The Alchemist

C'est la vie

2010-04-15T20:33:00.000+08:00

Come Fly With Me

2009-12-28T02:13:00.002+08:00

More than penicillin, more than the atomic bomb, derivatives...the most marvellous invention of the 20th century...or so it seems.

Try Try Try

2009-12-10T11:27:00.001+08:00

"The things that you try to hold on to...they're the first to go,
and all the things that you try to forget, these are the things that stick."

"The world is hard and cold. It can hurt you bad, but it doesn't mean to. It's nothing personal, but you've gotta try pretty god damn hard not to take it personally."

Stumbled upon the short story which smashing pumpkins's Try is interlaced with. The geographic geek in me noted the British accent voiceover, dreaming of California, while getting freezed off in Stockholm.

A piece of irreverence

2009-11-06T02:52:00.006+08:00

Who can say "Fuck you" to the state parliament, and actually get away with it?
Arno can.

Letter to State Assembly

P.S. Can you spot the hidden message in this letter? first letters.every sentence.

Katahdin (Part 2)

2009-11-01T23:15:00.010+08:00

As I looked over yonder to the precipice so aptly named, I realised that the fearsome reputation of this ridge is entirely justified. Some parts of the ridge looks knife-thin. It has been described as "a narrow walk in the sky like no other", and I am not sure I could actually appreciate such neat poetry now. The Helon Taylor honeymoon is over. Should I turn back now?

There were a smattering of people on the peak with me. Spent some time taking a few more photos before making the momentous decision--to cross the Knife Edge or not. I am no longer smiling--I am grimacing at what lies ahead of me.

At this point in time, it must be said that the weather was perfectly fine, with a healthy dose of sunshine beating down on me drenching me in sweat. I am worried more about my lack of water supply (and the fear of falling) more than anything else. I could not have imagined any other worse dangers to come.

A father-and-son team came back down from that mound, and told me, "That path is not looking good, and I am not going to take the risk with my boy here." Ominous indeed.

But seriously, how can I turn my back now that I am tantalizingly close to reaching the peak of Mount Katahdin? I could join the father-and-son team right now, but I could not live with the fact that on this day, I turned my back on Katahdin. So i dispelled the notion and forged ahead.

To start on Knife Edge proper, you have to actually descend and then ascend two rockfaces, which form some sort of a valley. This is the valley, with breathtaking views of the entire expanse of forest, rivers and the basins which I trekked though.

The father-and-son team disappear up towards the left side of the valley, back to the relatively safe embrace of the Helon Taylor trail.

This is the right side of the valley, where I saw another team making their way down a path which I was to climb later. This team had done the Knife Edge trail first, and plan on getting down via the Helon Taylor. They had the hard part behind them already.

Knife edge, here goes. The time now is around 1pm, and the sun is still beating mercilessly down.

Doing the Knife Edge proves to be extremely tough for me. I am in fact, not climbing anymore, but reduced to crawling on all fours due to the razor-thin width of the ridge. The fear of falling off the cliff is extreme here. Plus the fact that I have to lug 2 backpacks around--one food supply, one camera bag, which was compromising my state of balance. And I was wishing I had a compact camera with me instead. The D70 is obviously a luxury I can ill-afford ( with my inexperience at mountain climbing).

To prevent the backpack from tumbling over the cliffs, I use my toggle rope to fasten them to me. Handy tools, the toggle ropes.

It is difficult to depict how perilous and treacherous (to borrow the cliches normally reserved for the obligatory mountain passes that fantasy heroes need to cross) the path is. So instead, I took, while sitting on a boulder, the views exposing my left leg,

...and then my right leg. Any false steps, and that's it. The dull ache of the fear has grown into an incessant drum beat--probably from my heart. My heart pounds a little even as i am typing this. I am just glad I am not up there anymore.

Putting things into perspective, then a team of like half a dozen actually skipped past me. Girls, in frilly convent dress and beach sunhat, no less! I drew inspiration from them, and the fact that they are girls, and I forged ahead, boulder by boulder...

...until the trail seemingly comes to an abrupt stop. Of course I could see the blue arrow pointing forward, but I don't see ANY trail. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Luckily a mountain goat came along, and showed me how to do it. "What's the problem?" he asks. He was kind enough to carry my camera bag across this crazy ledge, after which I had no choice but to gingerly tread across with him. I am representing all Asians on this mountain, and I have already lost enough face crawling along on all fours. "There is no question about not crossing this ledge! So quit whining about wanting to go home!", I shouted at my inner voice.

Made it across that fiendishly scary ledge. Alas, the mountain goat was the last mammal I was to see on that day. What transipired to turn this adventure into a nightmare was something else totally unexpected.

Dark clouds had gathered, and a mist had suddenly descended upon me. Visibility was reduced to 10-m at most. And can somebody turn off that woo-woo-woo sound. I can't even hear myself anymore. Its 3pm, and 4 terrifying hours were to pass before I could take another picture.

The heavens soon opened up, and rain fell hard on me. Here I was stranded up on the topmost mountain ridge, in a valiant attempt to crawl my way to Baxter Peak, and the deadly combination of rain, mist and wind are trying to thwart my bid.

Then it happened. A flash lighted up the entire expanse of the mountain range, as far and and wide as the eye could see. This was no longer just a silly rainstorm. It was a thunderstorm, of the biblical proportion. Sometimes the things you learnt in school could save your life. I learnt that the higher up and the more exposed you are up on a mountain ridge, the more likely you are to be struck by lightning. The first thing i did was to scramble off the ridge. Fear of falling? That was so yesterday. I was precipitating from the fear of being struck by lightning even as I was being drenched by the pouring rain.

As luck would have it, the part of the ridge where I was caught gave me more room to maneuver around, and I could at least pick the widest ledge on which to set up my tent-- which consists basically of just the ground sheet covering me. The ledge even had a sort of a V-shape hull to it, where I can lie my entire body down, shielding me somewhat from the fierce winds. But I was beginning to shiver already.

So I had to make sure that the openings of the ground sheet was sealed securely--either with my limbs or by stuffing it frantically through the rocks. It was a rather fragile, but not exactly futile attempt. Sometimes the winds would flay one side open, and I had to scramble to close that gap. I felt like the Dutch boy who had to plug the gaping holes with his fingers when the dyke broke. When I finally settled down, I could barely hear myself panting from the exertions. The winds were still howling outside.

I was still shivering, but no longer uncontrollably. Any unnecessary movements would have me shivering all over again. So with my 4 limbs sealing off the ground sheet against the rocks around me, I was contorted into a rather uncomfortable position lying in the V-shape ledge. Economy of movement is of utmost importance here. Be still, be still, I keep telling myself.

Then it happened again. This time I felt somebody light up a blinding flash inside my groundsheet. I was counting aloud now, "one thousand, two thousand, three thousand....", till I came to 12, before the thunder finally roared. Mathematical calculations were racing across my mind. If sound were to travel at the speed of 330m/s and light at 300000000 m/s....ah...fuck it, let's assume speed of light to be infinite here....how far away is the actual lightning storm from me?" About 4km. I was hugely relieved as of now.

The next flash came soon after. I counted again, and each time I counted, I realised the storm was getting nearer and nearer. Like a soldier hunkering inside a trench, with enemy shells exploding all over me, I was wondering when would the next flash be intended for me. The crack of the thunder became even more intense. My ears were prickling, working on overdrive, straining to hear where the sound came from. I need not have bothered. The crack was evidently right in front of me, but the sound reveberated throughout the peaks. So a roar actually diffused into a chain of echos that reverberated all around me and disappeared towards my back. The storm was coming from the front. It was a surround sound system any Omnimax theatre would have been proud of.

I could feel the clouds marching ominously towards me. Fear turned to anger, and I tore open my ground sheet, looked skywards, and came face to face with the storm clouds. Dark and imposing, they were Sauron's troops hunting for hobbits along the mountain ridges, and I was shielded from their methodical gaze by my magic blanket. Lightning struck, and the thunder rang so loud inside my ears. I had run out of space-time to count the "thousands". I thought this was it. Ok, how does it feel to be dead? Maybe it wont be so bad. I would be immediately delivered from my agony now, and I could just fly away from here, fly to wherever I want to go. Thoughts of my family back in Singapore, and how I would now be just another statistic on Mount Katahdin made me feel like a damn fool. Wait. I was still breathing, nothing was burning. They must have struck another peak. I was cowering underneath my groundsheet, and had no idea where it struck. It could easily have been for me. I was now playing a game of Russian roulette with the thunderstorm. About a dozen, maybe 2 dozen peaks. I am astride between 2 of them. Who'll insure me now? Perhaps the risk-loving executives at AIG.

At this point, I was already soaked to the bone, and the cruel irony was I was getting extremely thirsty. I thought I may have to camp up here for the rest of the night, and knew I could go without food for a few days, but not without water. The ground sheet began to sink with the weight of rain water collecting on its top. I was not going to let them go to waste, and began to drink the water off the sheet. I clumsily spilled some onto the ground, but what the heck. I stooped down to clear the water that collected on the rocks. I'll worry about the ringworms later.

I had my watch with me. Tick tock tick tock, it had been like 2 hours, but the rain was relentless. Thunder cracked again. This time the sound reveberated from back to front now. I heaved a sigh of relief. The storm had passed behind me. Possibly the worst is over? I shouted with glee, the worst is over! The worst is over! And uttered some expletives, something to the tune of "fuck you storm". Maybe it was my imagination, but the mountains returned the echoes of my curses.

7pm. The rain had eased into a drizzle. The mist had parted to reveal what was a ethereal sight in front of me. I could almost see the whole of the basin that drains the mountain rivers to the ocean. For a moment I allowed myself to weep. I thought I had never seen something so achingly beautiful before. I could die contented right here.

Taking advantage of the lull, I tot I should snap some photos for keepsake should i make it back alive and well. In spite of the cold, I proceeded to take the only exposed part of my "tent", which was the dreaded fall-off from the V-shaped ledge.

I began to decamp (aka stuffed the groundsheet into the bag) and continue my trek on Knife Edge. But I began to shiver badly again, with the high winds threatening to blow me off the ridge. Fear of hypothermia set in. In fact, hypothermia claims more victims on mountain-top accidents. This could not do--I had to wait out the winds. I set up camp again, trying to shield myself from the wind. I lay on another crevice for a while. It felt warm and cosy. I was drifting to sleep. But there was something wrong with this crevice, comfortable though it felt to me. It felt too much like a grave--my grave. Now came another momentous decision. Should I or should I not camp here? What if I were to be found dead here? Reduced to curling up like a fetus hugging a bag of rotten stinking carrots for food. Or I could end up as the next ice-age man a million years from now. Not appealing at all. Morever, I had the stinking suspicion that my shivering and shaking were just a dirty excuse by the lazy self not to push hard for the summit. So I tell myself, if I were to die, I had better die trying to get to the summit, rather than lying inside what amounts to a very probable early grave for me. My new rallying cry: If you must die, die with dignity!

So I packed up (this time I left the pack of carrots behind, whose stench were to stain my raincoat and bag for an entire week) and forged ahead. This time, I no longer crawled. I skipped, I rushed, I jumped, I hopped--all in the furious attempt to get to the summit. It seemed neverending, all these rocks and boulders that I had to traversed. But looking back, I'm sure it was psychological. The uncertainties of your destination always make your journey seem that much longer. Actually in a short while, a little under 1 hour, I finally reached the summit. So I had proven right that the shivering were just an excuse not to do climb the last stretch of the trail. I actually had enough body heat in me to come all the way up here. It was 8pm by then.

Katahdin. The real summit. The end of the Appalachian trail. The holy grail.

As promised, the way down from the summit proved to be much gentler. It consist of a vast area of almost flat and desolate terrain they call the tableland. It was one of the very few tundra landscapes existing in USA, so there were lots of efforts put into trying to conserve the Artic flora up here. I was spellbound by the utter beauty of it all. The delicate and tender light of the moon had once again lighted up a very beautiful path for me to follow. For a while, I just stood there, contemplating in reverential silence at the solitude of the land.

Anyway, my hopes of getting back safely to base camp were dashed. The tableland falls off rather abruptly towards the edge. There was no way i could attempt to climb down at night in wet and slippery conditions ( I had slipped a few times while walking on flat land). So, I decided to spend a night up here on top of Mount Katahdin. Later around 2am, an ever fiercer storm hit Katahdin, but I was too jaded and tired to care anymore. Worried though I was, I thought I had played up my chances of being hit by lightning too much. Airplane flights do hit periods of turbulence, but the probability of a plane crash is still rather too remote. In fact, I was unable to proceed all the way till around 7am the next day, when the storm gave way to an incessant drizzle, and lastly to the morning mist. But since I am penning this entry right now, it's just another case of all's well that ends well.

But I'm not proud to say that a search party was underway in the morning looking for me. They had this system of requiring all hikers to sign out prior to embarking on the mountain trail, and signing in again upon return. The rangers would cross-check with each other across all the different check-points to confirm all hikers were safely back by evening. So when I failed to sign back in that evening, they already knew there was someone trapped up there in the mountains.

Next morning. Tom the ranger who "rescued" me. We were mighty relieved to see each other, perhaps me more than him. He has a youthfulness which belies his 40 years of age. Amazing. The mythical elixir of youth must be flowing through these mountains. Ever gregarious, he shared with me his adventures up in the mountains, down in the rapids, and his first love--fly fishing, and how he was so relieved not to have to call up the Coast Guards for yet another missing hiker (about a dozen a year, it seems.) I was apologising profusely for having wasted their precious time and resouces due to recklessness on my part. But he would have none of it and stated firmly, "This is our job. This is what we rangers do." Anyway it just goes to show the critical importance of staying on the trails. As long as you stay on the trails, the rangers will be bound to find you.

A write-up about Katahdin via Knife Edge in one of the guides I was to find only later. Would I then have attempted the Knife Edge after reading this? I have no idea, but my friend thinks that words like "most dangerous" and "extreme exposure" and "many fatalities" would, instead of discouraging me, only spur me on. Maybe he's right. And I have a strange feeling that my story with the mountains is not over yet. The heartbreaking beauty of the mountains may once again lure me up there. Some day.

A trader is like...

2009-10-28T10:09:00.003+08:00

A trader is like a rodeo rider. The market gets violent and shakes everyone but the most determined and convicted trader off its back.

A trader is like a surfer. He analyses wind conditions and tide levels and catches the waves just as they are about to form.

A trader is like a midnight clubber. The booze is on, the music is playing, there are hundreds of people dancing, but everybody has his eye on the exit door.

A trader is like a hunter. He waits in stealth, locks in on his target, goes for the kill, and gets out fast. He lives by the motto "one shot, one kill".

A trader is like a coin-picker. The coins are littered all over the road. They seem easy pickings but a bulldozer is parked right there.

A trader is like a poker player. The market always acts like it has a hand. He either plays along with it or calls a bluff. And he has a trump card--stay out.

A trader is like a trench soldier. 90% sheer boredom, and 10% sheer terror.

A trader is like a daredevil. He makes his judgment of the braking distance, and stands in front of the locomotive train. Get it right, and he lives, but only if he gets it right.

A trader is like a doctor. He monitors the pulse of the market with the EEG, and when the market goes into cardiac arrest, he performs elaborate maneuvers to rescue the health of his portfolio--calmly.

A trader is like an alchemist. He transmutes what is essentially trading noise into the most precious resource of all--gold.

Katahdin (Part 1)

2009-10-26T02:47:00.011+08:00

Mount Katahdin is the northernmost peak of the Appalachian mountains that stretch from as far south as Georgia to Maine, and some say, to Canada too, depending on how pedantic you are on cartographing the mountain peaks. It has inspired hikes, climbs, poetry, paintings, a piano sonata and most notably, the writings of Henry Thoreau, who wrote of Katahdin:

"The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there. Simple races, such as savages, do not climb mountains -- their tops are sacred and mysterious tracts never visited by them. Pomola is always angry with those who climb to the summit of Ktaadn".

Katahdin actually means the Greatest Mountain in native Indian language. The Indians are obviously not well-travelled. Katahdin is by no means the greatest mountain in the world, whose height (1600m, slightly taller than Cameron Highlands) would barely cause a ripple among the sheer enormity that is the Himalayas. But there must be something about this particular Maine mountain that so inspired such dramatic prose. So it was not mere coincidence that I decided to embark on this pilgramage in the summer of 2009 to Katahdin, having been acquainted with both the Appalachian mountains and Henry Thoreau before.

I took off on a 330-mile drive via Interstate 95 from Boston to Milinocket, the nearest town to Mount Katahdin. Car rental is costly, especially if you are travelling alone, so you can be sure that I had overturned every timetable in every single bus company (Greyhound, Vermont, Concord) that ply on the Maine roads before deciding to go rental. I keep telling myself, how much would I pay to see Katahdin, and the practicalities of financial matters paled into insignificance.

Interstate 95

The mountain ranges loom far ahead , up among the clouds.

