VOI: February 2003 Archives

I've always wanted to have library in my house one day. A honest-to-God, library. Books wall to wall, from the floor to the ceiling. Book stacked up as high as a standing man lying around in eccentric disarray. And in the middle of it all, two worn, comfortable leather chairs for me and the missus to pass our evenings in thought, reading the volumes of accumulated knowledge surrounding us. It is from this vision, this dream, comes the name for this website, the "Volume of Interactions".

We interact with volumes of knowledge every day of our lives. With the people we meet, with the books we read, with the shows we watch on tv. Even in our very own minds, interactions of knowledge occur every split second as we feel, we breathe, we think, we smile, we cry, we bleed, we live.

John Donne (1572-1631), "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

Indeed, how true. We are defined by our interactions, from within and from without. We are defined by our Volume of Interactions.

I almost never swear. Its got to be a pretty ground breaking stuff before i launch into a tirade of expletives. Don't get me wrong - i'm certainly no angel, its just that i choose not to use profanity (bastard, bitch and asshole are not categorized as profanity in my vocabulary).

But there are times, like today, that i just feel like spewing it all out, preferably at the people who are the cause of the frustration. Training mature adults in the use of the Internet can be a very disturbing exercise, and it seems that the further north i go in Malaysia, the worse it gets. I was t-h-i-s close to losing it with a few of my trainees today. God knows how i managed to keep a straight face.

I think the reason why i swear so rarely is because i know what a calming effect it has on me. When i'm under tremendous stress or terribly frustrated, a few "f**k you"s and "motherf**kers" is incredibly liberating. If i were to use it more often, i think the salving effect of swearing would be lost and i just can't have that.

Received this email from a buddy who has been reading my poetic exploits of late [Poem 1] [Poem 2]. Interesting observations to say the least. He wrote:

Lets face it, there are only 3 reasons why guys write poems for their gals:

1) they're fags (read Azahan)

2) they want to get into her pants

3) to make up after screwing up