"Perceived Time" is not a linear entity

Playing chess in Pousada do Castelo de Óbidos

"Why time goes faster as we age" is a question often asked to the Google Gods. Just do  Google search yourself and find interesting and satisfactory answers that the perception of time going faster as we get older s universal. The logic is simple. When you are 10 years old, 1 year is 10% of your lifetime so far. When you are 30 years old, 1 year is just 3% of your time so far. So, as you get older, you start to perceive that time goes faster.

Sounds simple. right? But no. It is not entirely true. Perceived time gets extremely tricky. Sad and boring days go slow. The pandemic 2020 with mostly lock down and work from home home-alone felt to be moving in a snail speed. But looking back, it also feels like time went fast. boring periods feel differently when you experience it vs. when you look at it later.

I also kept moving across nations pretty fast between 2012 - 2018, every year living in 2 countries in average. When you arrive in a country, you feel like your life starts from scratch. Especially if you knew no one from the country, you could really redefine yourself. I often feel like a blank white sheet when I arrive in a country for the first time. As I was living a nomadic life from 2012 - 2018, I rarely bought many things. Any stuff I bought, I had to throw away as I moved to another country. Then, we buy new things in the other country that we arrive. It was like getting new blood. But since 2018 June, I am in Atlanta. Almost 3 years with no change in location, even the apartment. With 3 years, my minimalist lifestyle has slightly changed as things accumulate at home. Also, unlike the new blood coming in when you move around, staying in one place makes you gather more garbage. Things break, and we have to buy new things - not because we threw away things when we moved to another country - but rather, things decay - the wear and tear.

The first academic year in Lisboa went quite fast - but also left ever-lasting memories of friendships, romance, smiles, and tears. But I have also reviewed and relived those memories several times. I have gone through those photos repeatedly. I fondly called those times, "those days," especially the first 6 months of Lisboa. The first year of Lisboa - I lived it again and again, every time I returned to Portugal from other countries such as Sweden, Croatia, Belgium, and USA. Now, looking back, the period between 2012 August - 2013 July feels like quite a long time, compared to the rest of time in my life such as 1987 - 2012 and 2014 - 2021.

I used to write weekly blog posts during my first academic year in Portugal. Then, when I moved to Sweden, I started writing monthly posts. Then upon return to Lisboa, I intermittently blogged my life. I resumed the weekly blog posts during the early COVID19 days of 2020, which I later stopped as WFH was normalized and became normal. Especially with the vaccine, now we feel we may get back to normal life soon. The cases still remain high though. Those excitement of weekly posts also brings a perception of long days when I look back at 2012 - 2013 in Lisboa. We don't remember the events. We remember the last time we remembered the events. When we repeatedly recall an event, it starts to feel closer than it actually is.

When I go on a long-trip that lasts more than 2 weeks, the first half goes feels long. But the second half goes too fast. Maybe that the first half is like the 100% of time I have been in that place where the second half is just the 50%? As I am getting used to all the new places, nowadays, once I land on a new city, the very second day I start to feel home even if I am just staying in a hotel.

Things felt differently when I was young. We used to eagerly wait for the annual trips during our middle-school days. We just started with one-day trips to the villages of Sri Lanka, which became two day trips from grade 9 onward. The 2-day trip involved sleeping over in a new village, and got all of us excited. 2010, my trip to Paris for SoCPaR was both my first foreign trip as well as my first conference experience. As such, it felt special. Now, as I have been to 46 countries and hundreds of cities, such an excitement becomes harder to achieve. I have to go to a farther interesting place to indeed feel the same excitement. Still, I surprise myself in a few exciting trips, such as my visits to Panama or New Orleans.

Perceived time is a weird construct. Trying to explain it makes no sense. This is my conclusion. Long live the memories of our young days.

* Embedded music videos are from INNA. I spent the best days of my life since 2012 (from 2012 and ongoing) listening to her music. It is like growing old with her music, witnessing how her music also evolves and matures. Listening to her music from 2012 - 2013 days takes me back on the memory lanes.