Welcome to Baxter State Park

Katahdin lies inside Baxter State Park. The story goes that Governor Percival Baxter was so spellbound by Katahdin that in order to prevent loggers from mining the surrounding area that he bought over the entire piece of land around the mountain, and entrusted it to the care of the state of Maine. That was how it became a state park. For the record, 204733 acres is slightly bigger than the island of Singapore.

The infrastrature of Baxter Park is laid out in this way: there is only one road leading into the Baxter Park, via an entrance. The nearest town, Milinocket, is probably 20 miles away. The base camps scattered around the main mountain ranges are located about 5 miles away from the entrance. You can elect to drive your vehicles to some of the base camps (like Roaring Brooks, Katahdin Stream and Abol), and you pay $24 per day for vehicle+man, or you park your car at the entrance and hike your way into the base camps--for $11 a night. At no time are you allowed to spend the night anywhere else in the park, so basically it means every night spent in Baxter State Park costs at least $11 per head.

I parked my car beside a lake, which was near the entrance. Seemingly tranquil and serene, but who knows what lurks beneath.

Since i would be away for a few days at least, thought it would be prudent to have the number plate recorded just in case the car gets stolen. But it was remarked to me (later of course) "nobody would come here to steal cars one lor." True.

Recording the numbers for security, not for 4D.

Spread out my barang-barang. From left to right:
Insect repellent (25% deet), Crumpler camera bag with D70, 17-70mm auto and 70-200 manual lens, a dozen toblerones and snickers, peanut butter, guide book with map of Baxter state Park, note book, Paul Theroux reading material and pencil, a pack of organic carrots, torch light, bread, Campbell soup tin can, 2 toggle ropes, rain coat, groundsheet, and an Adidas backpack.

Having never hiked overnight before in my life and lacking necessary experience, packing up has been a woeful hit-and-miss affair on hindsight. Why in the world would I want to carry reading materials up there? I realised my folly halfway up the mountain, with the weight of the books digging into my flesh. And what's with the 70-200mm lens? I had thought about it, and thought that I will never forgive myself if I come face to face with a bear and do not have a good zoom lens with which to shoot the bear with. Incredulously naive, because the first thing I should do is to make as much noise as possible to drive the bear away, and then run in the opposite direction--for dear life. On the other hand, the toggle ropes proved to be very useful later when the hikes turned to climbs. Finally, I can never overstate the importance of that humble groundsheet, without which, hmm, I could not contemplate beyond.

After packing my stuffs, remembering specifically to lock my car, and paying my dues to the rangers on duty at the entrance, I began to hike my way into Roaring Brooks camp with a spring in my steps. Loved every minute of it, but a very friendly ranger driving by insisted on picking me up along the way. Learnt from the ranger that Baxter State Park is a very well-policed park, with over 40 rangers on duty at any one time, unlike his last call of work, Denali National Park in Alaska, while 10 times larger in area, had only 4 rangers working in it. I guess he must have had a back-breaking time in Alaska. But I was getting excited too, because Denali (McKinlay) was also where Christoper Mccandles perished, and he must surely have heard of him, but I was careful to keep mum. I didn't want him to think of me as another silly college boy trying to tempt fate just because he watched "Into the Wild" on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Instead I joked about his workload being cut up by 40 times, which would otherwise never happen in the corporate world, and he beamed, "It certainly is!".

At this point in time doubts began to creep in. I had wanted this trip to be wild, but not so wild that I would lose my life, nor so mild to be like a walk in the park either. And with over 40 rangers policing every aspect of life in Baxter, it certainly sounded like a trip to Central Park indeed.

Spent a night inside one of the huts at Roaring Brooks camp. It is primitive, with wooden planks for bed and candles for light. "I am the noble savage, living in the primitive age of the world." It's always cool to be able to quote Thoreau and actually mean it. When darkness descends upon the land, the woods comes alive with fireflies dancing in the trees and the river sparkling with moonlight. These are enchanting moments that will remain in the deep recesses of my soul for long to come.

The morning after. Washing up beside Roaring Brooks, the icy-cold water stings me awake and hydrates me for what is going to a gruelling day.

I was carrying a few nigging fears with me at this point. I had forgotten about buying iodine pills in Boston, and was obsessed with the fear of drinking from the streams, until a fellow hiker said,"Just drink it up, let's worry about the ringworms later." Also, I had read that summertime was black fly season, and had heard stories from a Canadian traveller earlier that his face got stung so bad that it swelled for a few hours. So there, my 2 obsessions coming at the start of the hike, fear of black flies and fear of drinking poisoned water.

To get to the mountain proper, I had to cross a few miles of thick forest, but rest assured, paths have already been cleared for us. There is no need to trailblaze through. And, temperate forests, with their sparse undergrowth of soft lichen and moss, are a joy to walk in.

Into the wild...

Started the trail around 5am, with the sky already quite bright. I had elected to do the Helon Taylor trail, which is a hike with only a few climbs, after which it should adjourn to the infamous Knife Edge before reaching Baxter Peak, the tallest peak of Mount Katahdin.

This is the Helon Taylor trail, which involves jumping along these boulders.

Oh yea, and one more fear, the fear of getting my boots wet. So this stream was a considerable challenge in keeping my boots dry. My Timberland Gore-Tex held up nicely, and passed the test with flying colours. Of course I replenished my water supply here too. River streams don't come by so often in the wilderness.

A 2-m tall boulder, one of the few climbing challenges along the trail, facing me.

Easily done--looking down.

This is getting fun. At this point, I had still thought of Baxter State somewhat like a more rugged Sunday climb at the gym. I recalled the joke in the Peep Show, where Jeremy mentioned that "the world is his gym, the mountains, the rivers.", whereupon Mark concurred, "The world is my gym too, well, just that little bit where it is actually a gym." That's the polarity between country and city life.

Wildlife--I mustn't forget to photograph the wildlife I encountered along the way.

Slowly the treeline becomes more exposed. I think I am halfway up the mountain already.

The scenery gets more breathtaking as I go higher up.

More wildlife.

I am soon up among the clouds. I expended approximately 5 hours of non-stop hiking to get to this far. Everything goes to plan. This is still a stroll in Central Park.

Steep climb

Uh-oh. The steepest climb yet. I think it was a 2.5-m climb here. There was no other way but to somehow haul myself up. After much difficulty, including throwing my 2 baggages over the top, could I actually overcome the boulders here.

After doing a few more 2-m haul-ups, I soon realised that its not so easy after all. Looking down, I was thinking, oh my gosh, I am actually CLIMBING now! Quelling my fears, I keep telling myself, "Comon, you've done all these before at the Kallang gym."

One advice they always give...

...Don't look down.

And a new fear supplanted the old ones--the fear of falling. This particular fear of falling is quite unlike that encountered in roller-coaster rides. It is as if the sheer intensity of a roller-coaster ride gets diffused across time, resulting in a less acute but no less palpable throbbing of the heart. It doesn't matter how high you go, because by the time you climb to a certain height, it doesn't make a difference to your brittle sack of flesh anymore. I was thinking, the Helon Taylor "Central Park" trail must have ended, and I must be on this so-called Knife Edge already. If so, then I must be near the peak already.

Is over yonder the peak? No it isn't.

Sometimes you couldn't see over yonder, and you thought that what you saw was the peak. You hastily scramble up, only to see yet another of such mound, and yet another, and yet another. Its beginning to take a toll on my physique.

Taking a break. I'm not alone in getting tired from all these humps.

Spiders.

Wildlife shots indicate my generally high state of morale for I still have it in me to find the mood, not to mention energy, to observe wildlife (mostly insects unfortunately) around me. For a while, I was worried about snakes lurking beneath the undergrowths. But bah...none whatsoever.

This is getting a bit hardcore now. Not unlike one of those fearsome obstacles you have to overcome in those Nintendo games in order to progress to the next stage. I was thinking, hmm, should I just give up and turn back? At this moment, the choice still lies with me, because I had hiked over what is not too difficult to backtrack--a gentle slope punctuated by some large boulder climbs.

It was really tough getting up that wall, but I kept telling myself, this must be the Knife Edge, and I must be nearing my journey. I was elated to see a signpost upon scaling that final rockface, only to realise its not Knife Edge. It was only the Helon Taylor Trail that I had done, and its already 11am now. I had taken 6 hours to trek just 3.2 miles? That must be terribly slow by anybody's standards. And in order to get to the real peak, Katahdin Peak, I have to trek through a 1.5 mile long ridge called the Knife Edge.

Signpost that says Pamola Peak (not Katahdin), and gently points Katahdin-bound hikers to what lies to their left...

...the Knife Edge.

to be continued...soon...

BNP Nick Griffin on BBC Question Time

2009-10-24T14:18:00.005+08:00

I don't know anything about British politics, never heard of the British National Party (BNP), and much less of their leader Nick Griffin and his extremist views that Britain should remain fundamentally white. While white supremacy is nothing new, what is refreshing is that BBC has given him an opportunity to air his views in public. Giving white supremacy any sort of attention, much less on prime time television, is a very dangerous affair, and the controversy was brewing for some time on Financial Times, so I decided to check out what's the whole deal about.

And what transpired from the video I watched was, in my opinion, a triumph of free speech and democracy, where ideologies and arguments are allowed to stand or fall on their own merits. Against a panel of admittedly very illustrious opponents, Nick Griffin, a more oratically gifted one perhaps(an Obama with that Hitler moustache?) could have grasped control of the stage and turned the table against the incumbents. Instead he hemed and hawed, backtracked many times and and was reduced to nervous laughter, which drew swift and sharp rebuttals ("Why are you smiling? It's not a particularly funny matter."). The straw men he built over the course of his political career, denying the Holocaust for example, cosying up to the Ku Klax Clan for example, were admittedly his major liabilities. His rambling ways betrayed a complete lack of clarity of thoughts.

But of course, BBC must have known the outcome in advance. They strategised right down to the last detail--why else invite an American black woman on the panel, who would be both an academic and moral authority to speak on the Ku Klax Clan--to milk maximum humiliation for all Nick Griffin was worth. The trojan horse was delivered, and the bait was taken. The only person there to defray the heat was hapless Jack Straw, UK Home Affairs Minister, who was being blamed for giving birth to the BNP through 12 years of lax immigration laws. So we have a curious case of unwilling father and bastard son, sitting uncomfortably side by side. The 2 women panelists came off with their reputations enhanced. You wouldn't want Sayeeda Warsi sitting opposite you in any debate competition. Eloquent and displaying a sort of economic rationale that is difficult to refute--"this is no longer a race issue, but a resources issue"--she is one daunting opponent. Bonnie Greer, disarmingly humourous and chummy with her snide comments, is just danger.

Add to the mix an engaging and at times emotional audience, and a sprinkling of beautiful people, this is as fun as politics can ever be.

Last note, if the programme had set out to humiliate Nick Griffin, it would have comfortably met its objectives. But I don't think anybody from either side of the ideological divide--liberals and supremists alike--would be convinced to switch camp on the sole basis of a TV programme. Thoughts are entrenched in people over the course of a lifetime. The brain entertains a million thoughts a day, but most of them are just repetitions in various guises, and only reinforce the structure of the brain, compelling the next thought that comes along to travel along well-worn synapses. It is less a philosophical problem than a biological one. It takes enormous commitment and intellectual honesty to come clean with oneself and reorganise our own house of thoughts. Far easier to let the cobwebs manifest themselves in their own ways, rightly or wrongly, and allow ourselves to be forever entangled in our own convoluted web of thoughts.

On Mr Market

2009-10-22T14:27:00.000+08:00

I used to think Mr Market was some kind of omnipotent masters of the universe, and we are mere slave to his whims and fancy. But as long as we fear him accordingly and give him the due respect, we would be shown mercy. The streets are littered with the bodies--hang, drawn and quartered no less-- of those who have been victims to his occasional but unspeakable wrath. They serve as stark warnings to the survivors.

But Mr Market is an elusive one. Nobody knows who he is, or has even looked him in the eye before. Some claim to be able to communicate with him through tongues. We call these people chartists. Those who are unable to comprehend these strange languages resort to vague ideas of superstition. So superstitious was I about Mr Market that I worship him in my mind, and refused to even mutter anything that would be construed as disrespect to Mr Market, much like how people do not speak ill of the dead, or of deities. A book I read warned just that, that we shouldn't speak of "fighting the market", for it will hit back, and hit hard. You should think of Mr Market in more benevolent terms, as a figure who will conspire to fulfill your wishes so long as you go with the flow. It's more Zen than biblical.

But now I know better. Mr Market is just indifferent. You can say anything you want, you can do anything you want. It doesn't matter. You can bet against the Black Swans all your life and retire rich. Others blow up even before they start. Go ahead, be so mighty impudent once in a while and remove your stop-losses just before it hits. Don't worry. Nobody is going to come up to you with some sort of a probability bill to pay afterwards, and certainly not Mr Market. He is just a psychological construct. He is just like God.

Fighting the world is tough

2009-10-17T13:29:00.004+08:00

a great story on the struggles of a molecular scientist Ted Steele, who seem to suffer setbacks after setbacks in his quest to convince the world of his ideas.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=830139582673220790#

...and a few thoughts flashed through my mind while watching the vid.

1) Science acts as a very strict gatekeeper between mainstream ideas and everything else on the fringes. With the modern-day rigour now demanded on all research, it is not easy for any new ideas to gain membership. And that is good. If not, we would be wasting valuable resources entertaining all sort of drivels from flat earthers and creationists.

2) If you want to fight the world, be prepared to get hurt. Perhaps a lifetime of torment, and then be cast into oblivion.

3) Not all scientists had it so tough as Ted Steele. Perhaps this is the difference between true geniuses and mere mortals. Geniuses are always recognised early, and worshipped accordingly. Look at Richard Feynman, whose ideas had always tended to be accepted willingly by the scientific community. At age 20, he was already invited to participate in the Manhattan Project. And by age 47, he was already a world famous nobel laureate. That's the mark of a true genius--a blessed life. Einstein had it very tough with his theory of relativity. Perhaps Einstein was right when he said he wasn't a genius, merely someone who thought a lot.

4) Sometimes you bring trouble onto yourself. Ted Steele's uncompromising stance and controversial headlines may have invited the vitrol directed personally at him. In his quest to convince the world of his ideas, he may have allowed his ego to take control of the proceedings. If the key word here is convince, he may do well to adopt a softer approach.

On Foreign Talents

2009-09-27T12:10:00.004+08:00

A good friend, with whom I have had a long-running disagreement over the issue of foreign talents, fired the latest salvo by sending me a link to an article published in the Malaysian Star:
http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2009/09/we-prefer-non-singaporeans.html#links

The Malaysian report purports to report that employers' hiring message in Singapore these days has morphed from the seemingly innocuous "Foreigners welcome" to the downright explicit "Foreigners preferred".

Such an article would have provoked a stir of dispproval among Singaporeans. The argument sounds almost absurd: Where else in the world are citizens increasingly marginalised by influx of minoroties into the country? But reading the article only reinforced my own set of arguments.

1) "Every time such an ad appears, it cuts into the popularity of the government, which won 66.6% of the popular votes in the 2006 election."
The article correctly points out such politically sensitive ads would never have been allowed in other developed countries. But that's only because the citizens in those developed countries know to show their displeasure with their votes. The winds of change has been sweeping across countries more accustomed to long-standing one-party rules. The LDP of Japan has lost power for the first time in 50 years, and UMNO of Malaysia is looking cautiously over its shoulders after a demoralising setback last year. But Singapore? It seems that we are a small island sheltered from typhoons and political winds too. Against the backdrop of a docile electorate, the government is only being rational in putting the rights of its citizens on a backseat. Ask yourself: How many times do you place the concerns/complaints of a more vocal client over that of a more compliant one?

2)"The foreigners, hungrier and without family responsibility here, generally work longer hours for less pay – something that married Singaporeans with a home mortgage to pay cannot possibly match."
While serving NS and having reservist call-ups are valid gripes outside the sphere of control of Singaporean (males), having a family are personal choices. We always forget that the foreigners are also human beings who, by dint of circumstances, have given up the joys of having a family for the sake of surviving in a cut-throat world. And then comes the average Singaporean who, perhaps somewhat complacently, decides to settle down, saddles himself with debt, only to find himself unable to compete with the hungrier foreigners. Is this a case of having the cake and eating it too?

3) Lastly, the problem of foreigners flooding a country or industry is not a uniquely singaporean affair. Just like there is very little Hainan about Hainese Chicken Rice, and very little European about European options, there is very little English about the English Premier League. Foreigners outnumber locals in this highly lucrative industry. Teams like Arsenal frequently boast 11 non-locals in their lineups on matchday. Managers have no qualms going on record stating that they prefer foreigners to English, because they are more talented and/or cheaper. European law makers have been silent on such cross-border employment, because they were the ones who set the wheel in motion, but are now powerless to stop it. So now we have a situation with Singapore fans griping about the flood of immigrants in their country while cheering for foreign players like Ronaldo (Portuguese) and Thierry Henry(French)in the English Premier League. Now this is uniquely Singaporean.

I could go on about the dominance of foreigners in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and how the centuries-old open-door policies have been the cornerstones of American and French nation-building, but that's another point.

