PAD Thai

I have no idea what the PAD wants in Thailand. So what if the PM resigns. Then?
Yeah cause and action. Step down. Lackey of Thaksin.
But then what's the solution?

Very myopic. With the fiasco that's taking place in Thailand, who would ever want to go back there again for the next few months? Give me a free trip and I wouldn't take it. I don't like the idea of bombs flying through tents. Neither can I entertain the thought of being civic conscious and disposing my garbage in a nearby bin, only to have a free charcoal makeover courtesy of a home made explosive lurking in the Thai trashcan.

I think Thailand needs Thaksin. Thailand looked promising under his reign. Yes cronyism or nepotism. Agreed. Maybe it is. Possibly might not. But it's the price a normal citizen like you and me have to pay, knowing that I can sleep safely at night without worrying whether the colour of my underwear is red or yellow.

In 22 hours time, I would be free of mind numbing academics.
In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out where might Agent Smith appear next in a Hessenberg matrix.

Break

I took this from postsecret.

For a moment, I thought the contrast never stood out with such clear clarity.
Let's hope he brings about change that the world desperately needs.
And when I mean change, I mean self-correcting change.
To put the point straight, sometimes, the best form of action perhaps is no action.

If our dear economists purport that the market is self-correcting, so why are we intervening?

Barometer eter eter eh eh eh under my barometer eter eter eh eh

At my first year of college my physics teacher told us this rather amusing story, I’ve never forgotten this story - but I certainly have forgotten everything I learned in that class.

The following question was asked in a physics exam:

“”Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer.”

One student replied:

“You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building.”

This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. He appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics. For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn’t make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:

“Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer.

“Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper’s shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work uut the height of the skyscraper.

“But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi sqrroot (l/g).

“Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up.

“If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building.

But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor’s door and say to him ‘If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper’.”




I think I should do this during my thesis presentation. haha.

Critical Event List 2

1pm Wake Up
1.30pm Lunch
2pm Bathe
2.30pm Stone
3.30pm Stone
4.30pm Stone
5.30pm Stone
6.30pm Dinner
7.30pm-3am MUG MUG MUG MUG MUG

Some screwed up schedule.
My biggest worry perhaps is staring at the paper intently for 2 hours not knowing how to do most of it despite all the mugging. Yup. Maths.

And if my tuition students are reading my blog, haha, now you know,
I'm nothing but fluff.


YEAH RIGHT. I'LL PROBABLY GET 120/100 FOR YOUR PAPER 1 OR 2. Ok crap.

Critical Event List

2 days to the start of my first paper
9 days to the day where I have to battle complex mathematics for 5.5 hours
11 days to the end of my exams
3 more weeks to the start of my first reservist
4 more weeks to the end of my first reservist
5 more weeks to Christmas
6 more weeks to 2009
7 more weeks to the start of school

Not a very optimistic-looking timeline considering all the pessimistic elements lurking around.
And i think the notion of sinking fund just took on a whole new meaning literally. *bloop bloop bloop*.
Guess our money for lift maintenance and repairs just got wired into Richard Fuld's coffers.

Skirmish Round 2

I was eating dinner downstairs about an hour ago.
I was about 7/8 done with my plate of usual cai fan when suddenly this indian foreign worker took the seat in front of me and sat down. I was pretty puzzled at first, since the tables in the loci : |z - HANSEL| <= 5m were mostly vacant. Well, seeing how so many of them like to hold hands or walk closely with one another along the dormitories during my night runs, I was like well... ok..... I guess I'm an attractive Chinese male afterall. OKOK THAT'S BESIDES THE POINT.

So when I was busily savouring my last piece of brinjal, he suddenly asked for two dollars. Well....
1) I had about $400 bucks in my wallet after tuition and selling off 2 Nokia phones (oh I'll get to this later).
2) Quite little people around me.
3) I sprained my ankle last week, so I can't really run. I think you get the point.

I wasn't in a very charitable mood either. Well, probably i'm quite a jerk but I felt pretty awkward from the whole situation. Afterall, I had quite a rude encounter with one of them while running through the HDB flats late at night. Yeah. A drunkard who couldn't cycle his bicycle straight, even though after giving him like 10m of space to cycle past me. Ok that aside.

So I was walking back home, after eating, crossing the road, and then I was greeted by China dolls in scantily clad clothing with one man leading them to a car that was parked nearby. Cool. In the wake of spiralling costs and rentals, I'm not surprised why pimps are resorting to housing their employees further up North. Yes and at the lift landing, the following graffiti presented itself.

#12-518
Owe $$ Pay $$

I'm loving Woodlands every minute.
Well, yes I'm glad I have a roof over my head. Sometimes, it's the adjacent roofs that are occasionally too close for comfort.