Me and daylight savings

I have this love-hate relationship with the daylight saving time settings. In the spring, European countries and most US states clocks are moved 1-hour faster. Then in the autumn, the clocks are turned back to the regular time. That means when the sun starts to rise late, when you have to go to work in the darkness, you suddenly get one more hour of sleep. But then, you also lose one more hour in the evening. When you come home, it is already very dark. While I appreciate the attempts to adapt to the seasons, such time changes also create an artificial and abrupt timeshift on a single day. I am not sure whether I love or hate these time changes. However, Europe is getting rid of these timeshifts by 2021. There is always a 2-week difference when EU changes time each semester and when the USA changes. There was a time I was flying from Lisboa to Phoenix via MSP. Interestingly, that day the USA was having the time shifted to summertime. However, Arizona doesn't follow daylight savings. This confused me a bit, together with my delayed luggage. I am waiting to see how different EU countries will choose their permanent times as they bid goodbye to daylight savings.

Time zone stories of a nomadic student

Back to cooking in Atlanta

I have this love-hate relationship between the daylight savings observed in many countries. It lets me sleep longer and avoid going to work when it is too dark in the autumn and winter. The sunlight starts to shrink with time as we progress into autumn, and the winter time (which is the actual/natural time) kicks in and gives us one more hour to sleep. But as days progress into winter, the sunlight continues to shrink, still making you wake up and go to work in the dark. On the other hand, as spring comes, the days start to lighten up, with more sunlight. Then the summer time starts, to make you wake up earlier, and to give you more light in the nights.

Time zone change is another factor that you often have to deal with when you migrate from east to west or vice versa. It sometimes helps, and sometimes does not. I found that moving towards west usually helped. It helped me when I moved to Portugal from Sri Lanka in 2012, and then again this year when I moved to Atlanta from Portugal. I have been a night person since 2009. This is a habit I initially picked up with my first GSoC, as my mentors and other developers were from EU and US while I was in Sri Lanka. Later in Portugal, my deadlines often kept me up until mornings (conference submission deadlines are often given as 23:59 EDT or 23:59 AoE/anywhere on earth, which is the next day morning until noon in Portugal). This time although I moved to Atlanta in June, I maintained my biological clock synced with Portugal. Therefore, I go to bed at 10.30 pm (3.30 am in Portugal) and wake up at 6 am every day (11 am in Portugal). I leave home around 7.10 am and arrive at the lab at 7.25 am (if the bus is on time) to 7.33 am (if the bus is delayed). I hope to maintain this habit.

Time capsule - Portugal version

Taxi bill found in my pocket

There were many times I left Lisboa to live in other cities. But I knew that we would return, and usually stored our things securely in safe storage before leaving the city. But this was the first time packing everything, throwing away our 6 years of stuff. The city has loads of memories, and it is overwhelming. I have a feeling that the best part of my life so far, was in Lisboa. Not in Colombo, where I grew up.

Migrations consume lots of energy - especially if the migration is permanent. Portugal was my home for the past 6 years. Although I was moving back and forth between countries, I always returned to Portugal within a year. This year leaving Lisboa was first time as in a permanent move. I will of course go back for my Ph.D. defense soon. But not to live there again. At least no plans in the future that I foresee. We were dropping our clothes that are still relatively new into the donation box since we just can take 1 checked-in bag each in the flight. Later I realized, I dropped my metro card inside mistakenly with one of the shirts. Several months later in Atlanta, I found the taxi receipt from Lisboa in the pocket of my jacket, which I luckily still did not wash. On the taxi to the airport, I had mistakenly dropped a new umbrella and a water bottle from the side pockets of my bag. Leaving a country, throwing away almost everything we accumulated over several years is in fact somewhat a painful experience that we got used to. In fact, that explains our minimalist lifestyle during the past few years in EU.

Memories of Porto, still strong after 6 years

Sometimes we want to go back to visit a few of the places that left strong and pleasant memories in the past. However, it is not always easy to recreate and relive those memories. I wanted to spend some time in Porto before leaving Portugal this year. It was always in my list since we last visited in 2013. However, due to time limitations, we could not make it this year. It will remain forever as a memory of 2013 summer, until I manage to visit it in the future. This takes me back to the memories of Kista and Farsta in Stockholm. I stayed in Kista for my 2013 falls semester in KTH for my EMDC masters program. I used to visit Farsta frequently those days for a walk and for the shopping mall. Farsta also had a Hindu temple. After I left Stockholm and returned to Portugal, I visited Stockholm twice. Once for my masters graduation at KTH and once when I returned from ACRO summer school from Karlstad. I managed to visit Farsta during my first visit. But I missed Kista during both of my visits. Kista is not much of a fun except the shopping mall which also hosted our student accommodation as well as our Kista campus (far from the main KTH campus).