The modern world

2009-04-21T15:14:00.003+08:00

The vague concept of "the modern world", which has for a long time coming been a convenient scapegoat for all the ills of our times, can actually help bail out those religious fellas who got onto the wrong side of law.

Q: WHY YOU STAY IN A PENTHOUSE IN ORCHARD ROAD INSTEAD OF TEMPLE?
A: Because I'm a modern monk. Can't you see? The world has changed...
I can be closer to my devotees if I stay in Orchard Road....

Q: WHY YOU WATCH PORN?
A: Because I'm a modern monk. Can't you see? The world has changed...
Who doesn't watch porn nowadays....?

Q: WHY YOU WEAR CALVIN KLEIN UNDERWEAR?
A: Because I'm a modern monk. Can't you see? The world has changed...
And it last longer... You should try....

Q: WHY YOU WEAR ROLEX WATCH?
A: Because I'm a modern monk. Can't you see? The world has changed...
And also it's a gift from my devotee.... Not I buy one...

On a different note, we tend to cast a disapproving look when we see monks mingling at high-end streets like Orchard and Sim Lim Square (of course!), and we react with glee upon seeing them stray onto the wrong side of law. We string them up, strip them of their dignity and robes, and scrutinize their private lives, right down to the underwears they own. And when we find that they lead lives not dissimilar to our very own, we start berating them for doing the very things we do, like giving in to materialistic excesses or lust or whatever that people in the "lousy modern world" do. Shouldn't we allow for some harmless failings on our fellow humans from time to time, especially if the crime committed is inconsequential? What is it with this selective inconsistency, or if you prefer, hypocrisy, that we have in abundance inside us? The christian bible may be another overrated relic, like justin timberlake or mutual funds, but it does say something wise from time to time: let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.

Into the Wild

2009-04-20T17:48:00.009+08:00

"There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy...", so began a song written in the wartorn 40s, which tells a fantasy of a boy who "wandered very far, over lands and seas" only to learn that "the greatest thing... was just to love and be loved in return". The song could very well have been about Christopher McCandless, whose story has haunted me ever since I caught the movie Into the Wild.

Uneven at times and beautiful in parts, it tells the tale of a boy who hails from middle-class America, but found himself in spiritual discord with the excesses of modern times. To him, a career is a 20th century invention--smart suits, sharp ties, empty souls--and he didn't want anything to do with them.

Paraphrasing Henry Thoreau, he said, "Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness, give me truth." After fulfilling the tedious and absurd duty of graduating from college, he set off on a journey to seek his truth. Starting from Atlanta, he crossed the great American plains, worked his way to Nevada, and into Mexico via the Gulf of Mexico, and crossed the desert back to the US. Having gained an intimacy with the North American continent, his wanderlust now took him to the ultimate wilderness frontier: Alaska. Trekking alone into the Great White North, the wilderness finally caught up with him and, remorselessly, claimed his life. He got himself killed all because he refused simple navigational tools like maps and compass. The tragedy was not that he seemed so lacking in basic sense that he somehow threw away a life like that. Thousands of nutcases get themselves bumped off the gene pool all the time. The tragedy was he was otherwise a very competent and intelligent guy, fleet of foot and quick of reflexes, and he should never have died under the circumstances.

The director was rather heavy-handed in trying to explain the inner soul of Christopher McCandless, alluding often to his overbearing father and the dysfunctional element which ran in his family. While no doubt he had to escape his life because his family embodies all that he hates about society, I think the director is missing the point. It is simply the call of the wild. The same siren song which led Columbus to the Americas, Marco Polo to the far east, and Dr Livingstone to the heart of Africa. The wild promises adventures that enrich your life, a spiritual reunion with the earth, and a peace that simply cannot be gotten from our modern-day jungle. It stirs you alive. All I know is when the siren song of the wild beckons, I have to go.

Barry Lopez, a landscape photographer who writes for National Geographic, and who too had found his calling in wilderness attributed it to a sense of loneliness. He writes, "The cure for loneliness, I have come to understand, is not more socialising. It's achieving and maintaining close friendships. The trust that characterises that kind of friendship allows one to be vulnerable, to discuss problems that resist a solution, for example, without having to risk being judged or dismissed. I bring this up because the desire I experience most keenly, when I travel in landscapes like the ones made so evocative here, is for intimacy. I have learned that I will not experience the exhilaration intimacy brings unless I become vulnerable to the place, unless I come to a landscape without judgements, unless I trust that the place is indifferent to me. The practice I strive for when I travel is to meet the land as if it were a person. To encounter it as if it were as deep in its meaning as human personality. I wait for it to speak. And wait. And wait."

It ain't over till it's over!

2009-03-14T23:22:00.015+08:00

Towards the end of the match, I was asked to come up with a hypothetical headline to sort of capture the amazing spectacle that had earlier unfolded before our eyes. "Man U Thrashed at Theatre of Doom". Nah too long. "Red Devils slaughtered like lambs". No punch. "4 shoved up Man U's ass". Too vulgar. "Liverpool spanks Man U into meek submission". Too erotic. And my tongue started twisting as I was launching into the next one, which sounded like "Day of the Triffids at Old Trafford"... Writing headlines is not an easy job.

Why not just "Liverpool beat Man U 4-1", asked my incredulous friend. No! We Liverpool fans had been waiting for a day like this for a long time coming. It would have been a journalstic travesty to let Man U off with just any other headline. For almost 2 decades(can anyone even fathom the length of 20 years?), Liverpool had been living in the shadows of a dominant Manchester United team. If there was any team who had gotten on the wrong end of a stuffing, Liverpool would be it. Painful memories of a Jamie Carragher double--own goal doubles-- way back in 1999 came flooding back to my mind. A last min O'Shea goal at Anfield a few years back nearly set off an internal haemorrhage. At last, I managed to make peace with the devil and actually admired how Manchester United make the art of playing effective soccer seem so easy. Why? All you need to do is to send your defenders up at the last minute and pop your head at goal. Liverpool had become so pathetic that a draw at Anfield was considered a gift from the gods.

In many ways, we found our lives running in parallel with the fortunes of the football club we support. Somehow cheering for a chronic loser seem to condition one to be a loser in life. We learn to accept our lot, and learn to accept that the others will always have it better, and easier. Liverpool fans tend to hang their heads a tad lower, and smoke, and read Camus.

Until today, that is. We simply could not believe our eyes as the goals went in one after another. Manchester United given a hiding at Old Trafford? The expensively-assembled team of arrogant entertainers taught a footballing lesson from the gentlemen of Merseyside? It was like George Bush pleading for forgiveness for his Iraq fiasco. But happened it did. The last time Man U was thrashed at home by any team was in 1992, and by Liverpool, 1936. 1936! John Lennon and the state of Israel weren't even born yet. Perhaps it was the genius that was Torres. Perhaps it was the inspiration that was Gerrard. Or perhaps the industrious Kuyt, or the exuquisiteky-skilled Aurelio. (I always tend to notice the underdogs, even in a team of underdogs.) It didn't matter why. When Andrea Dossena signed off the match with a lob that floated into goal with such careless mockery, we were already delirious with joy and pride. With new-found self-confidence, and boasting pools of testesterones we never knew we had, we roared ourselves silly with delight. And with each roar, the years of frustration just melted away. And they always say, "Even the dogs have their day". But I say, this is a new world order. If it's always about fighting anyway, let's just fight to the end.

As for the headline, how about this: Liverpool strips Man U off their cloak of invinsibility. Summer is coming, but Man U may yet catch a chill they're never forget.

Someday i'll be saturday night

2009-03-03T13:08:00.002+08:00

Don't Panic

2009-03-02T12:40:00.002+08:00

Oh, we're sinking like stones,
All that we fought for,
All those places we've gone,
All of us are done for.

We live in a beautiful world,
Yeah we do, yeah we do,

Oh, we're sinking like stones,
All that we fought for,
All those places we've gone,
All of us are done for.

We live in a beautiful world,
Yeah we do, yeah we do,

Oh, all that I know,
There's nothing here to run from,

And there, everybody here's got somebody to lean on.

It seems to be creeping out from everywhere nowadays. This is a song of the times.

This is criminal

2009-02-22T01:00:00.006+08:00

After agonising over the almost haphazard notations on the lecture notes provided by my course on Black-Derman-Toy interest rate model, and getting absolutely nothing out of it after almost 2 hours of my life, I decided to appeal to Emmanuel Derman himself.

http://www.ederman.com/new/docs/faj-one_factor_model.pdf

And soon the whole gist of the story became clear to me. It was not particularly because the original paper was well written--and it was sparkling in its clarity, as befits a typical Fischer Black paper--but because the idea was essentially very simple. Add-and-subtract simple. Heartbreakingly simple.

And I looked back to my lecture notes. I was not alone in getting all muddled up reading them, judging from the collective confusion in the class after the lecture. And I had to wonder, and perhaps never getting a satisfactory answer--how could anyone make something simple appear so incomprensible.

Richard Feynman once said, "If you can't explain anything simply, you don't know what you're talking about." Does the guy really understand what he is teaching? This is a complete and systemic breakdown of communication. And we, as the students, are made to pay, with our time, with our money, with our pride. Sometimes, I find no difference between institutional education and institutional abomination.

Post-remark (26/02/09):
Now I realised I had missed the point completely when my rudimentary understanding of the Black-Derman-Toy was cruelly exposed in an exam. In order to back out a r(2,-2) short rate, I had to perform tons of frustrating calculations, which I had later realised was completely unnecessary had I actually understood the powerful concept of state pricing. With state pricing, I could back out short rates, yield curve, and even forward yield curves. And that was what our lecture notes had been driving at all along. I learn, I learn...But the notations are still terrible!

Awakenings from a false dawn

2009-01-13T17:27:00.004+08:00

At the start of the year, investors, fresh from the festivities, continued where they left off in the so-called year-end rally, and started bidding stocks higher. That helped the stock market rebound more than 25% from its November 21 2008 low. With more money in debt and money markets than equity markets for the first time since World War II, a rally could be spectacularly explosive. Looking at all the positive market indicators--rising oil prices, higher volume, rising indexes--there was a real sense of anxiety that the worst may be over. It may not sound right, that you actually wish for the worst to befall others. But it's just greed. It's just business.

The thing is, if we are on the road to recovery, in the sense that the worst quarter for the world economy was the 4Q 2008, which isn't saying much actually because it was extremely bad (or so we are led to believe), then we should see a bottoming out of stock prices anytime now, because conventional wisdom has the stock market as a 6 month leading indicator of economic health.

Indicators are misleading. They pretend to tell you a lot, but actually they don't. (Which is good actually, because you don't want the stock market to flash green lights for all to see so everyone can see its time to buy. Then you'll always be too late.) Oil prices have since rebounded from the rock bottom of $35, briefly touching $50 due to the Gaza wars, and the Baltic indexes have corrected by quite a bit too.

But any talks of a sustained rally is, at best, premature. The anticipated rally from the Obama presidential inauguration on Jan 20 2009 is not materialising. Instead investors are bracing themselves for what could be a worse-than-expected 4Q corporate earnings. In the space of 1 trading session (Jan 12 2009), financials are surrendering their gains since their November 21 low, and are threatening to breach that low all over again. Like a patient in ICU, a "stable but critical condition" has now suddenly--as usual--"taken a turn for the worse."

The depressed market trading conditions is suggesting that the year-end rally is beginning to take shape as just another bear rally in the grand scheme of a severe downturn. The dead cat has bounced? As an aside, the phrase comes from traders, whose morbid imaginations conjure up images of cats which had fallen from considerable heights and died under the circumstances, would nonetheless still bounce upon impact. That's what gloomy stock markets make you think about. You think about death.

Russell Napier, in trying to answer the million-dollar question, turned to history and examined 4 periods of extreme market undervaluations in 1921, 1932, 1949 and 1982, and found common themes, summarised here by FT's Tony Jackson, "Typically, the bottom was immediately preceded by a turn in commodities (copper especially), auto sales, corporate inventories and corporate bonds. Good news was, meanwhile, ignored by investors."

If we work through the list item by item, it seems that most of the conditions for a market bottom has been satisfied, especially with regards to commodity prices like copper which gained back some 20% since December, and oil, which rebounded from its low of $33.87 (Brent North Sea crude) in December 21 2008, to around $50 a barrel. US auto car sales may seem to be headed down, but once adjusted on an "annualised basis", they are actually not doing too bad. There is a palpable thaw in the credit market frozen over in the mayhem after the Lehman collapse. Bond yields have fallen and companies are issuing rights again.

But the conditions are scarcely enough. Dangling off the last of the list is an ominous remark about how "good news was ignored". It reflected the sentiments of those historic bears when markets were so bad that investors, apathetic to all sorts of news, have all but given up on the stock market.

It is clearly not the case now. Any reports of earnings that were less severe than expected would have the shares spiking straight up. Debenhams reported less severe than expected 4Q results and prompted a 20% rise in its stocks. When the BoE announced interest rate cuts to 1.5%, pushing the pound up(I am not sure why at this moment), the shares of British banks like Lloyds, Barclays and RBS rebounded very strongly in the space of a few sessions. Anticipating a massive auto bailout, investors bidded up the price of Ford from $1.50 to $3.50. Not good.

The thing is, if we are in the midst of a horrible bear market destined for an entry in the history books, and not just one of those barely mentionable cyclical downturns --technically the 2001 recession could be seen as one of "barely mentionables"-- then the bear market has further to go.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but analyst Jim Sibbet, paraphrasing Dow theorist Robert Rhea, explains that bear rallies and false dawns are mainly the effects of pockets of misplaced optimism investors still harbour about the economy, and when the true extent of the economic devastation is slowly revealed to us, piece by piece, the optimism will slowly be weeded out. That is when the market slides to its uncomfortable destiny with a truly unimaginable rock bottom, that is when the market has lost all hopes of recovery, that is when lights have been switched off at the end of tunnel, that is when everybody's mind is made up, and there is no way to go but up. And that is also that elusive bottom, the financial El-Dorado that everyone's been dreaming about. To go to heaven, you must first go through hell.

More ominously, there are some economists who think that we are actually having a continuation of a major bear market that began at the start of 2000. The underlying economic structures did not have a chance to fully recover before cheap credit papered over the cracks and ushered in a short-lived era of housing booms and false prosperity. If the fundamentals are severely damaged, it may take much longer for recovery to happen. I don't know why some like to quote from their CFA textbooks that a recession last for at most 1 year. The people who lived through the Great Depression never saw prosperity in their lifetime. Closer to our times, the Japanese endured a decade of zero economic growth. And we--the people of my generation--may become what others speak of in hushed tones, the lost generation.

In the midst of rising unemployment rates...

2009-01-13T13:05:00.006+08:00

...it's high time politicians, so often convenient targets of the common people's wrath, consider fire-proof vests for personal safety. Because what happens when the economy turns bad? You can get fired.

MP hospitalised after man pours flammable liquid on him, sets him on fire

Shebab of the Sea

2009-01-07T02:20:00.004+08:00

There has been a recent spate of piracy along the Red Sea, which caused considerable disruption to oil transportation routes from Middle East to the rest of the world. The acts drew worldwide condemnation of the pirates, who were portrayed as uneducated thugs who would sooner have caused trouble on land if not at sea. So I was rather surprised when AFP managed to catch hold of a pirate who was in the midst of hijacking some Saudi tanker, and actually coaxed some gems out of the pirate himself.

"We are the Shebab of the sea and we can't be scared of the Shebab of the land. Every Somali has great respect for the holy kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We have nothing against them but unfortunately what happened was just business for us and I hope the Saudis will understand."--Mohamed Said, pirate

How thoughtfully worded. So the hijacks were simply unfortunate incidents which he would rather not have happened but for the economic circumstances of the day. And for a moment, I could just imagine him whipping his fellow pirates into a gleeful song and dance with "We are the Shebabs of the Sea!" These pirates must be delightful company.

And some of the hijacks have turned up interesting returns. A cargo of Ukrainian tanks and missiles bound for Sudan insurgencies have been recovered from the pirates by the US Navy, but that would only mean that the arms smugglers are now cleared to continue their illicit business. "I certainly won't speculate on where they might end up," 5th Fleet spokesman Lieutenant Nathan Christensen says. "We want this to end as peacefully as possible." An absurd job on murky waters, these US Navy law enforcers on the Red Sea.

Bernstein on hesitation

2008-12-12T11:55:00.005+08:00

I have always liked Peter Bernstein, one of those Wall Street gurus whose names you can always find plastered in any finance bookshelves. Somehow he seems different from all the rest who practically scream, "LOOK AT ME! I AM RICHIE RICH!" while jamming their books with bland MBA-lingos exhorting you to worship themselves above all else. Probably through his eloquent writings, his reverence towards history and his sensitivities towards the arts and literature, Bernstein has managed to distance himself from the MBA pack.

And this is what he had to say about hesitation in the face of uncertainty. Common knowledge has it that "he who hesitates is lost". Going on to quote Hamlet "the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'ver with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment lose the name of action.", he went on to debunk the consensus:

Yet once we act, we forfeit the option of waiting until new information comes along. As a result, not acting has value. The more uncertain the outcome, the greater may be the value of procrastination. Hamlet had it wrong. He who hesitates is halfway home.

