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). He is better known under the pen name "Mark Twain".

To celebrate his birthday, Google has placed a drawing of a couple of boys painting a fence on its homepage.

Louis Daguerre's 224th Birthday

Today's Google home page shows an old black and white photo of a family in a photo frame. This photograph, a daguerreotype, is to mark Louis Daguerre's 224th birthday.

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was a French artist and physicist, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography.

Mask

Mask, is it worn over the face or is it worn over the heart?
Mask, is it worn to deceive others or is it worn to deceive one's heart?
Does one hurt others when wearing a mask or does one hurt their own heart?
Should one be wearing a mask or should one really cast it away?

- BuLaDiFu -

Afterthoughts from an Interesting Quote...

From Kamisama no Memo-chou Episode 12 (Alice): "You see, Narumi, NEETs are not people who can't do anything or don't try to do anything. All that separates them are the rules they follow. With different rules, they can't play the game the same way. The other players become bewildered. They knit their brows in confusion. Thus they rush to label and categorize them, to isolate them, and regain their peace of mind. But NEET is not a label. It's a way of life." From Wikipedia: "NEET is a government acronym for people currently 'not in education, employment, or training'. It was first used in the United Kingdom but its use has spread to other countries, including Japan, China, and South Korea. People under the designation are called NEETs (or Neets)."

Interestingly, this quote from the anime seems to fit well into points highlighted in Hikikomori (Wikipedia).

"Young adults may feel overwhelmed by modern Japanese society, or be unable to fulfill their expected social roles as they have not yet formulated a sense of personal honne and tatemae – one's 'true self' and one's 'public façade' – necessary to cope with the paradoxes of adulthood."

Perhaps these NEETs, are just people who live or strive to live 'true to themselves'. Wishing to follow upon this rule, they could not fit into our modern society (Not just in Japan but as a whole). Yes, our modern society - a place where one does not or should not show one's true self or ideas to the public, a place where one has to wear a mask in front of others.

Failure to do so, oftentimes result in being alienated, taken advantaged of or worse, being 'backstabbed' in office politics. All because one had chosen to follow his/her own rules and showed one's true self. Perhaps as a result of this or a sum of these, NEETs had chosen to withdraw themselves or even lose their jobs even if they had one and ultimately, being unable to land themselves on a new job.

To add to this, they refuse to let go of their own rules, to assimilate into modern society, probably because doing that might mean that they are defeated by life and that itself would make life meaningless or they would thus lose their sense of direction in life.

They sought for a haven, one where they could live in while being true to themselves. What they have seeked, they found it in 'The Internet'. This place has no barriers, no requirements, no prerequisites. Perhaps because there is no rules, NEETs find that in this place, no one can judge his/her rules to be right or wrong and hence the link between NEETs' so called 'attachment' to the Internet.

On another note, you will probably recognize these traits of NEETs to be found in children. And just so as to speak, these traits are said to be 'cute' or something along that line when referring to children, but when these same traits are found in adults, they become undesirable. Perhaps, it wouldn't be too far from the truth to associate them as 'Children in an Adult Body'? (I'm pretty sure NEETs will often be asked to 'grow up'.)

"A decade of flat economic indicators and a shaky job market in Japan makes the pre-existing system requiring years of competitive schooling for elite jobs appear like a pointless effort to many."

"After graduating from high school or university, Japanese youth also have to face a very difficult job market in Japan, often finding only part-time employment and ending up as freeters with little income, unable to start a family."

There can only be this many 'elite' jobs and jobs that pay well often requires that one 'own' at least a few 'masks'. Without this ability to don on a different mask depending on the persons your socializing with can be a huge disadvantage. Imagine saying the wrong things during an interview or shooting off remarks that offended your employer's important customers. Just that would be sufficient reasons to cause NEETs to lose their jobs or fail to get one.

All that's left would probably be those jobs that require less or no socializing with others (those part-time jobs or low paying ones), which is growingly becoming impossible to find. As most jobs in our society now requires interactions with others and with interactions there will be friction if one does not own masks (conveniently called 'Socializing skill' or 'Networking'?).

"The Japanese education system, like those found in China, Singapore and South Korea, puts great demands upon youth. A multitude of expectations, high emphasis on competition, and the rote memorization of facts and figures for the purpose of passing entrance exams into the next tier of education in what could be termed a rigid pass-or-fail ideology, induce a high level of stress. Echoing the traditional Confucian values of society, the educational system is still viewed as playing an important part in society's overall productivity and success."

How often have you been told by your parents that education is the key to success? But in reality, is that true? How long does it take to get a 'Degree'? 26 years? So after these 26 years of education, how many of these Bachelors could actually find a job? More often than not, what we're being taught in our education is vastly different from what is required in the actual working world.

And with this massive amount of competition due to our ever growing population, the number of 'decent' jobs vs the number of people who need 'decent' jobs is widening. As with all things that follow the law of supply and demand, its not hard to conclude that the requirements of landing on a particular job gets increasingly demanding. Ten years ago, there are only so many people with a degree and these people will get the 'decent' jobs. Now, there are so many types of degrees out there that practically anyone you grab out on the streets has a degree. So the 'decent' jobs have now 'upgraded' to requiring 'Masters' or multiple degrees. Soon perhaps in ten or twenty years time, they will probably start requiring 'PHDs'. And probably then, some other thingamajig will be cooked up that is of a 'higher' quality than PHD.