Memories are the best part of a travel. I sometimes like to travel to new places. Often I just want to go back to a place that I previously enjoyed and loved. Even if I go back, the same places do not always give the same memories. Things change. Places also change. Thus our experiences.

How to time-travel?

Time traveling is an exciting concept that has been portrayed in several fiction, literature, and movies. While I am not sure about its feasibility, at least we can simulate the feeling. :D

Let's try, step by step, to travel back in time.

The first step, pick a time and location that you like to time travel. It should be a location that you have been in the past time. It should have given you strong memories. It does not have to be happy memories. Not all the sad memories are necessarily terrible.

Have you decided a place and a time? I have for myself, chosen a few pairs of locations and years:  2017 in Louvain-la-Neuve, 2016 in Atlanta, 2015 in Rijeka, 2013 in Kista, 1987 until 2012 several parts of Colombo, and 2012 in New Delhi.

Now for this to work without causing confusion to you, you should not have visited the same places in between. Otherwise, the memories collide. :D For example, I haven't visited Rijeka after 2015 and Kista after 2013.

Also not all the places will take you back in time giving a time-traveling atmosphere. I was in Stockholm for the 2nd part of my EMDC MSc program in 2013. But I returned to Portugal for my thesis in 2014. However, it did not feel the same anymore. My friends did not return to Portugal with me. So make sure to bring the same people with you when you plan your time traveling. Might be a good idea to wear the same clothes too, to bring back the exact moment. :P

Next, are you back in your destination [location, time], such as [Rijeka, 2015]? Great. Make sure to go to the same restaurants, beaches, and universities that you frequented. Use the same mode of transport. If possible, eliminate anything new. Like, if you never owned a laptop in 2015, don't bring a laptop with you. :D

Great! Music plays a huge role in our memory. Listen to some songs or watch some music videos of the time. It works best if you did not listen to these songs in between. Otherwise, the original memories you allocated to the song might have faded away.

I have picked the below song, which was always playing in Rijeka wherever I went in 2015. I also did not listen to this song afterward. So it is my song of 2015 summer in Rijeka. :P

It is also important to create memories in the first place, to be able to recall them. Making memories is not easy. We don't remember every minor detail of our daily life. But we do remember when we do something remarkable or different. As a thought experiment, during my recent visit to Barcelona, I had Udon at the nearest restaurent for all 3 dinners. I am sure I will remember this forever. :D

Prisoners of Time

I recently watched this amazing video. "Otis Johnson went to jail at the age of 25. When he got out at 69, he rejoined a world that was starkly different from the one he remembered. This is his story."

We often have strong memories when we go back to a place that we have enjoyed before. This year, I had the opportunity to go back to Stockholm after 2 years. Lots of memories. I, in fact, went to Stockholm twice. The second time I went to both Stockholm and Fejan. However, both times I failed to go to Kista, the place where I stayed for 4.5 months, during my entire stay in Stockholm. Our student apartments were located on top of a shopping center. Almost all the shops in the shopping center would close at 9 pm, which I dearly disliked. Other than that, we enjoyed an instant shopping whenever we wanted to. We did not have to walk for shopping.

As I was enjoying Farsta, Stockholm city centre, and Stockholm old city, Kista somehow slipped to the last of the to-visit list. Now, Kista has come back to the top of my places to go when I go back to Stockholm in the future. This is all to re-create the memories of 2013. I can feel the bittersweet feeling Otis faces in the above video. Losing freedom to stay in prison is harsh. While not judging his action and the judgement as that is neither my duty nor the intent of this blog post, I admire the way he expresses himself. This video has become quite popular and viral. I truly hope Aljazeera shares revenue from this video with him. He was quite entertaining and his voice was soothing to listen.a

Dimensions of Time

The summer in Stockholm was long and pleasant

I was reading an interesting study on Erasmus exchange programs. It states, "Not only do former Erasmus students have better employability skills than 70% of all students. What’s more, 27% of Erasmus alumni met their current life partner during their stay abroad, according to the recent Erasmus Impact Study." Go ahead and read the full report. ;) Thanks to the Erasmus Mundus, I have called Lisbon and Stockholm my homes. Of course, the definition of home has become pretty vague lately. The memories I had for the last two years were remarkably interesting.

Time is an interesting element. When we experience the same location after a long time, we feel like travelled through time. Today, the moment when I sit down at FA1, Instituto Superior Técnico after a long time (after around 1.5 years), for a lecture, remembering the legendary moments of EMDC (European Master in Distributed Computing) and Virtual Execution Module. I am sure I will feel the same when I return to Sweden/KTH for the second part of my PhD.