My trigger-happy fingers have caused me much grief in the *past.I need to get this drummed into my head.

*(only last night) I had been trying to get into BAC, but I knew the market was very choppy. The ticker was bouncing between 16 and 16.2 for a few hours. Hindsight and common sense is to stay away tonight, but at that moment, when it rose, I was filled with dread that it would run away, and when it fell, I was filled with anticipation to buy. And when it went down to 16 again, I just had to buy at 16, all because I thought I had stayed up all night, and I deserved some action. Almost immediately after the order was filled, it plunged drastically down, closing at 14.9 for the day. The instantaneous reaction from the market was surreal, almost as if some higher being out there was observing you with glee. That sickness in the stomach, familiar eh?

Trading tips for NYSE

2008-12-04T01:23:00.009+08:00

a list i mentally compiled to myself along the way...

1. If you find yourself 15% up in a day, you can also be 15% down tomorrow. It's called volatility. Liquidate.

2. Do not trade pre-market. Do not trade in the 1st 15min. Have a feel for general sentiment of the day before committing.

3. Asia lags US. Do not use Asian markets to predict US movements. Not even for identical company stocks listed across different exchanges.

4. Do not worry if a trading strategy is sound. If enough people use it, it is sound. E.g. moving averages technical analysis. Just use it as another indicator.

5. Do not be worried about low volume declines.

6. US stocks can be very volatile. Be careful with the stop-loss. If you do not have a stop-loss, justify it. If you have a stop-loss, justify it too. Move on.

7. In general (only for buy), do not queue for stocks at a price a few notches lower than market price. It's completely pointless. If it decides to fall, it will fall through your queue price, and you are wasting time and effort monitoring the stock. Better to have your button on market order once the price stabilises.

8. Try to time the market if you can. Some days you get it right, some days you get it wrong. Plain wrong. Do not over-obsess over the difference of a few ticks. Feel you could have bought at US$0.20 lower? Yea it sucks. Learn from your mistakes and compile a list of WHAT-NOT-TO-DO, like this one.

Now for a real test of my mettle. To the frontline...
2:00am Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS 5.39 +0.75 (16.16%)
LVS is up 16% in a day. According to Rule No 1, I should sell. Should I?

2:08am Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS 5.27 +0.63 (13.58%)
Indecision...din sell.

2:15am Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS 5.09 +0.45 (9.70%)
Ok. The ship has sailed. Queueing to sell at 5.40. Goodnight.

2:20am Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS 5.04 +0.40 (8.62%)
That's what i get for NOT following my own rules!!!

3:00am Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS 4.87 +0.23 (4.96%)
*nothing to say*

3:13am Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS 5.25 +0.61 (13.15%)
Beautiful play of geometric brownian motion here.

3:35am Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS 5.41 +0.77 (16.59%)
SOLD!

4:09am Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS 5.03 +0.39 (8.41%)
a foolish game of randomness, but seriously addictive...it's bouncing up and down like a yo-yo, almost predictably, dare i say?

must...get...some...sleep...

Why I long Citigroup

2008-11-25T23:26:00.003+08:00

*disclaimer*
Nothing on this blog shall be considered a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security, future, option or other financial instrument or to offer or provide any investment advice or service to any person in any jurisdiction. Nothing contained on the website constitutes investment advice or offers any opinion with respect to the suitability of any security, and the views expressed on this website should not be taken as advice to buy, sell or hold any security.
(just in case, you never know these days...)

1. Citigroup is a bank deemed too large to fail. Heck, it has assets larger than the GDP of most countries, with 2 trillion worth of assets (unfortunately I must add, with 2 trillion worth of liability too). With 350,000 employees scattered all over the world from Bugis to as far away as Boon Lay, I'm sure they can clobber up a decent swim team to compete in the Olympics. A disappearance of Citigroup under our radar might spell the end of the modern world as we know it.

2. Oh...and 52,000 employees have been asked, politely I'm sure, to leave. Some may say this smacks of desperation, but I prefer to see it as aggressive cost-cutting.

3. Sorry people from the manufacturing industry, the financial industry, save for porn, is more important than any other in the world. GM can go on their knees and plead for all they want, and the US government just won't budge, but the same government did not hesitate to write a blank cheque to Citigroup in the blink of an eye. Some are just more equal than others.

4. How ironic that capitalism has created a peculiar state of affairs: profits are privatised, but losses are socialised. But that's the way it is these days. I am not here to moralise on the issue, but if you can't beat them, join them.

5. Citi is not AIG. The US Govt sacked the entire AIG board of directors (BOD), but gave a vote of confidence to Citi BOD. Robert Rubin and co have some serious connections.

6. It has a mega-business model that has proven to be hugely profitable in good times. Citibank is a brand which comes with certain prestige. To borrow a cliche from sports, form is temporary, but class is permanent.

7. Mark-to Market (MTM) accounting (fair value) might be scrapped when the ruling is up for review next year. In the event of that happening, the liquidity crisis might just vanish overnight.

8. When a $5 bill can buy you a stake in one of the largest corporations in the world, and have some change left over for a $2 chicken rice, this is an early Christmas gift presented to us by the bungling duo of Irrationality and Fear.

9. Vikram Pandit and various other directors have bought massively (US$8 million of personal wealth is quite a lot, to me anyway) into Citi shares. This apparent show of confidence is reassuring.

10. History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always
looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable. It may look shitty now, but humankind from the beginning of time has seen off so many disasters, imagined or otherwise, that I'm sure this too will pass.

My old friend

2008-11-18T22:31:00.005+08:00

I don't know exactly when, but I have almost completely lost focus in whatever I am supposed to do. I don't really know what hit me, but it must have been the day i inadventently let my old friend back into my life. I thought it was just a harmless chill-out, to catch up for old times' sake. After all, one needs a breather from time to time. But when the time came to bid goodbye, he feigned ignorance. I shouted at him in desperation. He just smiled.

I should have known better. Procrastination has found me out, and is now clinging onto me with a newfound fervour, as if to make up for lost time. Where once I could spend days poring through stochastic calculus, subscript by painful subscript, and actually admiring the level of mathematical abstraction that is being communicated in written text, I can only now stare blankly back at them. Where once I could eagerly devour technical articles on the complex subjects of financial derivatives, I can only wonder on the meaninglessness of it all. Where once I could wake up afresh in the morning and plan my day in exactitude, now the hours just melt into days, and days into weeks. I grieve at my lack of determination, and he sings softly into the air, "If the days they seem to fall through you, well just, let them go."

It does not help that no less an intellectual authority as Bertrand Russel once said, "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." In more enlightened days, to idle away was a sure sign of nobility, for only the aristocrats could afford to indulge in their whims and fancies. Lord Byron wrote Hours of Idleness in celebration of slouth. Hemingway and Fitzgerald spent a good portion of their lives frolicking in the French Riveira. But somewhere along the way, idleness fell out of favour--big time. With papers to chase and rat races to run in a never-ending cycle, it's as if all the world's a large treadmill, and we are just going through the motion, pounding away till the day our heart stop. How delightful.

In the midst of it all, it is difficult to say no to this charming blob of consciousness, this Procrastination, whoever he is (perhaps a subconscious rebellion of our modern times). He is an interesting companion, even in the worst of times. He has even equipped himself with a new technological tool, Youtube, which streams whatever video your consciousness demands at any moment. And from there, I was introduced to the comedic duo of David Mitchell and Robert Webb, whose Peep Show provided me with endless hours of laughter and pleasure.

He is an artful one. Music is the headiest of drugs, and he feeds me incessantly with a potent brew of Federic Chopin, Joy Division, and Magnetic Fields. And soon I am possessed with an otherworldly fervour to master the hauntingly relentless Scherzo No 1. And movies! Out of nowhere, I was brutally thrown a copy of Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep. I don't know, but the spectre of Charlotte Gainsbourg's Stephanie has been lingering in my mind since. Delicately devoid of makeup, she has an indescribable elegance, that certain "je ne sais quoi" that the French would say. Sometimes she looked so fragile and goofy that I wish I could just wrap her around my arms and tell her that everything's all right. But she's an independent spirit--she doesn't need that--and that's what so alluring about her. And she doesn't believe in marriages. There is just this vague familiarity about her where reel and real starts to blur. And that is the beauty of life, no?

Ok, another day gone to dust. Tomorrow will be a brand new day. I will get back my focus. I will rediscover the joys of mathematics. I will immerse myself in my studies. In the background, a familiar voice, ever so languorously, sings, "Yeah, yeah, yeah...tomorrow comes today."

Life is a supermartingale

2008-10-29T23:08:00.006+08:00

Hyperinflation - The money is disappearing even as I sit here and contemplate it.
Arbitrage - You are being paid to receive money (positive cashflow)
Markov - Throw away all your financial news articles. History has no bearings on the future.
Supermartingale - Life is a supermartingale. Expectation decreases as time passes.

A friend recently shared a reflection with me:
人可笨不可懒。
Man can afford to be stupid, but not lazy.

This is so true, especially in the modern-day context. Day by day, resources are getting scarcer, but the competition is getting keener. It used to be enough to be good at something. Then the bar was raised--one must specialise. Now, you have to be at the pinnacle of your game. In this winner-takes-all society, only the ones at the top are ambly rewarded with riches. The rest are left scraping at the bottom of the barrels. Just spare a thought for the otherwise supremely gifted Olympic sprinters and swimmers of the Beijing 2008 cohort, who had trained all their lives for their one moment of glory, and turned up only to be left floundering in the wake of Bolt and Phelps.

Faced against insurmountable odds, it is easy to throw in the towel, and give up the fight. Fair enough. There's alternative ways of living than just about fighting for the scraps in life. For those who choose to soldier on, here's a rallying cry. We must persevere, in spite of our stupidity (or limitations). Because, quite frankly, that is all we have left.

As for the other reflection that life is a supermartingale, this is what Emanuel Derman has to say:

At age 16 or 17, I had wanted to be another Einstein; at 21, I would have been happy to be another Feynman; at 24, a future T.D. Lee would have sufficed. By 1976, sharing an office with other postdoctoral researchers at Oxford, I realized that I had reached the point where I merely envied the postdoc in the office next door because he had been invited to give a seminar in France.

In much the same way, by a process options theorists call time decay, financial stock options lose their potential as they approach their own expiration. They call this the negative theta factor θ. It is all too easy to let our thetas rise (much like entropy), but to bring our thetas under control requires a lot of determination and stomach for a fight. The struggles of life has now been neatly encapsulated into a symbol.

An aside,
Tourist: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
New Yorker passer-by : Practice, practice, practice!

What's it like down below?

2008-10-10T16:42:00.001+08:00

The Domino Effect

2008-09-19T12:27:00.004+08:00

Before the turn of the decade, 2 events have already earned their place in the history books: the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the end of an era for investment banking. The current crisis has yet to be played out, and it remains to be seen how this tragedy from the world of high finance impacts the everyman world we live in. The volatility index, the so-called "fear factor", are at levels not seen since World war II. The signs have been there for a while. Dow Jones have been swinging up and down with the regularity of a roller-coaster ride since the start of 2008. As of now, it appears, government attempts to save the world have succeeded in placating the markets quite a bit. The cost of saving these financial institutions have effectively been transferred to the everyman taxpayer. If there ever were a game that goes "heads I win, tails you lose", this is it. The bankers who wrote the CDOs in the subprime boom may have lost their jobs, but they had already made their hay while the sun was still shining, hay that would take the rest of the populace a few lifetimes to make.

Such is the moral quandry facing the Fed. AIG have been described as having "tentacles all over the world". The collapse of AIG would leave gaping holes so large that the world would just implode on its own. With US$1 trillion in counterparty assets, this is no exaggeration. Even Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have exposures to the tune of some US$8 billion in bonds bought by Bank of China and various other Asian banks. The Fed bailout of these firms, thus guaranteeing the securitised loans, have somewhat sheltered Asia from the financial storm. So far it seems, only Lehman Brothers have filed for the dreaded Chapter 11 bankruptcy. We can only observe with baited breath the fallout following the collapse of the 4th largest investment bank in the world. Not as spectacular as what an AIG collapse would induce --it's more fun reading about the Great Depression than living it--but still worth a look.

List of Counterparties and exposure to Lehman Brothers:

JAPAN

Aozora Bank $463 mln Loan
Mizuho Trust $382 mln "
Shinsei Bank $231 mln "
UFJ Bank $185 mln "
Sumitomo Mitsub Bk $177 mln "
Chuo Mitsui Trust $144 mln "
Shinkin Central $93 mln "
Nippon Life Ins $46 mln "

TAIWAN

Investments

Shin Kong Fin (2888.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) $78 mln
Cathay Fin (2882.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) $33 mln
Central Reins (2851.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) $32 mln
Entie Bank (2849.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) $24 mln
Bk of Kaohsiung $18 mln
Polaris Securities $11 mln
SinoPac Fin $2 mln

Bank loans

Hua Nan Fin (2880.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) $59 mln
First Financial (2892.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) $25 mln
Bank of Taiwan (unlisted) $25 mln
Fubon Fin (2881.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) $10 mln

AUSTRALIA

Commonwealth (CBA.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Below $123 mln Range of products
ANZ (ANZ.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) $120 mln Mostly to subsidiaries
Westpac (WBC.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Below $8 mln
NAB (NAB.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Below $81 mln

HONG KONG

Citibank (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) HK branch $275 mln Loan

CHINA

Bank of China New York $50 mln Loan

(3988.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (601988.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)

SOUTH KOREA

The Bank of Korea said the country's financial institutions had exposure of a combined $1.34 billion to Lehman and Merrill Lynch (MER.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) as of Aug 31.

THAILAND

Central bank said Thailand's 14 commercial banks had only $124 mln of direct exposure to Lehman and more than that in foreign exchange contracts. Bangkok Bank BBL.BK said it holds $101 million in senior, unsecured bonds.

SINGAPORE

DBS (DBSM.SI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)^ Insignificant
UOB (UOBH.SI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Very small
Bank of Nova Scotia(BNS.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) $93 mln loan
(Singapore branch)

PHILIPPINES

The Philippines' two biggest banks -- Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. (MBT.PS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Banco de Oro Unibank (BDO.PS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) -- on Tuesday set aside nearly $100 million to cover exposure to Lehman Brothers but the central bank said the total exposure of the local financial sector was small.

What exciting times we live in!

The Blitzkrieg

2008-09-02T01:02:00.003+08:00

The Eiffel Tower is already in their sight. They have scented blood and are moving in for the kill. In a week's time, they would come with guns-ablazing, and we would know our fate. Resistance is almost futile now. A 5 week onslaught have totally caught us by surprise, and left us bereft of manpower, time, resources and food. Extremely low on morale, the soldiers are bordering on mutiny. Some divisions are even deserting their positions. What's worse, the trail of defeats has left confidence totally shattered. We are only fighting on adrenalin, fighting only because red blood still courses through our veins. The citizens are engulfed in a myriad of emotions, ranging from the defiant, to the fearful, to the desperate, to resentment, and now resignation. Fate is no longer in our hands. The Maginot Line--our sentinel, our saviour, our fortress, which we have painstakingly built up over the past year, has turned out to be a just another cruel illusion. It was never enough. We were totally out of our depth, totally outplayed, out maneuvered, out-thought, and out-fought and now we face the consequences of our CARELESS mis-steps. We only have ourselves to blame for the dire state we find ourselves in. But now is no longer the time to talk of recriminations. The hour has cometh. Make a last-ditch stand. Recall the spirit of Verdun. Fight till the last drop of blood is shed. Fight to reclaim our dignity. Ils ne passeront pas. Hollow words they shall remain to be unless we take ACTION!

Paris,
June 2 1940

The Postmodern Traveller

2008-07-14T14:31:00.009+08:00

He cuts through the heart and soul of the city, gliding effortlessly around the urban jungle. He weaves in and out of traffic, at once part of it, at once apart from it. He observes in motion, taking in the vibrant sights and sounds, witnessing a dynamic city life as it courses through the streets, but never lingers longer than his welcome stay. The city appears aloof, yet it is he who has accepted the city for what it is. Trains, benches, subways, bridges, cars, even the dreaded authorities--they are but mere entities that he accepts as part of the landscape. He breathes the city through his skin. He caresses the pavements like a familiar lover, and leaps through obstacles as if they exist in different spatial dimensions. He knows every nook and cranny, every creek and crevice. The city resists, but to no avail. He is an antiauthoritarian, a quicksilver, a free spirit, a loner, a transcendental traveller. He is the postmodern poet on wheels.

I am inspired. But considering my dexterity, I would most probably elicit some headlines that reads:
Boy,29, dies trying blading stunts at HDB void deck

Last Chance Saloon

2008-06-15T19:50:00.021+08:00

For a waiting room of sort, it was a large one. From where I sat, I could only see endless rows of nameless, faceless souls lined up quietly, backs to wall, with their eyes closed. They seemed deep in thought, as if they were keeping a long uneasy vigil, or they could just as well be dozing off to the stultifying boredom. The air was stale with cigarette smokes and broken dreams. The walls, yellowed with age, had seen better times. Grafitti was sprawled all over. Perhaps there was nothing else to do. Perhaps the inmates merely wanted to mark the passage of time.

