Since I’ve been tagged by Strat-o-blogster, here’s 8 random facts about me to share with you before the year ends.

I think Aesop is the most concise storyteller ever. Because I prize minimalism, he ranks among the greatest story tellers in my universe. This is the best story I’ve heard illustrating the meaning of the lesser of two evils.

I’ve had a life long interest in freaks and the bizzarre. My favourite sites on these topics are Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society and The Human Marvels and unfortunately both sites have no RSS. Check out Kircher Society’s post on the self-mummifying monks of Japan and also the Voynich Manuscript (another link), which has fascinated me for the longest time.

This is a funny story from my life. When I was an exchange student in Amsterdam in 2000, we used to have lots of house parties attended by international students from all over the world. During one of the parties, my friend from mainland China, Zhang, asked me what’s the meaning of “penis”. So, I told him in Mandarin that it referred to the male sex organ. He got a shock, turned pale and returned to his conversation partner, a female Kiwi called Erika. Erika came to me and asked “Boon! What did you tell him?”. So I recounted what I just recounted here. It turns out that Zhang had asked Erika what was her favourite food and she had replied “Peanuts”. Because he didn’t understand what “Peanuts” meant, she suggested that he asked me. I laughed so hard till I had tears in my eyes when she explained the situation to me.

I love paradoxes, especially paradoxes of self-reference.

Related to paradoxes, proof and truth (all the concepts that attracted my philosophical interest), I once set a goal to understand Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems. I got to the third chapter of Herbert Enderton’s A Mathematical Introduction to Logic, which is the chapter on Incompleteness Theorems, worked through one or two sections but regrettably never completed the remaining sections.

My favourite quote is from a friend, a logician, “If you leave everything till the last minute, then you only have 1 minute to do everything!”. That’s efficiency for you. Not to mention a terribly exciting life.

I spent 10 days living like a monk when I attended my first Vipassana meditation course.

The best non-classical guitar instruction I’ve come across is from Jimmy Bruno and Tomo Fujita. For classical guitar instruction in Singapore, I would recommend Robert Luse.

Won’t be tagging anyone since I can’t think of anyone to tag right now….