Fiction: Behind This Little Cafe [part 4 -the end]

4. The back of the little cafe

One day, as living on ‘MySara’ sustenance money began to drag, Mala, eating Cheezeballs from a giant no-brand family-sized packet, Jacob told her, “There’s this place where hookers hang out. I found it -behind this little cafe...”

“Jacob, WHAT do you have to do with hookers?” She was breast-feeding their child.

“See, I can’t work much, nor can you, but we could all eat better for cheap -why not go over and see?”

Mala and Jacob held hands as they walked down the row of coffee joints, sushi bistros, and trendy book clubs where everyone was in turtlenecks. These gave way to betting agencies, hole in the wall takeaways, then a thicket of mulberry trees. They pushed through up to a doorstep obscured by dense branches and the buzzing of hornets. He rapped on it nervously, and a slot slid open. “I’m Jacob Wee, this is my wife, Mala.”

“Mala, who lost the Oakleys and purse, and you, who cleaned The Alley -okay, okay, wait -ah”

They heard a shaky hand jiggle a bunch of keys, then a lock turn, and they saw the leper who ran the place. The little cafe at the end of nowhere. Behind him, walls seared by a blaze -a fire, long ago -burn them all off their town, some young guns tried. 

Instead, it facilitated a narrow, hidden stairway down to a moody basement cafe, lined with standing candles and purple stucco hung with tribal masks. It was half dark but they glimpsed his disfigurement -one of his hands, gnarled. He walked with a limp towards the back, where a sign hung, 

‘Now the Lord God planted a garden east of Eden.’

“What is this place?” She peeled back dense foliage where naked bodies were joining.

“It exists for lonely people, for clean love. In reality it is but an illusion.”

“Isn’t this illegal? Jacob, what were you thinking?”

“Mala, wait. This is a good place and Eric is trustworthy. Maybe this is where we can start again.”

Eric showed them from the mirror-windowed control room, how filtered, subtly-strobing lights created the illusion of dense 3D vegetation, while ionized vapor and a loopy audio track set the stage for the olfactory sensations. There were tall stands of artificial plants here and there to give structure to the illusion.

“The hookers, are they also illusions?” Mala whispered.

More men got up from their tables and entered the garden which now featured a realistic waterfall and tropical birdsong. “No, but they’re ugly,” Eric glared at her.

Mala looked closely and saw they were all lepers like their boss. None of them really joined in the flesh. It was all simulated.

Eric showed them to a table. “You seen 2 sick heads buying beer and condoms at the mini mart? Who’d ever give them a ride but my ladies? And dang, they knew it!”

“Where are they now? When do they visit?”

But Eric kept silent, his dark face stretched with a broad smile. “They’ll soon get what they deserve. Have some fried chicken, Texas style.”

Mala bit into the crispy battered wings. Her eyes sparkled as she held his hand. Jacob, with that same far away look. A Swipe-n-Pay card was left on the table, 'Barney Liu', it read. Beside it, her lost purse. They charged their meal to the card. 

 

Fin.

I bought a plastic fife (traditional flute) by Yamaha...

I had $15 left in my debit account so I bought it without thinking much. It's quite a charming instrument to behold, made out of creamy smooth plastic, curvy in some places, with lip guards over the blow hole. It has actually got 8 holes arranged non-linear down the body, tho you only really need to operate 7 holes (ignoring the underside one, permanently closed).

It comes as a 2 piece fit which makes it portable for busking. But personally, I think its 34cm length is okay as it is. The tuning is quite interesting and allows me to play quite a number of popular songs more easily than on bamboo flute -without having to trial and error arrange them.

Fife, where have you been all my life?

To make the flute sing, you have to force air at medium velocity across the hole in a focused fashion, meaning making a pinhole with your lips. Sharper blows produce a higher octave easily. My technique is to gently push my lower lip against the lip guards (see pic above), which are on either side of the blow hole. It is wrong to rotate the fife, rather it has an adjustment round the back so you can vary the angle of your breath across the blow hole. Mine is almost negative 2. After that, it should resonate with a deep, warm sound.

Trust me, it's doable and quite fun. If you're thinking of other types of flute, consider this one as well -it's well worth $15. 

Fiction: Behind This Little Cafe [part 3]

3. Playing the blues


Mala wasn’t the same since their shameful exit from the expensive eatery. Jacob decided to take a job while she, pregnant, rested at home. He had made her pregnant. “Think of it as a gift” -and she loved it. All was forgiven.