I looked around me. Sometimes I could make out a familiar face or two. It was all very hazy. There were murderers and drink-drivers who shattered lives--other people's lives--in moments of insanity, doctors and lawyers whose lives did not turn out the way they wanted, engineers and scientists disenchanted with the lousy capitalist world, writers and poets cursed with a chronic discontent they could not identify, and above all, the common people. Yes, common people who yearn for something greater. Common people whose lives had somehow slid out of view. Common people anonymous to all but God.

For all the souls packed in here, the room was eerily quiet. When people spoke, they did so in hushed tones. We all shared a common destiny, but there was nothing we wanted to do with one another. Sometimes we stared, with our glazed eyes, right through one another. It was rumoured that Edward Hopper drew his artistic inspirations from this very spot, but we all know it isn't true. We are better than them--those alienated figures who hung about in the vast emptiness of his canvases. For one, there is still hope. Someone has forgotten to tell us that hope and despair are two sides of the same coin.

A young migrant, as if reading my thoughts, turned to me and said, "If the door is closed on me, I'll just open another one. And if it doesn't open, if I just knock long and hard enough, somebody might just wake up." his dirty face creased with hope as he spoke. There was an unmistakable fire in his belly, an all-too-rare commodity in a place chokeful with cynicism and spite. I was grateful for the warmth, for otherwise we would have succumbed to the cold long ago.

I pressed my nose against the window pane. It was dusk, and the heavy rain in the afternoon had gradually given way to a light drizzle. It was my kind of day. I wished I was out there, out on the rain-scented sidewalks. It always smells like springtime again after a rain. The roads shimmered under the neon lights, and the rough edges were blurred and smudged in fragrant swirls. People and cars zipped about in a kind of absurd hurry, probably with lovers to meet, places to go and parties to dance to till dawn. Looking through the window, darkly, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sad realisation that life was happening elsewhere, and passing me by. Then I remembered the rules, communicated to us with a thinly veiled threat. "One. Check your regrets at the door. Two. Self-pity will not be tolerated. Three. Get lost if you must. "And despite our anti-authoritarian slurs, we all complied. Otherwise we wouldn't have come here. This is no time for wallowing.

One particular graffiti, scrawled in angry red ink, caught my eye. "Fuck you Godot, waited all my life for you!", it spits with no little contempt. I never really understood what it meant. Someone explained to me that it was a reference to "Waiting for Godot", an absurdist play in which the characters waited in vain for a Godot who never arrived. Must be a disheartened religious zealot. Ahh...It's just as well this Godot never arrives. We are all broken souls who have, at one time or another, followed the wrong gods home.

There was Harry Silver, a handsome articulate man in his mid-thirties who had everything going for him till his one-night stands crawled into daylight and wrecked his marriage. Wait a minute. Wasn't he a fictional character from the literary world of Tony Parsons? Kid in tow, I swore he was as real as can be. Pleading under his breath, to no one in particular, he was asking for a second chance. All too easy, Harry, all too easy.

We all know the story of Richard Buckminster Fuller, who was once on the verge of suicide but decided to check himself here. The rest is history, so they always say. He made good his time, invented the geodesic dome, and carved his name into eternity. There is even a soccer ball, the Buckminster ball, named in his honour. He is regarded as a folk hero here but not all are as lucky or as determined.

Jack Kerouac checked in and out oftentimes. A familiar figure, he left after the stunning success of "On the Road" brought him instant fame. He never returned. He was last heard to have drunk himself to death on the edge of town. Could this be the metaphorical Hotel California, where you could check out anytime you like, but you could never leave? Probably not. As perverse as it sounds, Kerouac simply gave up on life.

The world is especially cruel to men of science. The guy who invented the zipper died penniless. I can't even recall his name, but I offer a prayer for the man every time I zip up safely. Georg Riemann, Georg Cantor all had it tough. Born to the wrong centuries and derided despite their immense contributions to mathematics, they eventually lost their sanity. I could name more. Antoine Lavoisier, Alan Turing, they didn't even have chance.

That reminds me. I must return to my task at hand. When I came here with my books, all of them shrouded in an arcane language that speaks of Martingales and Markovs, Measure Theory and the Black-Scholes, I was told they could very well be my ticket out of the godforsaken. My life had never been simpler. All I had to do was to unravel the secrets contained within the tomes. Everything else was noise. Staring at the symbols for the longest time, I was beginning to develop a sense of weary affection for them.

But demons lurk within. Paulo Coelho once wrote, " When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." I'm sure he wrote it just to sell his books, to appease some sort of commercial deity. The parallel universe which I had known all my life is at best merely indifferent, and at worst, it conspires to disrupt you. I come here to concentrate, but I keep losing focus. A slight distraction at the door will have me scurrying to find out what happens, but people come in and out all the time here.

As I am speaking, there is a real commotion now at the door. A group of people, dressed in blue, are awaiting outside. The air is thick with goofy euphoria, the kind which happens only when celebrities are spotted among us commoners. In sauntered a familiar figure, lanky and languid. Thierry Henry! Then I recalled, France was recently humiliated 4-1 by Holland in the Euro2008. It was the kind of things which you thought could only happen to other teams, to other people, sort of like getting AIDS or being struck by lightning. It must have been particularly painful for the French, whose years of strutting about in their cloak of invincibility had come and gone. Now that the cloak is gone, all that is left is ridicule, mockery and disillusionment. But this is no time for recriminations nor self-pity. The French team has decided to check into the last chance saloon.

I wish France all the best.

France vs Romania JokeFest

2008-06-11T01:16:00.004+08:00

Football journalists were busy whipping out their poison pens after France and Romania threatened to bring the beautiful game into disrepute, an accusation more often levied at "enemies of football" such as Jose Mourinho and er..Marco Materazzi. Even England, like an unfortunate kid picked on for no apparent reasons, was not spared the collateral damage. From perennial underachievers to plucky minnows? Ha!

From Guardian:
To be fair, Romania have only ever won one game in the Euros and that was against plucky minnows England.

From International Herald Tribune:
On a mild and sunny evening, the best that could be said of the tired spectacle was that the grass was a particularly restful shade of green and, to the naked eye, appeared to be growing well.

Unfortunately, there was nothing of wit from Soccernet this time. When it comes to wit, no other publication does it better than Guardian. Here are some Guardian gems to savour(drawn from other occasions and in no particular order):

[England-Croatia]
After all the debate over the shape England ought to adopt, Croatia decreed that it would be a severely dented one.

[France-Italy WC 2006]
Zidane looked relaxed, sharing a joke with Fabien Barthez who, coincidentally, has often been described as a joke.

[France-Romania Euro 2008]
For the first time in a year or so, Malouda broke dangerously down the left. He jinked into the box but his shot sailed somewhere over the Alps.

[France-Brazil WC 2006]
Now that the over-hyped Ronaldinho has been absolutely rubbish in the entire World Cup as well as the Champions League final, thus shrinking continuously in the big stage, could he be dubbed the New Old Thierry Henry?

[Man U-?]
Wayne Rooney struggled to contain his fiery temper and screamed 'You Kant' at a linesman when called for offside, and then 'Foucault' at the referee. Rare for a player to react to an unwelcome decision by critiquing the philosophical underpinnings of the rules.

Hedging

2008-06-09T23:42:00.007+08:00

One of the many financial terms which have been creeping into our daily lexicon
is hedging. While it sounds impossibly arcane, no thanks to the dark reputations that hedge funds have acquired of late, hedging is actually a simple strategy of reducing risk by taking protective, and sometimes painful, measures against our life utility. In finance-speak, hedging must involve taking opposite positions in various products which are correlated. So if we have to talk about hedging, we must have a common platform--utility, which is not a problem since our singular objective on earth is to maximize our utility, according to economists.

For example, paying life insurance premiums is a type of hedge for human capital in the event of death. Wearing seat belts is a matter of hedging comfort for safety. Socialise with a wider network of people. Do not over-commit in a relationship. Never burn your career bridges. All these social rules have their roots in hedging. If you look hard enough, hedging is something ordinary folks--those of the more conservative types anyway--have been practicing all their life.

And it is not unwise to do so. To take an opposite stance from hedging is to go all-in with guns a-blazing, with the all too familiar result of burning out way before your prime.

"This too will pass" is a philosophical hedge against the extremities of the human condition. Whether you be mired in the throes of despair or be lost in the joys of happiness, be awaiting death as a hangman or be sitting on a pile of capitalist gold, be in the company of or be grieving for your loved ones, the simple realisation that the human condition is essentially transitory tempers all sadness and happiness. Congratulations. You are now a Stoic.

I too have been hedging all my life. France vs Romania is those types of matches which I will bet draw, for fear of suffering the double whammy of France dropping points and losing money at the same time. I would much prefer to lose a small amount of cash and see my favourite teams triumph. Obviously the more important the match features in my heart, the larger the hedge needs to be against potential disappointment. I hedged a considerable sum against Manchester United winning the 2007-2008 Champions League, but actually forgot to cover penalty shootouts. Such is life.

And for all the broken-hearted in the world, it's time to learn how to hedge your pain away. Channel your negative energies into activities of the more productive types--the more utility they earn for you, the better. It's easier said than done, but get that first dose of utility in, and savour the soothing effects of utility on your broken heart. So stop spinning songs of nostalgia and start unravelling the secrets of the universe. Or start a veritable porn collection, if you so wish.

P.S.
The idea of hedging is not new. The average German would pay 80 euros to win Euro2008, while the French, averse to such displays of patriotism as usual, would only offer 13 euro.
http://www.lloyds.com/CmsPhoenix/DowJonesArticle.aspx?id=391960

OK! Placed my bet (draw for France vs Romania). Hope I lose.

Why Liverpool?

2008-02-21T23:01:00.006+08:00

Why, of all things, would I fall in love with a perennial loser like Liverpool? There was no denial the stinging mockery in the question often posed to me, after yet another disastrous English League result.

Yes, it's been torturous, even downright maddening at times. In Gerard Houllier's time, you wished you could spin him like a gyroscope after yet another "corner turned". Could we also rotate Benitez somehow, churning his innards inside out after yet another rotational policy that backfired? But some things are inexplicable, much like how we struggle to explain away romantic love. When things got so dark that you think God had switched off the lights at Anfield, The Cheeky One switched it on again with something like this:

Hapless against Barnsley, imperious against Inter Milan (check out the cross-field passes--sublime!) there is simply no team, not even France, like Liverpool. Stay away from Liverpool if you prefer the mundane, but if you happen to enjoy a bit of unpredictability in your life, hop onto this rollercoaster. But don't ask me where it's taking us. I don't have a clue!

Poker: The All-in Flush Draw

2008-01-06T19:38:00.000+08:00

Pretend I am TransFish. Now this has got to be one of my favourite poker moments. I hold 2 suited cards (as an example from the picture, AT--short for AceTen) and am heads up against a paired opponent.

Flop comes out 2 suits. The air is thick with anticipation. All is quiet, even as the chatters and shouts and excitement intensify across the table. My face is flushed as I await my flush.

First, the technicalities: What are the odds of me making my flush?

The intuitive answer I gave myself was: 50%.
4 suits. Each suit has 1/4 chance of flopping.
2 cards. Add them up.
Unfortunately, the actual odds of making that flush is much lower than the intuitive 50%.

We have 3 independent scenarios:
2 more cards of my suit + 1 card of my suit and 1 non suit + 1 non-suit and 1 card of my suit =
*Total of 52 cards. 2 are dealt to you, and 3 are dealt on the flop making a total of 5 known cards for you, and 47 unknown cards. Of the 5 known cards, 4 are of the suit of interest. There leave 9 more suits in the 47 unknown cards.

A better, and mathematically similar approach is:

There is a trick called the Rule of 4 (analogous to the Rule of 72):
We have 9 outs. To get the odds of making your outs come true, simply multiply the number of outs by 4, hence 9*4 = 36% (marvellous approximation!)
(out is defined as undealt cards that are favourable to your cause. The more outs the better!)

Now comes the game theory aspect of poker (with absolute zero knowledge of game theory, I substitute it with the rudimentary knowledge of calculating expectations)

Of course, the concept of "giving a free card" is also very crucial here--not for me, but for my opponents. I have yet to make my hand. I am waiting for a "free card"-- either on the turn or the river. Those who have me beat at the flop should make me pay (by betting heavily before the turn) to get the free card. In case, they don't, I will check quietly, but in case they do, I may just go all-in.
(A case of damned if they don't, and damned if they do, why else would I elect this hand to be my favourite poker moment.)

Why so?

Considering all possibilities when you go all-in. There are 3 and only 3 scenarios:
1) you win the pot outright. Everyone else folds ( the probability here varies. Say, each person has a 10% chance of calling)
P(0 people call) = 0.9^6 = 0.53 (assume 6 people are in the game)
P(at least 1 person call) = 0.47.

We can assume the probability of at least one person calling your all-in to be 50%.
Conversely, the probability of winning the hand outright is also 50% (everybody folds to your all-in)

2) you get called, and win. (0.5*35%=0.175)
3) you get called, and lose. (0.5*65%=0.325)

Calculate expectation.
Let PotMoney = P.
Let your current stack = x.
Let n = total number of opponents who call your all-in
We want the expectation E[all-in] to be as high as possible, and the 2 variables helping us are P and n.

Let's calculate how high P should be for a favourable all-in.
For expectation > 0 (for n=1),
This means that as long as P is 30% of your current stack, it is not too foolish to go all-in (note my cautious choice of words). When n > 1, P becomes immaterial. Simply put, the expectation just gets higher as more people call your all-in. And the best part is, you are taking on the same risks for higher expectation. Mostly, the people who are going to call you are the pairs and the trips. Best if they are holding on to a flush draw like you, but have an inferior high card. The poker people call these suckers drawing dead. (Yea, you keep waiting, keep drawing, and oh thank god when you finally made your flush, but you still get beat!)

Factors to consider before making the quantum leap:
1) The number of people playing
2) The pot
3) How much money I have
4) Chances of anyone making a full house
5) I better be holding the Ace or King of that suit, giving me a nuts flush.
6) Stages of the game (Opening?Endgame?)

I favour amassing chips at the beginning stages of the game. With a large stack, I can proceed to bully the table for the rest of the game, which is something I highly recommend to do once just for the experience. Pointing at my short-stacked opponents, I can either:
1) laugh at them
2) ask, "How much have you?", and throw the amount of bet equal to what they have, forcing them to go all-in for every card they play. And then repeat Step 1.

The gist is: for an all-in, your upside is unlimited (you never know how many "by-catch" are caught on the trailing hook), but your downside is limited to your all-in. When the gambling blood in me goes on full boil, calling all-in is something I relish!

Things I learnt from William Feller

2008-01-06T01:21:00.000+08:00

1. The trial of 1 coin thrown 1000 times is different from the trial of 1000 coins in one instant. That is, given the results (statistical characteristics) of both experiments, one can deduce if its the former or the latter.

Reason:
The laws governing prolonged series of individual observation (random walk) is entirely different from the laws derived for a whole population (law of large numbers).
Time average does not have bounded expectation and hence DOES NOT obey Law of Large Number (LLN). Instead it has its own set of "arc sine" laws strictly for waiting times.Ensemble average has bounded expectation and hence obey LLN.

It sounds absolutely preposterous. I must admit the math on LLN and CLT (Central Limit Theorem) get a bit too dense for me here, but please read Feller thoroughly before dismissing the idea. Perhaps ensemble average lacks the dimension of time--that's what makes it different.

2. Given a fixed probability average (which is reasonable if we apply Laws of Large Numbers), increased uniformity in each independent Bernoulli trial increases the variances. For example, given a certain quality p of n machines, the output will be the least uniform if all machines are uniformly equal.

Given a probability distribution of Bernoulli trials with variable probability,

To summarise: Set of the wildly fluctuating {0.1, 0.4, 0.7} is good. Set of the more uniform {0.4, 0.4, 0.4} is no good.

Another shocking revelation. I hope the Six Sigma folks are aware of this fact. I would like to venture forth an analogy from thermodynamics: Entropy of a system is at its maximum when the system is isothermally uniform. Similarly, variance of a system is at its maximum when every point within the system is uniform. Makes one think about our intuitive understanding of the word "variance".

What is Entropy? by Erwin Shrödinger

3. All it takes is 23 people to make it more likely that at least 2 of them share the same birthday than otherwise.

I suspect people who share the same birthdays have an instant affinity to each other because of the perceived rarity of such events. But I for sure won't flinch again if another May girl comes along.

4. German bombs felled over London were found to be perfectly random and homogeneous, despite apparent evidences of some areas being more heavily bombed.

Reason: to the untrained eye, randomness appears as regularity or tendency to cluster.

Anyway, that's what the chi-square tests are for--to determine if the pattern we are seeing is indeed an anomalous pattern or a good fit to the Poisson or Normal distributions, which are essentially random.