To make matters worse, education has deviated from its original path and became more and more 'business-like'. They have been churning out tons and tons of different certificates (There's even now a Bachelor, Masters or even PHD for 'Social Work'. Would that have been imaginable ten or twenty years ago?).

Each and every job that is available in our modern world now requires a person to 'own' a particular type of education to be 'qualified' for that kind of job. From a single person's point of view and with so many different types of certs out there, taking the wrong step and choosing a wrong cert to study for would spell doom. From there on, you would probably have to restudy for another cert, which again might or might not be useful in securing your future and is a 'luxury' that not many can afford. To add to that, the mentality that education is no longer trustworthy becomes etched in the person's mind (a pointless effort). This thus leads us to the point stated below.

"In this social frame, students often face significant pressure from parents and the society in general to conform to its dictates and doctrines. These doctrines, while part of modern Japanese society, are increasingly being rejected by Japanese youth in varying ways such as hikikomori, freeter, NEET (Not currently engaged in Employment, Education, or Training), and parasite singles."

Clearly, with that sort of mentality, the most logical path from then on would be to rebel or reject it. To forge on a brand new path, following a new set of rules, their own rules. And hopefully find a new world, a new future. This of course depends on the particular individual and his/her surroundings. Those whom reject education would turn out to be NEETs, while others who surrender themselves and sink into despair might become something else.

Marie Curie's 144th Birthday

On today's Google home page features a lady sitting beside a work table holding a flask of reagent. Apparently, this lady is Marie Curie and today's her 144th birthday.

Marie Skłodowska Curie was a Polish–French physicist–chemist who was famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity.

Scream

I scream at the top of my voice, but no sound can be heard
I scream at the top of my voice, but no words can come out
No sentences can convey what I am feeling inside
No solution that I can see to guide me to my journey's end

- BuLaDiFu -

Onward Struggle

After working hard on building up my blog, I have managed to fulfill the six month content requirement. Immediately, I tried to reapply for my adsense account to see if I can get it. (Note that on top of the six month content requirement, there is a need to place a privacy policy for your site too.)

Within hours of sending the application, I received an email confirmation of a partial account approval. After getting to this stage, I went into my blog account's monetize tab and went through the easy steps to place ad units to my blog.

Initially, these ad units are blank spaces which blend with my blog design. But because they were blank, I couldn't really tell whether I did the right thing. Did I place them correctly and will my account be fully approved? These sort of things went through my head.

Next I logged into the Adsense account to have a look and saw tons of options to click. Its pretty overwhelming to me as a newbie to this whole thing. Trying to understand what I am getting myself into, I started plowing through those articles in the Adsense Help section.

Reading the help section is actually a pretty good idea. It took my mind off the unnecessary thoughts about whether my account will get approved or not. In addition, it gave me some important information regarding ad units, link units, adsense for content, feed and search.

From what I read, each page can only hold 3 ad units, 3 link units and 2 customized searches. After some digging of articles and trying around with those ad units, link units and stuff, this is what I've learnt.

For blogspot bloggers, if for example, we placed 2 ad units on the home page (under design tab), no matter which page or post we go to, these 2 ad units will always be shown and therefore takes up 2 out of the 3 ad units limit.

And if you selected the option to show ad units within posts via the inline ads, then you will inevitably overshoot the 3 ad units limit in certain situations and on certain pages depending on how often an ad is shown in between posts. To avoid this, I personally feel it would be better to omit the inline ads option and then place them within your posts yourself. (Besides...using the inline ads option, it will place your ad unit at the very bottom of your post's page...which is a pretty lousy position for an ad anyway.)

If you choose to place the final ad unit in your posts, then you will have to make sure that on your home page, the ad unit won't show up in multiple posts and make you go over the 3 ad units limit on your home page. (I'm guessing that you will have to make use of the jump breaks.)

After deciding on the placement of ad units, I wanted to try out the link units. But as soon as I put a link unit onto the home page, I discovered that one of the ad units became blank. It doesn't show up even after refreshing. I only found out that this was due to the blogger system, while observing the adsense limits, somehow counts link units together with ad units towards the same limit.

Well...since placing 3 ad units & 3 link units onto a page would make it too crowded with ads (considering that I use some amazon banners too), I've decided to just settle with using 3 ad units plus perhaps some amazon banners. I guess I will probably play around with the positioning of amazon banners and ad unit within posts.

I've also managed to set up my customized search engine and feed with ads from adsense, but am not sure whether they are properly linked to my adsense account. Only time will tell me this I guess. (If you are having some problems with setting them up, please feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to guide you on how to redirect your feed to that from adsense for feed. Though I'm not sure how helpful I will be to you with my newbie knowledge...)

Anyway, roughly two days after I had placed ad units on my blog, I found that ads from google started to appear in those previously blank spaces. So I guess my adsense account finally got approved. Hurray... ^^;

Okay...I've got my Adsense account...now what?

Now that I've gotten my adsense account, things won't end here...I'll probably put in more effort and focus on filling up my blog with content and information that readers would want to know. Its gonna be one uphill climb from here.

- BuLaDiFu -

A Journey Long Overdued

Many a times, we fail to remind ourselves that we are not perfect...
Man was never perfect...

In our strife for perfectionism, we unrealistically aimed to do everything in one take...
In our quest to not make a mistake, fear starts to set in...

And from this fear, we lose our courage to take that much needed step forward...
A step towards our own future...

- BuLaDiFu -