Meanwhile, he bought a tough brush and cleaning powder from the dollar store, a pair of thick rubber gloves and boots; and proceeded to clean the stretch of back lane along where their flat was. He started at 11pm, after all the businesses had closed. The next morning, he sent out flyers to all the shops to open up al-fresco along the alley way. It was cool much of the day from its tall walls. Meanwhile, every night, he ferried trash bins to the end of the block to keep it clean. He made a lot of friends among migrant workers, and substantial money too. But there were those who were unhappy with that.


Shortly, the curtain that separated the two families was drawn back as they awaited the birth of their grandchild, and renewed prosperity.


“We have a clever son-in-law,” said Mala’s father, “And a good man.”


Jacob scrubbed the street every night past midnight most nights, as patrons were used to staying late. They were just everyday people, not wealthy, come for cheap food and beer and a comfortable space to talk. One night, as he was dragging the trash bins, he was surrounded by teenagers.


“You think we forget so easily?”


“Forget what?”


“You’re an eyesore, friend. Hey, an eyesore pervert cleaned up this street and wants a living. Shall we let him take over this turf?”


The leader, who was bigger than him shoved his chest, “I want this back alley. Mine -you understand?”


“Then I will just clean it.”


There was a tear that welled up in the leader’s eye. Out of his pocket, he fished out Jacob’s Oakleys. He put them on and slicked back his hair, “How do I look?”


Then he took them off and snapped them in half. He placed them in Jacob’s hands, looked him in the eye, and said, “Come on, let’s go.”


Mala’s family gave Jacob some fragrant oils as over time, he began to acquire an odor. He also coughed and sneezed more. And it was after their child was born, he admitted he could no longer be the trash collector of their alley, much less the janitor. He wasn’t built for such hard work.


“You shouldn’t have done it,” Mala said.


“I have no regrets. I made friends. I made business better. *cough*”


The afternoons grew increasingly hot and it seemed sometimes, like a dry dusty wind blew among the shacks and shoeboxes. People’s clothes changed. They wore checks and plaid where rips wouldn’t show so easily. Most of them, elderly, riding electric scooters that had seen better days. Their alley was an oasis in the desert of hard times. Mala’s granny gave him a harmonica. She hesitated as she placed it in his hands. It felt heavy, made fully of metal.


So he busked the blues -and became rather good at it. What his wife hadn’t told him was that money was running out on both sides of their family.

The Optical Banana Bow Sight

Being cheap and innovative, I came up with this very simple bow sight idea. I call it the Optical Banana. To calibrate it, make a slit in some plastic. Then separate the slit by wedging it half backways and half frontways (so there is a small non-linear gap between top and bottom of the cut.

Next, draw with a marker, a line from the top to the bottom, passing over the slit. Draw with another color, next to the first mark, and so on as necessary. 

What happens is when you lift the bow, the gap between upper and lower converges and is indicative of the longer distance aimed at ballistically. At further distances, the slit, made wider, converges upper and lower of the next color marking. The width of the slit is configurable via sliding the wedges.

IMHO, a very simple and fun project to build and test. There may be professionally-made ones available from America soon, as they inquired about it. But for now, I have a bow sight, at least one that doesn't suck.

Think I will make mine from card for now, with a metal clip as the wedge width calibrator. Sometime tonight.

. . .

Am wearing my Mudman 9300 Solar on a 22mm NATO. The previous Velcro just didn't feel right. Nor did the original rubber strap. Drank a lot of Coke and took in some sun which helped with my chest infection / cough since yesterday. Hope to head out tomorrow for a walk. Also have to finish up my short story.

Just past 10pm. Must do some coding on n4s which I had neglected.

. . .

Today, my shrink appointment. Was up early, managed to get cleaned well. Feeling a little weak and phlegmy this morning. Got a little coding done. Brought along a face mask.

Fiction: Behind This Little Cafe [part 2]

2. Misunderstandings and Loss

Barney and K-why shopped at the supermarket behind the dollar store. They bought beer and condoms. K-why smiled conspiratorially and the cashier, polite, just replied “have a good time, sir.”

“By the way, have you seen a tall, handsome young guy in Oakleys?”

“Sure, he comes by often, buys Coke and ice cream.”

“Huh,” said Barney “He takes pictures of young girls -find out for yourself. Spread the word, he’s a lecher and a thief.”

“One on one,” K-why made 2 intersecting Vs with his fingers, and they laughed each other silly. 