5. Given a sampling of German planes and their number plates, statisticians guesstimated the total enemy plane productions in World War 2.

Assumption: the number plates were given sequentially.

6. Even if a game is fair, where the expectation of winning (per trial) = entrance fee (per trial), there is nothing in the law of large numbers to prevent you from losing money with a probability of 1. (= sure lose).
(LLN only says your loss is limited to a magnitude less than n).

Assumption: we are dealing with random variables with divergent expectations (eg random walks)

7. We live in a world of no advance knowledge. For example, even the prospect of the sun rising tomorrow is subject to the conditional probability below:

P( sun will rise tomorrow | sun has risen for past observable 1826213 days)
= n+1/n+2 (Law of Succession of Laplace)
= 1826214 / 1826215
= 0.999999

Assume that we have no prior knowledge of the motions of the celestial bodies that causes the phenomenon we call "sunrise".

Wiki on Sunrise Problem

Proof. Bear with me on this hypothetical situation. Imagine there are 20 parallel universes, each created by a supremely bored Creator who, for pure amusement, determine the lifespan of each universe he created by drawing a ball from an urn containing red balls and white balls for each universe.A red ball drawn denotes the survival of the sun for that year. A white ball drawn means the sun must be extinguished by that year. The 1st universe has an urn of 0 red and 19 white balls. The 2nd universe has an urn of 1 red and 18 white balls and so on... Hence, each universe has different likelihood of being extinguished, with the 1st universe most likely to be dead, and the 20th universe least likely (in fact, impossible, since there are 19 red balls, and 0 white balls, are contained in its urn).

Say, human beings live on one of the universes, but they have no idea which universe they belong to. They have thus far survived for 10 years (i.e. 10 red balls have been drawn).

Let total number of balls in each urn be N.
Let total number of universes be N+1.
Let current number of years the Universe has been around be 10.

The probability of 10 red balls drawn = P(A) =
P(10 red balls from Universe 1).P(Universe 1) + P(10 red balls from Universe 2).P(Universe 2) + ...+ P(10 red balls from Universe 20).P(Universe 20)

The probability of the 11th ball being drawn is red = P(B) = 1/12.
Hence, the probability of the 11th ball being drawn is red, given that the 1st 10 balls drawn are red
=P(B|A) = P(AB) / P(A)
=P(B) / P(A) (as P(AB) = P(B)...think about this, they are mathematically equivalent)
=(1/12) / (1/11)
= 11/12
= (n+1) / (n+2) where n = number of successful observations

Note the interesting and immensely useful approximation:
which works as the Riemann rectangles are being approximated (though underestimated) by a continuous curve x^n, much like how the binomial distribution is approximated by the normal curve. The error becomes smaller as n goes to infinity.

Of course Feller warned that such ideas were already discredited, and could very well be labelled pseudo-science. But the mathematical developments of hyperspace have thrown up the distinct possibility of parallel universes co-existing with our own. Maybe ours might just be the one whose sun goes out tomorrow. Anyway, Pink Martini seems to agree:

If tomorrow's sun doesn't shine,
And no creatures stir in the morning time,
If the clouds go still in the sky,
at least I'll have my Clementine.

If tomorrow's moon doesn't show,
And our dreams go lost in the winter snow,
If the flowers wither and die,
at least I'll have my Clementine.

Download clip sung by China Forbes here

New Year Resolutions

2007-12-31T19:46:00.001+08:00

...No more Maximators, but I'll have problems with pouring boiling water on ants. It's the only time I get to be a napalm pilot.

Flight Of The Conchords - Jenny

2007-12-29T22:15:00.001+08:00

Bret: Hello.

Jemaine: Hi.

Bret: Hello man sitting in the park.

Jemaine: I just said hi, woman in the park.

Bret: How you doin'?

Jemaine: Mmm'good thanks.

Bret: Your looking good.

Jemaine: Pardon?

Bret: I said you're looking good.

Jemaine: Fair enough.

Bret: 'Jenny

Jemaine: Pardon?

Bret: Jenny

Jemaine: No I am sorry I think you've mistaken me for somebody else

Bret: No it's me, I'm jenny, my name is Jenny

Jemaine: Oh You're'oh' Ha ha ha ha' I thought' oh' what a hilarious misunderstanding.
Nice to meet you Jenny

Bret: We've met before - quite a few times actually.

Jemaine: Yes of course we have. I meant it was nice to meet you that time that I met you. Where was it that we met that time that I met you when I met you?

Bret: At a party.

Jemaine: That's right! Wasn't it one of those boring work parties?

Bret: No.

Jemaine: That's why I said wasn't it. It was the party of a mutual friend. - Was it? - Wasn't it? - Was it? - Wasn't it?

Bret: Yes it was.

Jemaine: Yeah, I thought so. Oh'Bobby's.

Bret: No

Jemaine: Doug's?

Bret: No

Jemaine: D-dog's?

Bret: No

Jemaine: Maxwell's?

Bret: No

Jemaine: Andy's?

Bret: Yes Andy's

Jemaine: Yeah Andy's party, ooh that's right. Ooh, Andy knows how to throw a party, doesn't he Jenny?

Bret: Yeah, I love Andy's parties!

Jemaine: I love Andy's parties. What crazy parties. How is that guy anyway?

Bret: She's good

Jemaine: Ooh that's right, Andy hates it when I forget that.

Bret: We watched a movie.

Jemaine: Yeah'it was something like but not necessarily Schindler's List. We watched it and we wept

Bret: It was Police Academy 4. We went for a walk

Jemaine: On our feet if I remember correctly.

Bret: We walked to the top of the hill and we ate sandwiches.

Jemaine: Oh, We'd just grab a sandwich and put it in our mouths. Oh, that's the only way to have sandwiches. Oh Jenny, tell me do you still walk? Do you still get into sandwiches in a big way?

Bret: Still walk a lot but I am not eating as many sandwiches as back then

Jemaine: Uh'

Bret: Do you remember what we did up there at the top of the hill?

Jemaine: Kind of'

Bret: We were standing at the look out

Jemaine: Oh, I remember exactly what we did at the look out. We just looked out' across the city from our little spot on the hilltop. Oh, It is so pretty from way up there. We talked about how the lights from the buildings and cars seemed like reflections of the stars that shined out so pretty and bright, that night.

Bret: It was daytime.

Jemaine: The daytime of the night.

Bret: Do you remember what you said to me?

Jemaine: Not word for word actually Jenny, but I remember there was some verbs.

Bret: Well you said meet me here in one year. You just needed some time to clear your head, and you seem to have done that.

Jemaine: La la la la la la la la la la la la la.

Bret: We have a child.

Jemaine: Pardon?

Bret: We have a child.

Jemaine: Why didn't you tell me, Jenny? Why didn't you tell me that day when we went to the top of the hill and we made sweet, oh how we made such sweet, sweet sandwiches. Does it have my eyes, my way with words? Does it look like me at all?

Bret: No, not at all 'cause we adopted him. I can't believe you don't remember, it was a very difficult process!

Jemaine: Oh'uh, oh'are you sure that was me Jenny?

Bret: Yes I am pretty sure that it was you, John.

Jemaine: I'm Brian

Bret: Oh my god! I'm so sorry!

Jemaine: Don't worry.

Bret: Now that's terrible.

Jemaine: Oh, don't worry.

Bret: Oh, how embarrassing!

Jemaine: Don't worry Jenny, I'm actually quite relieved. *That kind of thing just happens all the time, I just got one of those faces I suppose

Bret: So does John, ha, he's got one of those faces as well'

Bret and Jemaine: *awkward laugher*

*Note from blogger: I got kicked playfully once while sitting in a public place. Of course I was pleasantly surprised when I turned around and saw this pretty girl with long tresses and big eyes, only to be disappointed that I wasn't the "I" she had meant to kick (playfully I should add). I just got one of those generic faces I suppose.

Flight Of The Conchords...

2007-12-29T20:06:00.001+08:00

...are the best thing since Monty Python. Check out all their vids on youtube, and be in awe of their mastery of guitar licks and comedic timing.

Getting serious on social issues...

and having fun with randomness.

The duo, who are obviously very comfortable with the ladies, have a deadly refrain for the perennially clueless(and the nocturnally prematured). Try these lines next time you find yourself tongue-tied for words:
"I want to make love to you, it's the least I can do. In the bedroom, I'm a gentleman, the ladies come before me....but 2 minutes...2 minutes is all you need--cos I'm so intense..."

The Snowman

2007-12-26T01:12:00.001+08:00

Flying through the moonlit sky and dancing under the Northern Lights are what childhood dreams are made of. The girl in the attic must have been Norwegian girl Cecilia from Through the Looking Glass, Darkly. There are no penguins in the Artic though. And the haunting minor song belies what seems at first to be a Christmas tale full of innocent fun and glee.

The Normal Bound

2007-12-22T14:55:00.001+08:00

*Warning:Post contains pseudo-philosophical ramblings. Read at your own intellectual risk.

Most of us are only too familiar with crushing disappointments, meaningless jobs, indifferent love lives. Trapped in the monotony of everyday life, we make peace with regrets even as they slowly take the place of our dreams. We yearn for something more, and we continue to hope and dream and be disappointed and unhappy in an unyielding cycle. Sages have often hinted at the key to these life problems. "Seek material comforts, and you become enslaved by them.", "A simple life is a contented life", so says the Zen masters. Even Dilbert got into the act with "Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to get along without it". They all mean the same thing: Please lower your expectations.

There is even a mathematical construct for this. We are all bounded by the normal curve, and we aren't even aware of it. In math-speak, our hopes are often dashed because we aim at results which lie outside of the standard deviations that our lives are bounded by.

99.7% of [just about everything] are bounded by 3 standard deviations (sigmas) on either side(=6 sigmas in total). Six Sigma isn't the cult or martial arts movement that its fanciful name suggests, but a set of management practices implemented to improve manufacturing yield.

You wish to be a millionaire? Wealth is most likely a zero-sum game...so....
You yearn to be good-looking? Even the biological genes adhere to the normal curve. Just thank your lucky stars you (most of us anyway) are born without major defects.
You hope to have genius level IQ? Sorry to disappoint, but the normal curve doesn't agree.
You pray to be extremely talented? Consult with the normal curve first.
You want to be unique? But you already are...just like everyone else. We live in a wonderful world of predictable uniqueness and conventional individuality.

So what exactly is this normal curve that imprisons us so? Here's a Q-and-A session (with knowledge of high-school statistics assumed) to aid your understanding of your fate.

Q: What is the normal curve?
A: It's a probability distribution that is an approximation to the binomial distribution, which is the distribution of HAVES against HAVE-NOTS, the BLACKS against WHITES...or anything with bipolar outcomes (or Bernoulli trials).

It is also the approximation to a lot of other distributions, including that of sample mean, sample variances, in which case, the Central Limit Theorem applies, but I shall focus only on the special case of the Binomial (De Moivre-Laplace Theorem).

Q: The equation please.

n(x) is the normal equation, and R(x) is its integral or area under the curve with bounds given as -infinity to x.

Q: Why this equation?
A: It could be seen as a conscious sculpturing of what is essentially an exponential curve to a bell-shaped curve. And because if you integrate from -infinity to infinity, you get a probability of 1. Everybody in the world must belong under the umbrella.

But there is a rigorous mathematical proof which is based on the binomial distribution. Using firstly Stirling's Formula to strip away at the binomial coefficients, then approximating (k/n) ~ p and (n-k/n)~ q as n gets large,
(here, we are treating k as the random variable Number of Success, and the law of Large Numbers dictate that the rv goes near the mean), and substituting:
and finally applying Taylor's Formula, one arrives at the beautifully stark Exp[-0.5x^2]. This is a real statistical workhorse found in many applications.

A very clear proof is given in Yakov Sinai's Probability Theory:An Introductory Course.
Google on Sinai

Q: How about the term 1/ root (2pi)?
A: From the constant of Stirling's formula, which in turn is derived from the Wallis product. Wiki on Wallis

Q: The binomial distribution is discrete, varies according to p and n, and comes in different shapes and sizes, so how can it be approximated by the normal curve?
A: Ultimately, they all take on the shape of the bell-curve. The local asymmetries are overshadowed by the general symmetry as n goes larger.

Take for example binomial distribution with n=10, and probability p=0.1, with an obvious skew (they call it right skew, even though the graphs sort of leans left).

If I increase n to 100, the skew disappears--as if by magic. No, it's magic.

Q: How do they make sure that the normal curve, despite coming in all shapes and sizes, have a total area of 1?
A: Realise that area under f(x) = area under hf(hx), where h is scaling factor. It's that simple. Intuitively, for h>1, the height becomes taller, but the width becomes smaller.
For h<1, the height becomes shorter, but the width broadens. The area simply never changes.

In the plot below, the taller plot has h =1, while the flatter plot has h=0.5. The areas under both curves are....you guessed it, 1.

In math-speak,

Letting:

We get:

which is of the form hn(hx).

Q: How do we convert every single normal curve to their standard form?

Substituting:

We re-evaluate the normal integral with a given range k1 to k2 as:

In doing so, we have also scaled the discrete k-axis (of the binomial) to the continuous z-axis. Some ppl call this the z-transform. But this terminology conflicts with the actual z-transform used in signal processing. I stay away from the term.

Q: Is the substitution arbitrary?
A: No. We know the number of success X (random variable of the binomial distribution) has mean and variance.

In general,

We are turning all binomial distros to normals with mean 0 (centred at 0 ) and variance 1.

Q: If it wasn't arbitrary, then how was it derived?
A: I am not aware of any derivation, but the remarkable coincidence (in the fact that this substitution in the proof reduces the binomial to an exponential curve and at the same time, reduces the mean to 0 and variance to 1) seems like a natural phenomenon just waiting to be discovered.

Q: How can one take a discrete scale and turn it into a continuous scale?
A: This is only an approximation. The area under the discrete scales are formed by blocks of rectangles (or Riemann Sums, since everybody loves Riemann), while the continuous area is formed by passing a curve through the centre of the rectangles. The curve will naturally tend to underestimate the true area. To compensate for the error, we enlarge the range of the integral to include the areas at the extreme sides. They call this the continuity correction.

Q: Why do we use the standard normal statistic table?
A: The integration of the statistical workhorse is difficult. There is a fancy term for the integration: Jacobi elliptic integral, when we change the integration from xy-coordinates to polar. Someone came up with the bright idea to tabulate all the possible permutations of the answers into what is known as the Statistical Tables.
Anyway, in those pre-Casio days, they had tables for everything.

Q: What is the name of this theorem again?
A:De Moivre-Laplace Theorem. It first appeared in 1733, published by Abraham de Moivre. At that time, most of humanity was ekeing out a living not much better off than that of the Dark Ages, and yet math was already, compared with* our present world, graduate level stuffs.

*not compared to

Q: How is it related to the Central Limit Theorem?
A: The CLT is the generalisation of the De Moivre-Laplace Theorem. As long as we have the mean and the variance of any one single trial of the distribution (e.g. for binomial distro, a single trial is the Bernoulli Trial, and hence mean = p, and variance=pq), we can approximate them using the transformation below:

Q:What do I get out of the normal curve?
A: What seems at first to be asymmetry in a collection of data is revealed to be a beautiful(if austere)symmetry. The good news is, you can apply this theorem to practically anything, simplifying many otherwise computationally tedious tasks. The bad news is, you are part of it.

Q:How do I get out of the normal curve?
A:Best of luck.

Things I learnt from Nassim Taleb

2007-12-20T04:09:00.000+08:00

(in order of priority)

1. Beware David Hume's black swan.
No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.

Chickens pay the ultimate price by haemorrhaging like elephants.

2. Heed Solon's warning: It ain't over till it's over.

3. Learn from Odysseus who stuffed wax in his ears in the Sea of the Sirens:
I am not intelligent enough, nor strong enough, to fight my emotions.

4. Do not get married to yourself. Change your ideas and opinions as often as is necessary.
(In a parallel, Arthur Rubinstein was known as a pianist who changed his musical ideas and thoughts on a whim, much like George Soros and his investment principles.)

5. Children only learn from their own mistakes, no possible warning by others can prevent them from touching the hot stove. Likewise, book knowledge never lasts compared to life's (bitter)experience.

6. Yiddish saying: If I am forced to eat pork, it better be of the best kind.

7. Maths is a way of thinking, (much) more than a way of computing.

8. Your life expectancy increases each year you get older. If national life expectancy is 75, and you are 74, you are NOT LIKELY to die the next year. Remember that 50% of the population have lower than national life expectancy.
Other similar sayings: 50% of the population has lower than average IQ.
If you are not doing more than the average, you are pulling the average down.

9. Survivorship bias:
Imagine 1,000,000 analysts (or monkeys) making completely random predictions on 2 outcomes (market go up/market go down). 1 epoch (whatever length of time you may choose to define) later, only 500,000 analysts get their predictions correct.
Another epoch later, 250 000 analysts remain standing. After 15 epochs, there are still at least 30 analysts (1mil/ 2^15) surviving with 100% records. They are the fools of randomness we worship as Gurus.