Oh ya. I give up on Nokia phones. Lousy battery life. Phone loves to x where x is an element of P[{reset, hang up, switch off}], P being power set, while I'm chatting. Hence sold off both my dad's and mine's at one shot. I pity the people who buy it second hand.

I think I'm taking it way cool for this round of exams. I can't really seem bothered to study hard. Afterall, it's always a case of diminishing returns.

Owned

Damn Zhun.


But in the end still kana owned. haha.
Funny considering that i'm playing when exams are one week away.
WHO CARES WAHAHAHA

Rich get richer

Took a break and snooped around in facebook.

I'm quite shocked really. Brain quite empty back then in sch.
Rich so go overseas and salvage himself through college and university.
Come back Singapore now in investment banking.

Now now now. Why bother studying?
If you're rich and your parents know a lot of people, please go for a string pulling course. It'll help.

Don't be a moron like me. Can do maths can tie bowline can do clove hitch but cannot pull string lol.

Red Alert

I seem to be having a lot of skirmishes with our people from our motherland today.

I was in the library and on came this couple who sat at the table opposite me. Armed with 2 laptops, ready to do war with their keypads, producing so much noise with their incessant typing that it sounded like some eurodance anthem lol.

And then they started talking sweet nothings and cuddled and poked at each other after a while, all this time with MA1100 notes strewn all over the table. Bad combination.

I was eating lunch, when I received a call. Well, I was looking forward to my girlfriend's lunchtime update when I was rudely greeted by someone speaking in strong accented chinese over the other end.

"Hello?"
"Qing wen ni hui jiang hua yi mah?"
"No."
"Xie Xie."
-End of Call

Not the first time. Don't think it will be the last. I wonder what they want. I was also wondering whether she actually realized I could reply back in Chinese, but just didn't feel like.

Then during MA4230 break, both me and Gordon went to the toilet. As usual, I was greeted by a pungent smelling person who was at the sink beside me. No prizes for guessing. EH PLEASE BATHE LEH WAH LIAO.

Guess what I did for about an hour in the library. Identifying and enumerating all possible graph trees from order 4 to 10. Damn it man. Why am I not in Switzerland or some other exotic country bumming around.

I'm still thinking about postgrad. Postgrad in mathematics might not be a very good idea. A passport to doing well in that is blatant eccentricity which I do not want to spiral right into.
I really think there's no end to the pursuit of knowledge.

I was telling Mich that day if there was an opportunity for her to relocate to another office overseas, I would gladly follow. I'm really getting quite sick of Singapore. Staying in Woodlands doesn't help. It's really fucking boring up here. Starting to become Little China and Little India combined.

Anyway, on the lighter side of things.

1+1 = ?

Primary Sch Kid : Two
Computer Engineer: 10
Opportunistic Economist: 11
Mathematically Illiterate Chinese : Field ("Tian")
Mathematician: Even, Prime, Zero (modulo 2), all sorts of answers depend on how u define +

Ok nite. My blogging skills are like shit nowdays.

Disclaimer

If anyone stumbles upon this blog and wants to know what are the perks of studying Mathematics as a degree, please consult me first.

Because, i really really really really really think doing an additional year in honours for Mathematics is terribly dumb, unless you're some geekatron who has a fetish for numbers, trees, caterpillars, dots, lines, and what not.

Instead, go do a double degree in Mathematics and Business=(Finance/Decision Science/Marketing/Accountancy/Economics}. Rest assured, you will find the latter a freaking breeze.

It is damn bloody boring when the crowd in the lecture are mostly PRCs, who don't like to bathe.

Moronic lecture at 8am later. Probably one of the worst lecturers I've ever had in my NUS life.
Ok. That's abt it. Haha. Good night.

Incoherence is the word of the day.

Balance Scale

Fitness and academics are negatively correlated.
I can run longer and faster
but my fugging attention span for mathematics is getting shorter by the day.

As cock as it may sound, but if I was rich right now, I would like to try the following occupations to get a taste and flavour of the path less travelled by the educated

bus driver
taxi driver
mrt train driver
bak chor mee seller
hokkien mee stall owner
entree chef
crime scene investigation officer
car racer
A level exam setter (wait you need to be educated to do this)
bouncer
bartender
fashion designer (damn i think i might do a better job than those morons at FCUK)

ok period
back to stochastic programming and matricular bullshit.

PS: Google was simply formulated on matrix eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Random indeed.

BMI

BMI = Weight/(Height^2)

My Weight is 64kg (dunnoe why suddenly so light, must be all the consistent running)
Height 1.78m.
BMI = 20.19

Coool. I'm Normal. haha.
Fit, hunky and sexy.
I thought of adding an additional adjective named smart, but hmm, nah. overdoing it already.

WAHAHAHAHAHHAA.
DAMN ALL THE MATHS IS KILLING ME.