Case in point #1: most of the people who complain about singledom and not being able to find someone are usually good-looking. Usually because either a) they don't feel like their suitors are in their league; or b) people are intimidated by their oozing sexuality.

Case in point #2: let's say you were among the more better-looking. When an ugly person approaches you, it doesn't even occur to you that he/she is trying to hit on you. That person instantly becomes non-threatening and almost more genuine than a good-looker.

Case in point #3: hot people draw gaping mouths and stares, sweaty palms, and the loss of all courage to even talk to them. They don't particularly scream "talk to me!" but rather "look at me!" and get results accordingly.

Of course, there's a limit on the ugliness to popularity function. And here's where the Justin's Law of Superficiality with respect to Popularity Function becomes evidently clear. Imagine your normal 2-axis graph, with the Y-axis being popularity (the higher the better) and X-axis being attractiveness (the further right the sexier). The function is an inverted U-shape.

The peak of popularity occurs when you're neither ugly as a hunchback but not as hot as, say, Justin Timberlake if you're a guy or Anna Kournikova if you're a girl. But the peak itself does not lie right in between those two extremes. After all, you do have to be slightly among the better-looking in order to get your way through life. Sex sells, after all. So the peak lies slightly to the right of the middle.

It's not your typical U-shaped function with a normal distribution, either. After all, if you're already ugly, there's really not much room left for someone who's even uglier than you to still be non-threatening. If you're already pretty ugly, someone who's uglier than you would have to probably look like Quasimodo (and I'm not talking about the Disney version). And we all know if you saw Quasimodo in real life, you'd be running away, not going up to him and shooting the breeze. Therefore the curvature of the function becomes increasingly steeper at the extreme points of the graph.

So if you're single and truly struggling to find someone, take heart: you're most likely among the more better-looking citizens of society. You're blessed with looks. And if you have low self-esteem with regards to your looks, take heart as well: you're more likely beautiful on the inside, and therefore more popular (up to the limit defined).

Agree? Disagree? Make sense?

Oh yeah, don't forget to do my poll from the Friday, October 29 post.

And someone sign my guestbook (in Tuscany). It's getting lonely.

[sotm] U2's Vertigo.

- listen to angry, hard rock music (a la Limp Bizkit, Trapt, and Prodigy), or...

- loop sad, melancholy songs (a la Lene Marlin, Sarah McLachlan, and Jewel), or...

- is it not better/healthy to listen to either of these genres when you're sad?

[sotm] India.arie's Get It Together.

All my life I've been waiting
For you to bring a fairytale my way
Been living in a fantasy without meaning
It's not okay, I don't feel safe
I don't feel safe...

Left broken empty in despair
Want to breathe, can't find air
Thought you were sent from up above
But you and me never had love
So much more I have to say
Help me find a way

And I wonder if you know
How it really feels
To be left outside alone
When it's cold out here
Well maybe you should know
Just how it feels
To be left outside alone
To be left outside alone...

I tell ya..
All my life I've been waiting
For you to bring a fairytale my way
Been living in a fantasy without meaning
It's not okay, I don't feel safe
I need to... pray

Why do you play me like a game?
Always someone else to blame
Careless, helpless little man
Someday you might understand
There's not much more to say
But I hope you find a way

Still I wonder if you know
How it really feels
To be left outside alone
When it's cold out here
Well maybe you should know
Just how it feels
To be left outside alone
To be left outside alone

I tell ya...
All my life I've been waiting
For you to bring a fairytale my way
Been living in a fantasy without meaning
It's not okay, I don't feel safe
I need to pray

Oh pray
(Heavenly father)
Ohh heavenly father
(Please, save me)
Oh save me

And I wonder if you know
How it really feels
To be left outside alone
When it's cold out here
Well maybe you should know
Just how it feels
To be left outside alone
To be left outside alone

All my life I've been waiting
For you to bring a fairytale my way
Been living in a fantasy without meaning
It's not okay, I don't feel safe
I need to.. pray

It also leaves me in a Catch-22. If I try to just ignore it and say "to hell with this crap, it's not worth my time" then I end up sitting there stewing about it. But if I talk to someone about it, the more I find reason to be upset about it.

Guess this has to happen every once in a while for me. It reminds me of how much more I have to grow as a person.

[sotm] Ben Jelen's Setting of the Sun.

Now, he's broke.

He made $47 million over his career, only to blow it all away to gambling. Sad. I hope it can serve as a sobering reminder of how fame and fortune can vanish in a second, and of course the perils of a gambling addiction.

[sotm] Hoobastank's Running Away.

Currently reading: Think Like a Billionaire by (who else?) Donald Trump. Very interesting book.

[sotm] Beenie Man's King of Dancehall.