10. Gurus usually develop the unfortunate habit of writing books about their random success.

End of the road for an Addict

2007-11-25T21:58:00.001+08:00

It's not often that humour can be extracted from a subject matter as heavy as World War 2, but there you go...

Small Hands....but only hands small!

2007-11-12T18:36:00.001+08:00

4D combinations

2007-11-10T12:11:00.000+08:00

Ok. You see the number plate flashes by, and the gambler in you immediately wonders how many permutations of 4D can you buy with that 6 digit combinations - 378953.

Easy. It's 6P4 ( order matters here), and then to account for the double occurence of 3, we divide by 2. 6P4 being 360, the answer is 180.

Right? Wrong. Though the actual answer, 192, is close, the thought process is more tedious than is first suspected. What's more, should any of the 12 more numbers which you miss out strike top prize, you will be left cursing your high school math teacher.

Let's examine what happens with 6P4. It's fundamentally similar to 6C4 (where ordering does not count), and then multiply by 4! ways of reordering the 4 numbers you choose.

6C4 = 15. Let's list down all 15 cases.
Since there are 2 occurence of 3, I shall denote them by 3 and 3.

7895
3789
3895
3795
3785
3789
3895
3795
3785
3378
3379
3375
3389
3385
3395

Let's denote the 15 occurences into 3 groups:
Group 1: No occurence of 3.
Only 7895 here.
4C4 x 4! = 1 x 24 = 24 ways

Group 2: 1 occurence of 3.
8 groups here, but since 3 and 3 are similar, we shall deal only with 4 groups.
4 groups, in which there are 4! ways to order each group:
4C3 x 4! = 4 x 24 = 96 ways

*why 4C3? Since 3 is already selected, we have 4 more numbers 7,8,9,5 vying for 3 places.

Group 3: 2 occurence of 3.
6 groups here.
Since the 3 and 3 are similar, it is no longer 4! to order with each group.
(Remember, 3378 and 3378 are exactly similar.) We do 4!/2! = 12 ways.
4C2 x 4!/2! = 6 x 12 = 72 ways.

*Why 4C2? Since 33 is already selected, we have 4 more numbers 7,8,9,5 vying for 2 places.

Total number of ways = 24 + 96 + 72 = 192 ways.

What if now the 6 sets of numbers is changed to 337789?

We have to split our tasks into 9 groups:(think of trinary system 3^2).
Luckily for us, some groups are mathematically impossible.

Total number of ways = 78 ways.

Imagine if you had used 6P4, and then divide by 2(to account for 3 presumably) and then divide by 2 again (to account for 7), ending up with 360/2/2 = 90. With more careful math, you can actually save yourself from buying 12 repeat combinations!

Great Songs that met their Video Match

2007-11-05T22:56:00.000+08:00

Celebrating the simplicity of it all...

...or contemplating the fragility of it all.

Binary Model and Inclusion-Exclusion Theory

2007-11-02T17:18:00.000+08:00

A dice is rolled t times. What is the probability that all sides appear at least 2 times?

Sounds like a simple question. We have to be cautious though, for "what is the meaning of life?" is too a simple question that has stumped humanity.

First up, we search for an opening to the problem that is at once accessible to us.
Consider this: if all sides were to appear at least 2 times, the smallest value for t has to be 12. One possible set for t=12 would be {1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6}. In fact, this is the only set possible.

We see that for t<12, P = 0. And we can calculate the probability for t=12 by means of simple combinatorics:

This approach may not be useful, but the answer comes in handy to allow us to verify whatever complicated equations we may derive later.

(Or we can build from this approach, evaluating 13 throws as having 1 extra throw to distribute among the 6 sides. 6 choose 1 = 6. Hence, ans = 6*P12.
For t=14, we have extra 2 throws to distribute among 6 sides = 2 balls to distribute among 6 urns. 7 choose 5 = 21. But it is not so simple to evaluate now, as the number of ways is not all the same probablity.)

Where do we go from here? Introduce the binary system! And one that is symmetric in event space. Let each bit represent one side of the dice: A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6.

Now, how shall we define 1 and 0?
Consider that we want to find probability of "at least 2 times". In other words, we can find 1 - P(0) - P(1). With this in mind, we define bit 1 as occurence of 1 or 0 times, and bit 0 as occurence of 2 and above times, so that we can do something like 1 - P(...).

Now we can construct the Binary Table!

Let us inspect the meaning of each row.

The first row means all the numbers must appear at least 2 times. Hey! This is the case we want to find! Now things becomes apparent. To find the probability of this row, all we have to do is to sum up the probability of the rest of the rows, and do a 1 - P(prob of the rest of all the rows). Note that all the rows of the Binary Table are mutually exclusive.

The second row. It would mean Number 1 appears once or 0 times, and the rest all appear at least 2 times.

The last row. It means that all sides appear at most 1 time, hence giving a maximum of t=6 (or a minumim of 0). As earlier established, t has to be >=12, so the probability of this happening is 0. We shall not consider this case.
So there are a total of 2^6= 64 cases for us to sweat on.
(actually 63, as we discount 111111....)

Let's start evaluating the probability of Row 2. (Row 1 is 000000. There is very little information we can get from that.)

How can we find the probability that the Number 1 appears only once or none WHILE ensuring that the rest appear at least 2 times? Unfortunately it is too difficult.

Imagine t=12.
For 1 to appear 0 times(NONE): we need to find the number of ways to solve A2+A3+A4+A5+A6 = 12...a case of 12 balls distributed among 6 urns.
For 1 to appear 1 time: we need to solve for the number of ways to solve
A2+A3+A4+A5+A6 = 11...

Mind boggling stuff. And that's only for the 1 out of 62 cases we need to establish.

Instead, for that row, I am forced to consider a variation of it:

Here, I introduce a 3rd state x to mean Don't Care. I do not care what happens to the rest of the number as long as Number 1 appears 0 or 1 time in t throws. The probability of the case I just mentioned is actually humanely possible:

Why the term

Because we still need to account for the fact that this appearance of Dice Number 1 can occur at the first throw, or at the second throw,...up till the t throw. For lack of a better term, let's call this the t Loop.

The formula can now be combined:

Now we shall generate the full table, which I shall call the Don't Care Table.

One very important point to note is that the table is a truncated form. I left out the rows xxxx1x, xxx1xx, xx1xxx, x1xxxx, 1xxxxx, whose calculation is similar to the one we did for xxxxx1. Please bear this in mind! Also note that the rows of this table aren't mutually exclusive!

But how does the Don't Care table help when all we want is to sum up all the 62 rows of the Binary table. Ah....Poincare has this figured out. He found that to calculate the probability of the whole table minus the case of 000000 (we cannot include 000000, else the Probabilty is unity), for example, we must do:

As mentioned, the rows are not mutually exclusive. xxxxx1 and its 5 cousins (xxxx1x, xxx1xx,xx1xxx,x1xxxx,1xxxxx) contain all of what we want from the Binary Table...and more. We have some subtraction on our hands.

Consider the last row 111111. This row is exactly the same whether in the Don't Care or Binary Table. It is the simplest element in a recursive algorithm.
Now consider the second last row x111111. It can either be 0111111 or 1111111.
Hence, to get 0111111, all we have to do is to compute x111111 - 111111.
Therein lies the recursive algorithm, which we use to work back all the way to the top.

If you are not convinced, work out the next row 001111 (which is going to be a bit more tedious.) First we evaluate xx1111:
xx1111=001111+011111+101111+111111
Hence, 001111 = xx1111-(011111+111111)-101111
Knowing x111111=011111+111111, the equation becomes 001111 = xx1111-x11111-101111

We now need to break down 101111 into its elements.
We consider 1x1111 = 111111 + 101111
101111 is then equal to 1x1111 - 111111.
Since 1x1111 = x11111 in absolute value, we get 101111 = x11111 - 111111

We get 001111 = xx1111 - x11111 - 101111 = xx1111 - x11111 - x11111 + 111111
= (2C0)xx1111 - (2C1)x11111 + (2C2)111111

Finally, we can set up this equation:
(6C1)000001 + (6C2)000011 + (6C3)000111 + (6C4)001111 + (6C5)011111 + (6C6)111111
= (6C1)xxxxx1 - (6C2)xxxx11 + (6C3)xxx111 - (6C4)xx1111 + (6C5)x11111 - (6C6)111111

This is basically the inclusion-exclusion theory, now cast in a different light with my binary model. Bear in mind that it is EXACTLY of the form:

Let's take a look at the next row.

If you realise here, we are going to introduce another binary system. Take stock for a moment what is happening: A binary system and a t Loop inside another binary system which has been modified to a Don't Care system. That's rhetoric you can ignore.

The internal binary arises from having 2 Numbers now combining to give 00, 01, 10 and 11. The equation is now:

Why the term

The t Loop that was mentioned a while earlier has gotten a bit sticky. When there was only 1 event, now there are 2 events A1 and A2 to account for, resulting in a total of 3 distinct groups to arrange: A1,A2 and the rest (t-2). Rearranging the term, we get:

We now revise the Row 2 equation:

We do the same for all rows, and come to a general ROW equation:

Now comes the defining moment.
We are going to loop through all the rows, executing
xxxxx1 - xxxx11 + xxx111-xx1111+x11111
(ignoring 111111 of course),
which is equal to the summation of the probability of all the rows in the Binary Table except 000000.

Summation of the probability of all the rows in Binary Table except 000000=
Alternating inclusion exclusion of Dun Care Table =

Hence, our answer to the question posed right at the beginning is:

I have not verified the answers yet. Remember at the beginning, we solved for t=12. This is a good start to verify the formula.

Note that the internal binary loop would become Trinary (0,1,2) if the question is rephrased:
A dice is rolled t times. What is the probability that all sides appear at least 3 times?

Analogy of binary systems in probability

2007-11-01T18:36:00.000+08:00

Probability is a tricky subject. Often we confuse the sub-branch of counting, which is concerned with the number of ways to perform a certain task with the science of probability. We often forget that each number of ways to perform a certain task does not necessarily share the same probability, or in math-speak, they do not share a symmetric event space.

For example, if you are tasked to find the number of ways to arrange 5 identical balls in 2 urns. The formula for such a scenario is given as below:

As an aside, an ingenious way (unfortunately not mine) of interpreting the formula goes as follows:
I line up all 5 balls in a row. There are 2 urns, so I utilise an imaginary stick and place it between the 5 balls, creating effectively 2 partitions (one left of the stick, and one right). Each partition denotes an urn, so 1 stick is enough to denote 2 partitions. If there are 3 urns, 2 sticks are needed...and so on, giving:

No of sticks needed = No of urns - 1.

Then I simply find the number of ways to order all the sticks and balls, giving me:

(since the balls are themselves indistinguishable and the stick is indistinguishable, so we divide by 5! and 1! respectively.)

What if you are now told that each urn must now contain at least 1 ball each?
Simple. Using the same values, 1 ball is first distributed to each urn to ensure that each urn must now contain at least 1 ball each. That leaves us with 5-2=3 balls left to arrange with the same number of sticks (r-1), giving:

Now comes THE question:
Let the no. of ways of arranging 5 balls in 2 urns given each urn must have at least 1 ball = P1(5,2).
Let the no. of ways of arranging 5 balls in 2 urns given each urn has no restrictions on the number of balls = P0(5,2).

Is the probability of having each urn containing at least 1 ball ( which can be rephrased as the probability of having no empty urn) equal to:

No!
The number of ways to arrange 5 balls in 2 urns is not all equal in probability.

A better way to view the problem uses the analogy of states (like binary states, tri-states that electrical engineers are comfortable with).
The 2 urns represent 2 states, giving us the familiar binary system. Each ball represent one bit. Hence there are a total of:

2^5=32 possible states.

(Of course, we are now simply viewing the problem as putting n distinguishable balls into r distinguishable urns, which is also the number of ways to draw n balls from r unique types(each unique type is an urn!) with replacement, where order counts. Just like a mountaineer who always tries to find new ways to climb the same mountain, mathematicians are always trying to view the same problem from different angles, hoping to gain further insights or discover something which was previously hidden. Back to the problem:)

Breaking up the problem:

The probability of distribution of balls such that we end up with no empty urns becomes relatively clear. It is simply:

Note that 00000 and 11111 all denote 1 empty urn.

The analogy of binary system helps bring probability problem into sharp focus. Another question illustrates its power.

Cards were dealt face down from a deck of 52. What is the probability that the 1st ace encounterd occurs on the nth draw?

We now imagine a binary system of 1 (Ace) and 0 (no ace) with a total of 52 bits.
Picture the table with headers as below:

The meaning of the curly braces, which divide up the table into 2 groups, will be apparent later. But first, we define the sample space, noting that each way has equal probability of occurence.There are a total of 4 aces, to be scattered among all 52 bits. So for every row, there are 4 1s, and 48 0s. So how many rows are there?
Total number of rows possible:

Now, we introduce the restrictions. The 1st ace must occur on the nth draw.
We divide up the group into A1 to An, and An+1 to A52.
In the first group, only 1 ace resides in it, specifically in the An position.
In the second group, 3 aces are distributed among An+1 to A52.

The problem is now reduced to a matter of throwing out unwanted rows and retaining those that we want. So which are the rows that we have to throw out?
1) All those with more than 1 Ace in the group A1 to An.
2) All those with only 1 Ace in the group A1 to An, but whose 1 Ace does not reside in the nth position.

There are quite a lot of rows to throw out here. Instead of throwing out rows, we can think of the rows that we must keep. There is only one group we must keep, which is:
1) All those with 1 Ace in the group A1 to An, and whose 1 Ace resides in the nth position.

For this group, how many ways are there to arrange them? The answer lies in the other group An+1 to A52. Considering that 3 aces are to be found among An+1 to A52, and that there are 52 - n bits from An+1 to A52, we get the final answer:

Now what is the significance of multiplying the answer found above by n? Essentially it gives us the probability of finding 3 Aces in the group An+1 to A52. Without the binary system, these angles may not be so readily apparent.

Lastly, the binary system has made light of an unnecessarily complicated problem: The issue of drawing 4 Venn circle diagrams. I believe most of us were introduced to the Venn diagrams from young, first with 2 circles, then 3 circles. It is a very elegant and simple solution to many probability questions involving many intersections. Put it simply, without John Venn and his marvellous invention, my head would spin like a gyroscope everytime I encounter probability. So if 3 circle Venns have been useful, then 4 circle Venns must be even more useful. I chanced upon this diagram at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Inclusion_exclusion_diagram.JPG

The diagram is flawed as soon as I counted the number of states in it. Using the binary system, for each circle we denote it as ONE bit. There are 4 circles, hence 4 bits. In a 4 bit system, there are supposed to be 2^4 = 16 mutually exclusive regions marked out by the intersections of the 4 circles. (The last region is 0000, representing the area outside of all 4 circles.) But I counted only 13.

So I present my own model in which care was taken to include all 15 different regions as spelt out by the binary system.

A brief explanation:
The 4 events are depicted by their colours:
Red, Blue, Black and Green.
While Red, Blue and Black are the usual 3 circle Venn,
I added Green...modified to resemble a doughnut with a hole in the middle and an extension outside of the 3 circles.

This model is useful for anyone who wishes to understand the inclusion-exclusion theories and other theories based on this, e.g. Waring's Theorem, and also to visualise the De Montmort's Problem of Coincidences better. Now I wonder how did the Wikipedia poster manage to get inclusion-exclusion theory correct with a flawed model.

An alternative model was offered by my brother. (See below). Basically all you have to do is to make sure the new region(Green)splits every other existing region into two...a truly intuitive illustration of the Binary Model indeed! Maybe not too symmetrical though...

Now the problem comes alive when you try to add more and more regions. In adding the regions, we are supposed to cross the boundaries of each existing region one and only one time. Now, is this problem vaguely similar to the famous Bridge of Konigsberg Problem as proposed by Euler?

GMAT AWA Samples

2007-11-01T15:53:00.000+08:00

All articles here were timed under exam conditions of 30min. So please excuse the typos, grammaticals, and sometimes convoluted logic.

1. Some believe that students are less well-equipped for college than they used to be. They say that present-day students are inadequately prepared to express themselves in writing or perform tasks that entail quantitative thinking. But they do not realise that college-bound students are trained to think creatively, and use resources, like computers, which did not even exist a generation ago.
Which argument do you find more compelling?

A school of thought believes that students are not as good as they used to be in previous generations. They are unable to match up with their previous generations both in language and logic, and are thus not as prepared for college. Instead, I find the counter-argument, that students are actually more creative than ever before, more logical and compelling, for reasons I will elaborate on.

We live in a defining era--the age of Information, heralded by the birth of the Internet. History has shown that whenever there was a breakthrough in the proliferation and dessimination of information, culture and society would blossom. For example, the invention of the printing press in the 1400s by Johannes Guthenburg resulted in the Renaissance. The Age of Information, where we are now, is no less momentous. With such a wealth of resources at the tips of our students fingers, it is natural that they should be more creative and resourceful than ever before. The Internet, together with the immensely rich content of witty blogs, cutting-edge videos and anthemic music, is testament to this fact.