Standing outside, Mala heard them, and reported it to Jacob. “You better do something,” she said, “what else have you been hiding -lah”

“I haven’t been hiding anything -it’s all lies”

“I don’t know if I should see you anymore...”

That evening, the dividing vinyl curtain was somehow locked. Jacob went up to the roof and Mala was sitting, legs dangling off the side that faced the bright lights, the entertainment businesses, and boutique eateries.

She heard him, “leave me alone.”

But he put his Oakleys over her eyes. She felt for them and smiled. Then took a selfie with her mobile. He held her, tears streaking down his face.

Very soon, he became known as ‘Jacob the Crook’, ‘Hated Jacob’. People slipped laxatives in his coffee, and talked about him on the train. Others reported him as a sex offender at the rail station.

But Mala had made a lot more since sporting his sleek Oakleys. Some things were simply worth the money -evergreen. He met her at the station, where she returned from her new job as a grid girl at the race track. They liked her slightly bigger two front teeth and ‘high class’ vibe.

“Have to stand under an umbrella, in the sun. And have to wear this,” her hands described the cut of her sexy outfit. “I’m Indian -lah, sun’s no big deal,” she propped up the expensive American-made lenses on her forehead. Her eyes were sparkling.

At her urging, they stepped into the popular boutique eatery, as she was loaded and dressed to kill. It was their first time inside.

There were whispers when the other couples saw them. “Isn’t he the handsome guy who takes and doesn’t pay? They say he likes looking girls up and down.”

“Sir, you pay up front, someone spoke over his shoulder.”

“I’m paying,” Mala said.

“Then it’s okay, " announced the manager, “his girlfriend is rich.”

Jacob looked on, emotionless. They drank the low-alcohol beer and had their fill of tapas. Mala held his hand and smiled, just like all the girls were doing. Well, if she likes it, he thought to himself. He could sense the scoffers ready to unleash.

“We’d better go now,” he took her arm.

“Why leave so soon? Air here too expensive for you; $100 a month. Drive a Proton Saga -lah. Eh -BICYCLE only,” the cozy joint broke out in a wall of laughter.

“Jacob, have you seen my purse?”

“Thieves get paid back,” someone called, but he didn’t turn to look.

So they left the $1,000 Oakleys as surety, to looks of distaste.

“How much was in your purse?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He knew, from her frown, it was wildly more than she had expected.

Fiction: Behind This Little Cafe [part 1]

1. Behind This Little Cafe

A family with a handsome young son moves into a small shoebox shack neighborhood and everyone is excited. When his sinister shadowers arrive, confusion and mistrust quickly set in. But help is there even in the darkest hours from the ones who appear dumb poor, but in fact are humble and blessed.

1. The new boy in town

There was a bustling shanty town, lying like a rough encrusted gem, about a run down repurposed cinema with its parking lot of dollar-store customers. Shacks, shoeboxes strewn around brick and mortars, increasingly taken up by millennial entrepreneurs. So it was that my friend Jacob, his mother and father, came to live in a third floor half-flat overlooking a stenching back lane strewn with mangled rats and sour rotting trash.


The flat was partitioned with a vinyl curtain that felt like the lino flooring and there were only 2 shared bathrooms. On the other side, there was a Chinese-Indian family with a daughter. He had never liked the word ‘Chindian’, but that was what Malaysians called them. Her skin was smokey and her wavy hair had natural body. But it was her almondish eyes and buck teeth that gave away what she and himself shared. Looking at her, he saw himself, it was like she was his cousin yet, being alone with her, chaperoned, office hours, only by her granny who couldn’t hear, they told each other the stories of their hearts. And they shared love in small shallow dips.


The metro station was visible from the roof of the building he lived in. And in between drawing his Christian comic strip which earned him a paltry $100 a month (besides state benefits to cover groceries), he rode the rails. And they were his window into worlds of which he never suspected existed. He saw a cash box courier with spiked gauntlets and collar; girls with boobs out to there, cosplay babes, and travellers from the west where everything was better made, from their clothes to their packs, to their hair and complexions.


His was a life on hold. He wanted a sign to hold up: ‘please don’t mind me’. But by and large, maybe because he wore Oakleys, girls did dance a little as they passed by. He didn’t protest, even if he couldn’t drive them to Uptown for dinner.


She revealed something to him one day, as they leaned against the rail of his balcony. “Call me something -lah.”


“What do you mean?”