Most of the airports currently provide free Internet for a limited time, such as an hour per device. Since I usually have 3 devices with me during the travels (a laptop, a tab, and a phone), I always get 3x time. :D My devices remember the wifi networks that they have connected to. It is always interesting to view them - they are from universities, airports, hostels, hotels, homes/apartments in Colombo, Lisbon, and Stockholm, and cafes with Internet! They are the logs of the places that I have visited, the lands that host my homes, and my journeys between the destinations. Wish everyone offer unlimited Internet.

Today we got an update regarding the schools participated in Google Summer of Code 2014 (GSoC 2014), from Google. "For the first time in seven years a new school has claimed the top spot—congratulations to International Institute of Information Technology - Hyderabad."

Time has its own dimensions. It is interesting to see how many things change in life and technology. I am sure that the world is becoming a better place to live. I hope I am not being over-optimistic. :)

A log of my computers and my blog posts..

My current laptop in my desk at home

My first desktop computer in 2006 had a dual boot of Windows XP and Mandrake Linux, in just a 40 GB hard disk. I allocated 10 GB for Linux, as Windows was my primary operating system by then. In 256 MB memory. It ran pretty well. The Internet connectivity I got from Suntel was not so good, and was expensive at times. Each time we got a phone call, the modem disconnects the data and I had to be offline till the phone call terminates. I was able to manage with this till 2009, and it was pretty much enough for me. With memory, CPU, and virtually all the important elements replaced over time, the desktop is still somehow alive. I used to have floppy disks of 1.44 MB to have some documents with me. Also, my first pen drive by then was 256 MB.

Then in 2009, I moved to Ubuntu, with my new laptop. It had a 2 GB memory. It actually works even now without any changes in memory, CPU, battery, or any other component, though pretty slow as the current applications require a much larger memory. I stopped using Windows altogether, becoming an open source evangelist. :D

On the 11th of February, I bought my current laptop HP Envy, Intel® Core i7-4700MQ CPU @2.40GHz × 8 processor, 8 GB memory, with a 1 TB hard disk. It came with a Windows 8 (Which I later upgraded to 8.1), which made me have dual boot again. Still having Ubuntu 14.04 as the primary operating system, where Windows remains idling rarely being used. This seems pretty much enough for now; but I am sure it will look terribly small after 2 or 3 years, just how it feels when I think of the days of 256 MB RAM, and the 56 k bandwidths. Today I built OpenDay Light modules, and it takes a whole 13.7 GB with everything built and configured from source code. It would have been 1/3 of my hard disk for my first computer. :D 

 
My Internet Presence

If Google is strong enough to overcome the forces of future and keep the Blogger platform active, I will be able to see this post from a day from future and see how the things were in the past, during the year 2014 and before. :) As of now, Google (Gmail and Blogger), Facebook, and LinkedIn are three important platforms that I have invested my time on, to create a web presence. If one of them disappears in the future, that will be a loss for me (as well as many other users out there, I presume). I have done some serious blogging in 2009, 2011, and 2012. Relatively, my blogging activity has been much slower in 2010, 2013, and 2014. Hope it will improve in 2015. 

Given below are the 10-most viewed posts from this blog, along with the dates that they were originally published. I should admit that the blog views do not represent how much effort I put in writing these posts. However, I am happy that some people have found these posts useful.

Moments with Twitter.. Jun 10, 2012
Is Freelancer.com a complete scam, or a partial sc... Nov 2, 2012, 120 comments
Auto Scaling With Amazon EC2 Feb 1, 2011, 10 comments
How to apply/create an svn patch (for beginners) Apr 1, 2009, 4 comments
Moments with Twitter - II Jun 17, 2012, 1 comment
How to close an open port in unix/linux environmen... Jun 9, 2011
SVN Commit in windows [Could not use external edi... Mar 28, 2009, 2 comments
ssh: connect to host xxx.xxx.xxx.xx port 22: Conne... Dec 14, 2011
Moving data from mysql to cassandra Jun 15, 2012, 2 comments
how to ignore someone you love Apr 24, 2011, 2 comments

Time/Money Duality

This post can be considered the part-II of one of my previous posts - LATE. The movie "In Time" was the major motivation behind this post.

Time spent and perceived.