Ouch.

Hopefully I'll get around to redesigning the web site too. It's over a year old, it's getting stale.

The great news I got this week though, is that my final mark for a course I took last year is getting raised 10%. Seriously, the system at UT is so flawed. I had to pay $13 to get my final exam back, check the marks, and discover something's missing. As much as I loved that class and had a great prof, screwing with a student's GPA is inexcusable, and somebody has to be held accountable. The prof has to be held accountable because she miscalculated my marks, and UT has to be held accountable because of the ridiculous system in place. I'm sure if everybody checked their marks, everybody's GPAs would be higher. This is like the fifth time in my academic career I've had my marks (earned, I might add...I only ask for marks I should already have, never argue that I should be getting a 9 instead of an 8 for an answer to something) adjusted after the results came through.

Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

[sotm] LL Cool J's Can't Explain It, from his latest album The DEFinition.

To my pleasant surprise, I won the Oxford photo competition to go along with my pre-determined video competition wins for both Oxford and Hong Kong. Kenny, Poria and I were bitter Alexandra stole the HK photo competition from us. But the difference is, while the video competition generated a cold, hard, cash prize, the photo competition generated a $50 gift certificate to the UT Bookstore. Which buys me all of...1/3 of a textbook. So in the end, UT still ends up taking all my money. Bastards.

At the same time though, being at the Duke of York was tough - I couldn't spend as much time with people as I would've liked. Since I knew more people there than most considering I went to both Oxford and Hong Kong, along with the fact that I spent a considerable amount of time distributing the DVD I spent the last month creating, it felt really tough not being able to spend as much time catching up with people I haven't seen in a long time as I would've liked. I ended up feeling both estatic for seeing great friends and reliving memories as well as feeling terrible for not spending more than 2 minutes with each person, moving from person to person almost like an assembly line. Unfortunately for me, that's almost always the way it is with most of my relationships - my philosophy is seeing people, albeit briefly, is better than not seeing them at all. Their very presence meant the world to me.

Man, what amazing, wonderful memories. The euphoria's still in abundance.

[sotm] David Guetta's Just a Little More Love. I'm listening to so much house and dance these days...must be the European influence on me.

So he tells us: the first question you should ask yourself every morning is, "How can I screw over my competition today? How can I crush them like the cockroaches that they are?" (disclaimer: these are his exact words...unedited...not my thoughts!) He then proceeded to give us an interesting and inspiring talk on how business truly works in the world - that nice-guy, "competition is good" talk is bullshit when you're a businessman. Business is war; it's kill or be killed by your competition.

Now here's the million-dollar question: do I truly have that killer instinct in me? Do I really have what it takes to only care about the bottom line?

True to my I-am-everything personality, I've been accused to being too much of a loose cannon for Christian leadership, and too much of a sympathetic for hardball leadership. Loosely translated, it means I'm too mean to be nice, and too nice to be mean. Various mentors in my life have tried to pull me one way or the other, so it almost feels like I'm stuck right in the middle - in no man's land.

Sometimes I feel like my willingness to help others hinders what I truly want, even in survival cases. Last night, long story short, a really shady-looking guy, completely dressed in black, comes up to my Mercedes and asks me to roll down my window while I'm preparing to leave Bayview Village. Just his approach caused me (wisely, I might add in retrospect) to subtlely lock my doors. I opened a crack in my window, and he asked me if I had any jumper cables. My first thought was I should help this guy; and if I actually had jumper cables, I probably would have, even though he looks like he was ready to carjack me, especially since he approaches me right after my friends just left...so I just gave him a "no, sorry" and proceeded to drive off. If I truly looked out for only myself, I would've just told him no without hesitation.

And yet, sometimes I feel like my ability to be cold-hearted prevents me from building certain relationships. For instance, last year, I had a group project in which I was designated the project leader. The 4-member group were all my friends, and I knew I could count on them to pull their weight. And to a point, everyone did; save one person. Now this girl, she's a friend, not particularly close, but still a friend. She's making an effort, but in all the wrong places; her results were regressing the project in the worst possible way. I had to tell her, it's just not working out. It was getting late in the timeline, but I had no choice but to drop her to save the project. In the end, I chose not to sacrifice the highest mark possible in favor of helping a friend. My justification: it was nothing personal, it was only business.

The more I think about it, the more I think that the "niceness" is who I am, but the "meanness" is who I want to be. I do have that ultra-competitive mean streak and the desire to be the best, but not always. Ultimately, which potential do I unlock? In this world, nice guys really do finish last in the rat race. Bottom line is, I'm a businessman. The rat race is the only place for me to go.

What kind of race I'll be running is the question du jour.

[sotm] Walk Into the Sun by Dirty Vegas.