“You’re Jacob. Pure Chinese. I’m just a rojak mixed blood. Give me a name.”


“Jesus loves you. Whatever your name, however you look.”


“Give me a name doesn’t mean Jesus anything.” she proceeded to peel off her top and unbutton her jeans. “Give me YOUR name.”


Soy forms curd on top of its milk. It was skimmed off and left to dry in the sun. And they loved, between the sheets of the delicacy, hung on the rooftop lines. Hers was wet when they had finished. And his was spent dry. There was stain like cheap school glue over the pitted concrete they lay on. And nobody cared, or would bother later.


“Where do you work?”


It came reluctantly, “I’m a food promoter. I just stand there outside the airconned shop, with makeup and a tight skirt. They pay me almost nothing except their expensive logo T-shirt.”


“I know you’re an artist and a leader.” She rolled on top of him, her fists on his chest. But her granny’s voice came calling from below.

Simplification of modern computer architecture…

Say a computer has to calculate the speed / acceleration of a bullet versus a moving target. We can represent this as F = ma intersects a linear locus = velocity x elapsed time.

Say the details aren’t important, so we use the following logic, 

at t1, a is 0, locus is 0

at t2, a is F/m, locus is v.t2

etc.

where they intersect, hit or miss, is v.tN’ and a.tN.tN’. where location of both colliding objects is n1 and n2.

The computer, would take t, n, and v, a as symbols. The processing is simple as t is a running total, n is a fv, and a is v.t.t’ where v is constant.

Such a machine need only consider t++, and the multiplication of v and t in the same clock.

But this gets interesting when we are faced with multiple projectiles as is common nowadays in games. This includes the modeling of a sprite running and firing bullets.

We can see that we need only implement fv over the whole game scene. Same with weather forecasts, but with a few more variables, namely, Work = energy.t , and it is incorporated as such that we have the following variables, force/t = mass.t while F is also equal to ma. We need only add F/t and m.t into our processing. These are simply vectors which alter fv’s vectors.

Say there is reflection, mirror effect, then we need to take fv and complicate it with n/n’. So far so good, minimal waste.

Say the movement is fast. We can use the case, locus towards 0 instead of upping FPS. The direct opposite. To implement the silicon, we need a dedicated fv co-processor or GPU with circa 4 cores or more depending on variables. 

To train AI, it is the same but with a co-processor which matches fv to other variables, the vector being a linguistic, photo, scientific (physics), or logic problem. To achieve processing, the subject is reverse taken apart (reverse engineered) by fv, then compared to another, fv‘ and so on. There is no need for specialized software and hardware.

...

 

Finally managed to unload / get cleaned. 1 1/2 hours till chores. My throat is less sore and am feeling less sleepy.

 

Am wondering if the above 'modern computer architecture' is any good. I wrote it last night as I was going under my sedative. It might not be very correct, but I think the gist of it is useful and someday computer GPUs may be cheaper / more efficient this way.

 

As for the CPU itself, there are just 3 basic functions it needs to handle which are  fr , fw , and fop. The logic behind this is to simplify and modularize reads, writes, and operations. Since we deal with functions of r, w, and op, we do not need a complex CPU but 3 simple cores that carry their own instruction local sets, hidden from one another.

 

For example fr may be tasked by the program, to read AddressN, write to AddressN+1, remove AddressN through an operation of N NOR N+1. It need only take 'read AddressN' and pass the code to the next core. The function of r, will handle the execution async and in OOP mode. Therefore fr needs to have it's own scheduler-listener-passer as do the other cores.

 

Such a CPU is easy to build and relatively fast for the cost. It is easy to code for and can scale perhaps to 100s of cores on a single chip.

 

...

 

I was asked about quantum computers. The most I know is that the electron and voltage do not feature in QC. Rather think of it as a laser, a stream of photons bouncing from one end to the other of a long, say 50 meter tube. Eventually, a beam is emitted from the QC, and it is the reading, the solution. The larger the QC, the more it can process per clock. Think of a super-collider. It would be fast and accurate.

 

Each time light bounces on a tube end, it receives instructions. And there may be thousands of tubes, made with fiber optics. I guess that's all I know. 

 

...

 

It's soon to be chores time. I took a shower and am feeling better overall. Had noodles for dinner and some leftover chicken from the chapfarn store nearby. Helped sweep and mop, finishing a little late, 8pm. Seems we are able to wrap up the global Liew empire of evil witchcraft anytime soon. I hope it is soon.