I have heard the phrases "Don't waste money!" and "Don't waste time" more often than any other suggestions asking not to waste something. "Don't waste electricity", "Don't waste water", and other similar suggestions are indeed the derivatives of "Don't waste money", or are driven by some sentiments such as "Don't waste food - give it to the poor instead!" We can simply conclude that "Money" and "Time" are considered two equivalent and most valuable assets. We spend money to save time, and also spend time to save or earn some money. I see this duality as the reason behind the routine of the humans. Everyone makes the world a better  ('better' is a relative term. so someone's better may be another's worse though) place to live, at least by a tiny bit, through their job and otherwise, by investing their time.

Being a complex quantity, Time has its own real and imaginary counterparts. Each of us has 24 hours. But the effective time differs from person to person. I feel, in terms of physics, we can't define Time as a vector or a scalar rigidly. May be, we should research further on the nature of the multi-dimensional time!

If we consider time as a complex number, what we measure will be the time's projection on the x-axis, the real counterpart of the complex quantity. When we are waiting for something or someone even a few minutes go like an hour - we can explain this using the above "Complex-time" concept. 

"Busy" is a relative term. I can be busy for task-1 or person-1, but may be available for task-2 or person-2.

The time and the money spent and the duality

"Can you spend five minutes with me regarding this project?"

"Sorry, I am afraid. I have to catch the train in 5 minutes to my home."

"Oh, it is fine. I am also on the same route. Let's discuss on the train"

Now, I am not busy for the discussion, since the talk is not going to consume my time.

Currently, it is impossible for us to travel by time, or purchase it. So either we spend much time or less of it - we can earn time relatively, but not absolutely. In natural terms, we can't earn time, but just spend it effectively. Time does have a monetary value. The In Time  movie attempts to make Time as money, focusing on the time-money duality. It discusses the sharing of time, and transfer of time between different individuals. The rich have more time, and lesser the poorer.

Since Time is used as the money, the rich have more money, making them living forever, almost, where the poor keep running searching for time, awaiting their end, everyday. For them, "tomorrow is a luxury they (you) can't afford" and even idling becomes costly (of course, idling costs in the real world too, in the time scale, as of the above image).

Wish if we can buy some time, utilizing this time/money duality in the future.

LATE

Getting late is inevitable in many times, though it sounds pessimistic to announce so. The impact can be a mere delay in attending an event or even failure to attend the event altogether. 

Digital - Analogue Analogy 

Digital-Late and Analog-Late

Some of the delays are often lead to an on-off scenario, which resembles a digital system. If you come late, you are fail (0). If you are on time, you are in (1). There is nothing in between. So one minute delay is as harmful as a delay of an hour or more in these cases. An ideal example would be being late to a flight. If you are late to a flight, you miss the flight. Let it be a minute or an hour. But some of the delays are analogue type. If you are delayed by a minute harm is less, where getting delayed by an hour will probably harm a lot. Attending a lecture can be a common example. Unless regulations restrict you enter the class late, getting late by a minute or two won't harm much, where a delay by an hour will make you lose the chance of grabbing the lecture for the day.

In Academia

Counter/Office closed - Digital-Late

Late submission in school assignments often results in a reduced score (often a 5% - 10% penalty per the day. Even a 5 mins delay is considered a day, and hence the penalty). During our undergraduate times, the online uploads are often come with a deadline at 11.55 p.m. In some of the cases, the upload button will be disabled at the exact time. That means, a second is delayed - no chance to upload, which often leads to a zero score. In school, coming late is often considered a half-day, which is marked as 0-1 (full day is marked as 1-1). So often, in the last minutes, we used to run to the classrooms to ensure that we enter the classrooms before the class teacher.

Mitigation

A proper timing usually help to mitigate the risks of getting late. Prioritizing based on the cost of getting late would help too. Seeking a less risky alternative may be a good alternative. For eg, missing a train might be too risky in Sri Lanka than missing a bus, as here long distance trains are not so frequent. In that case, if you feel that you won't make it on time for the train, better to pick the bus route instead.

Not too early though
However, the fear of getting late might induce proceeding on something too early, which may not be appropriate. Doing stuff too early is as bad as doing it late. Proceeding on something too early often would result in misunderstanding the requirements/expectations, environment, and the stake-holders involved. This often result in wastage of time, sub-optimal results, embarrassment, and even failure.

In case of a digital-like timing, it is better to be there an hour early, than being late. In analog-like cases, late is better than never.. ;)