Secondly, we cannot compare between different generations, and then judge them on subjective skills like thinking and writing. It is true the previous generations seemed to be more prolific and creative, but possibly we are looking into the past with rose-tinted glasses. The Jack-Keroac inspired Beat Generation was a movement in response to the 'hippie' culture, but the main reason there is no equivalent Jack Keroac in our present generation is we do not need one. We have instead, technological whiz-kids and scientists who continually define the new frontiers of science. The quantitative demands of a physicist is more gruelling than ever before. It is difficult to argue that the previous generation of students was possessed of better quantitative thinking skills.

In conclusion, the present generation of students are equally, if not more creative than students of the previous generations. And rightly so, for they have so much more resources and information to tap from, unthinkable only one decade ago. Also, we cannot compare between different generations. Each generation had their own demands, the baby boomers with the social issues, and now, our generation, with technology. Certainly, our present generation are well-equipped to tackle college and life after college.

2. Human nature, no matter how selfless is appears, is selfish. Discuss.

The author asserts that there is no such thing as altruism in human nature, and that we are inherently selfish in everything we do. Human nature is too complex an issue to make such generalisations, but upon deeper analysis, with support from philosophy and neuroscience, I agree with the author.

People tend to struggle with an emptiness in life. Philosophers from the school of thought of Kiekegaard term this inherent emptiness "existential loneliness". Some immerse themselves in a religion, start a family, embark on world adventures, while others seek solace in volunteering. All these are alleged to be manisfestations of the phenomonon of "existential loneliness". When we observe a selfless act, we can trace its roots back to the person struggling to find a meaning in life. His act of volunteering or committing altruism is his way of filling that emotional void.

Doing good and selfless often makes one feel good about himself. Developments in neuroscience has discovered that the act of committing altruism may release certain chemicals into the brain which can get people hooked, much like what romantic love does to the brain. So if you need a rush of high, you can always go out and do something good. These chemical reactions are inherent in us, and we are often unaware of them. Once the scientists have pointed this fact, it becomes clear why people are addicted to altruism.

But how about Mother Theresa? Hasn't she dedicated her whole life to helping the underpriveleged in India, so far away from her safe haven in Ireland? Mother Theresa is invariable a shining example of altruism. But people look no further than the 2nd hand accounts given by what the media wants us to believe. Some scholars who have studied her life have controversially pointed out that she was obsessed with her public image, so much so that she only granted interviews to "cordial" reporters. She made timely public appearances in a show of ultimate devotion to her cause. In short, she knew the world needed a "Mother Theresa" figure, and she boldly set out to claim her role as that aforementioned "Mother Theresa", thus writing herself into world history.

In conclusion, there are lots of basis to claim that human nature, no matter how selfless it appears, are inherently selfish. It is difficult, and understandably so, to break away from how we are wired up in our mind and body. Still, altruism can be considered to be a form of benevolent selfishess, definitely more welcome than the strain of selfishness we normally encounter. Be selfish, and help save the world!

3. The study of history is largely a waste of time because it prevents us from focusing on the challenges of the present.” Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above. Support your point of view with
reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

The author asserts that the study of history detracts us from our present problems, and is thus largely an exercise in time wasting. While it is true that our attention and resources should be focused on the problems of now, nevertheless there are much to learn from our history. Therefore, I disagree with the strong stance of the author.

History repeats. Much of history is littered with amazing stories and lessons from which our present society has much to learn. The success of UN stems largely from the failures of the League of Nations. Ronald Reagan, probably aware of the doomed appeasement policy to Adolf Hitler, refused to stand down to the Soviet Union's arms race in the 1980s, ultimately culminating in the arms treaty pact signed between the two superpowers.

On the other hand, politicians who refuse to heed history's lessons too often find themselves walking down the slippery path of failure and doom. Geroge Bush has been forewarned of the problems caused by an invasion of Iraq by Vietnam war veterans who knew better. Despite international condemnation and warnings of another Vietnam in the making, he went ahead, and got the US stuck in a largely unsuccessful and costly operation. Ethnic cleansing in history have always been shown to be a disastrous policy, yet in our modern society, we are still forced to witness the horrors of mass slaughter based on racial prejudice from Serbia to Rwanda.

In conclusion, the study of history is still largely relevant in our modern world. A leader who is astute and wise would do well to listen to history lessons and forge policies with history in mind. Otherwise he risks committing the mistakes of his forefathers. For the sake of progress, history is still an important part of our modern world.

Math Humour

2007-10-28T23:50:00.001+08:00

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

...and a string of random jokes by mathematicians for mathematicians.

Why do programmers always have Halloween and Christmas mixed up?
Because OCT 31 = DEC 25.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary numbers, and those that don't.

An inchworm is defined as 2.54 centipedes

Lastly,

Photos of the Norwegian cycling trip up!

2007-10-28T15:32:00.000+08:00

>Memoirs of an artic cyclist

Check out these great places for cycle touring:

Pakistan

Scotland

New Zealand

Norway (my trips were inspired by this post)

...and the geeks shall inherit the earth

2007-09-30T22:22:00.001+08:00

What happens when a bunch of college geeks decide, for once, to put down their books and pick up the guitars? Pop music, stripped from all the outer veneer of avant-garde progression and crass commercialism, finally reveals its form--true and pure.

Please give it up for the Maths and Physics Club, wonderfully named no doubt as a tribute to all the engineers who toil hard in silence to keep our crazy world afloat. Come on now! Let's all pick up that guitar and sing along...

(Capo the first fret, and strum to C, C7, F and G...check out the vid)
I’m still waiting for your answer
These four walls keep closing in
When you say I seem like a stranger
Well I guess that makes two

The sun is setting down
The fireflies are out
They don’t make a sound
With no one else around

And I have no doubts
You’re still angry
Baby, we can work this all out

I love it when the coals burn way down low
Slide up next to me
So sweet so
I wonder just how far tonight we’ll go
Darling won’t you please come home

The sun is setting down
The fireflies are out
They don’t make a sound
There’s no one else around
It’s you and me now
And I have no doubt
That you’re still angry
Baby, we can work this all out

I love it when the coals burn way down low
You slide up next to me
So sweet so slow
I wonder just how far tonight we’ll go
Darling won’t you please come home
Darling won’t you please come home
Darling won’t you please come home

Macau--Small in size, big on charms (Part 3)

2007-05-08T00:57:00.000+08:00

Wandering around Macau, I was in awe of the generous acres of space, especially around the waterfront. I was overwhelmed by an inner urge to roam, to run, to to yodel, to be free. Macau may be a tiny enclave, but she is the perfect antidote to people from Hongkong and Guangdong seeking respite from urban claustrophobia. I haven't been to Portugal, so I cannot quite pinpoint who were responsible for the city layout, but kudos to the planners for creating such a unique dash of space in an urban setting!

Apart from being politely accosted by ladies of the night near Avenida de Joao IV, there was absolutely no trace of the sin city image Macau has been unfairly tagged with. Instead, Macau has an undeniable charm for everyone, from history buffs to avid gamblers. While there is still much to be done--witness all the empty apartments in Taipa (not to mention the absence of Texas Holdem in a self-proclaimed gambling haven)--the Portuguese are justifiably proud of Macau. As one official puts it,"In Macau, we have the chance to write a nice ending to what once was a grand empire." And he wasn't just referring to the egg tarts.

Macau is a city of wide open spaces...

...and bold boulevards.

A cup of tea, a few slices of bread and a table of friends...start your day the Macau way!

A beautifully claustrophobic sight greeted me from the window of my apartment. To be frank, the building I was staying in didn't look to have passed fire safety inspection and I already made out my escape route just in case.

Lady in red waiting at bus-stand in red, presumably for the bus in red.

The Paris mayor would do well to follow Macau's example and implement public toilets for dogs.

Casino Lisboa, looking a tad tired and run-down, is relinquishing its role as the premier Macau casino to swankier American ones.

Trishaws around the Guia Hill.

There is the Commonwealth Games for the English, and there is the Lusofonia Games...for the Portuguese.

The fortress of Guia stands sentinel over the city.

Macau--Small in size, big on charms (Part 2)

2007-05-08T00:50:00.000+08:00

Getting a room in the swanky hotels was out of my shoestring budget. I knew (through http://www.augusters.de) accomodation was affordable in the old city districts--only obstacle was in locating the exact place. Navigating narrow winding streets, I finally came upon a rather dingy apartment that had a signboard spelt "Augusturs Lodge--Floor 3J".

It wasn't that straightforward to locate Floor 3J, whatever that was, as there were a few staircases leading to different "Floor 3". On one such foray, I was greeted by a grumpy old granny who, together with the apartment on offer, could have walked straight out from a Wong Kar Wai 60s film set. I made out through her thick cantonese accents that she had quoted me HK$20 (S$4)-- nirvana to the miser in me. She grew edgy as I fished out 2 HK tenners, and jabbed 2 fingers into my face while mouthing "leong baht leong baht!". I said no, firmly believing that Augusturs Lodge would have a better offer, and left, leaving behind a fuming old lady who must have thought me mathematically and financially challenged.

I finally made the correct staircase (leading to Floor 3J), and came upon the steps of the elusive Augusturs Lodge. A Filipino girl was sitting behind a counter in an apartment that finally looked more like a tourist lodge. Her friendliness and English tongue made me feel right at home, even more so when, upon signing the guest book, I noticed many Singaporeans had previously left their trail in it. Quoted HK$50 for a private room, this was truly a steal.

Augusturs International (Floor 3J), a big hit with Singaporeans who know how to sniff out gems from the Net.

This room, with 2 double-deckers, a fan, TV and a table, gave many a traveller respite for the night. The view was not great, facing the back of yet another dingy apartment block, but what more could you ask for with HK$50?

With my accommodation worries out of the way, I started planning to spend the rest of the night hitting casinos and UNESCO sites in equal measures.

I consider myself a Texas Holdem fanatic. At least I could fold my hands properly, hiding my disgust with the nonchalance of a hand flick -- just like a pro. Desperately wanting to get some poker action, I first approached Waldo, then Sands, asking if there were any "Texas Holdem" tables. One time, I was given the quizzed look, the other time, a firm "There is no Texas Holdem in Macau...yet." sufficed.

Still, I managed a peek into Sands. Call me uninformed, (euphemism for "suaku"), but I had never seen the business of gambling on such a large scale before. I was bowled over by the number of jackpot machines lined up, stretching as far as the eye could see. Every machine held the complete attention of a frayed soul hunched over it. The table section was no more impressive, of which Blackjack was the predominant game. The Chinese take their gambling seriously. Those seated at the tables rarely spoke to each other. They wore studied countenances and cursed politely when the need arose. The more boisterous tables had European and American tourists who were there simply to soak up the atmosphere.

I too, badly wanted to try my luck at the tables. Unfortunately, the cheapest table, at HK$100 per hand, priced me out of any fun. Choosing the next best thing, I grabbed a complimentary milo and cup noodles which came my way, proceeded to enjoyed a good free supper, and went off in search of my elusive poker action.

I went into Wynn next. I found no poker action there, but was seriously stunned when a pair of the most exquisite eyes looked back at me as I spoke "Excuse me, do you have any ......". The pretty girl may not have an inkling of what I was asking about, but it didn't matter. A million questions were racing through my mind. "Are you free for supper tonight?" "Have anybody told you you looked vaguely like Cecilia Cheung, only prettier?" "I am a movie director, and I would like to cast you in my blockbuster. Let's discuss somewhere more private." I chose, not instinctively, but wisely, to say, "Thanks", flashed a goofy smile and slithered away.

The ubiquitous McDonald, found in every city in the world, so why not Macau?

Fruitseller by night

The city planners have done a tremendous job in keeping the old while ushering in the new, resulting in a unique blend of old and new architecture in casual co-existence.

Macau is embracing herself with the onslaught of visitors. Rapid changes are inevitable, whether the old world romantics like it or not.

Built around Mount Fortress, the old city with its narrow streets and steep slopes, is mildly reminiscent of HK's Lan Kwai Fong district.

The Ruins of St Paul is to Macau what A Farmosa is to Malacca is to what Merlion is to Singapore.....not!

In the mood for love? Grab a lover, steal a kiss, right under this colonial lamppost.

The Macau government obviously deems it necessary to coax more polite greetings out of Macauese. They aren't actually particularly rude. In fact, they seem to smile more readily than their HK counterparts (which isn't saying much).

Macau--Small in size, big on charms (Part 1)

2007-05-08T00:43:00.000+08:00

Macau, the former Portuguese enclave tucked in the western corner of the Pearl River delta, has always been languishing in the shadows cast by her much more illustrious delta neighbour HK. Macau was returned to China in 1999 with as little fanfare as HK's 1997 return was momentously celebrated. For many, Macau was the Sin City of the East, its "anything goes" anarchism attracting all sorts of lowlifes reeking of desperation and cigarette smell. HK movies, of course, played up this seedy stereotype by sending their screen criminals to Macau whenever the plot called for some arms or drugs smuggling to be done. That's the story of Macau, a story no one outside of the gambling fraternity really cared.

But Macau is determined to shed its unseemly image. With the entire region booming, prosperity and buzz has crept into this once-sleepy territory. Foreign investments are repositioning Macau as a MICE (Meeting, Incentive, Conference and Exhibition) centre of international clout, while at the same time, Macau is being rebranded as a family oriented entertainment centre not unlike Las Vegas. Singapore should take heed, for results have been nothing short of phenomenal. Revenues have since outstripped that of Las Vegas Strip, making Macau the premier gambling centre of the world. 20 million visitors flood the territory of half a million every year. UNESCO, tellingly, granted the World Heritage Site status to Macau in 2005. A new chapter is being written, no longer with the blood of slain gangsters, but with the glittering gold of tourist dollars.

Which is the true face of Macau? The only way to find out was to pay a little visit to its fair shores. So when presented with the chance, albeit a very snap decision devoid of any logistical planning, I grabbed at it.

My logistical worries turned out to be unfounded. Snap trips in northern Europe leave you stranded in cold nameless towns. Snap trips in Macau leave you a comfortable cushion seat on one of the many ferries plying between Macau and HK, such were the frequencies of the ferries that they run round the clock all year round, for a mere HK$200!

Arriving at the ferry terminal on a balmy evening, my first concerns, as were in any foreign lands, were to locate a free map of the city, access the suitability of waiting lounges as makeshift hotels, and to check out availability of food. All concerns were ambly addressed. Tourist friendly indeed!

My first sights of the city as the ferry steams into harbour-- the neon lights from the casinos lending the harbour a shimmering and strangely comforting feel.

It's very easy to find your way around on foot. The waterfront perimeter, from the harbour in the east, all the way to the west, spans no more than 5 km. All self-respecting casinos, including Wynn and Sands, are located in this prime property. Wide boulevards (avinedas), all with Portuguese names, line the city. One such boulevard, Avenida de Amizade, links up the ferry terminal to the town centre.

Walking along Avenida de Amizade, I caught the silhouette of a nocturnal angler against the backdrop of Macau "The Floating Casino" Palace. I was to find the entire perimeter of the waterfront filled with anglers, young and old, but predominantly men, lying stealthily in wait for their catch. The Zhuhai must be teeming with fish, either that, or the local TV channels aren't terribly exciting.

The Macau Colosseum, a monument built in worship of the tourist dollar.

Before Vegas casinos appeared on the scene, old school casinos of smoky parlours and tough-looking pit bosses ruled the land. Here, the facade of Wynn squares off rather arrogantly against Casino Lisboa, the grand dame of the "nostalgic" era.

Wynn marks every passing hour with a resplendent display of water and fire works, and changes the face of the Macau gaming industry with a Vegas-style entertainment centre.

A Walking Oxymoron

2007-04-15T17:17:00.000+08:00

A walking oxymoron is having an otherwise blissful and much needed Sunday morning sleep rudely awakened by a call from your friendly army officer asking that you be "activated for the Silent MOB" by xxx GMT in some faraway army camp.

A walking oxymoron is an army personnel not really coming to terms with his status as an army personnel (albeit for one day only).

A walking oxymoron is not knowing if a greenish sack, found among numerous other sacks in the forgotten corners of the storeroom, could indeed be the Full Pack listed as one of the major items needed for MOB.

A walking oxymoron is having to confirm the identity of the said Full Pack, standing at a mere 33cm, complete with photos via MSN, with a surprisingly patient friend. Anyway that's what friends are for, helping you sieve through full packs from mere rubbish. Thankfully, his message after seeing the photo was, "OK! All ready to go!"

One can never be too sure. I had always remembered Full Packs to be big macho backpacks modelled after those mountain climbing Deuters. Here, a Full Pack is seen with a shoe and my beloved Crumpler side by side for perspective.

A walking oxymoron is having to spend 1 hour of packing, 30 min of swearing, another 30 min of cab journey, 10 min of trekking through vast army wasteland, before acknowledging and completing your activation in...5 seconds.

A walking oxymoron conscientiously packs all the required items below:
• No 4 shirt/ trousers x2
• PT short/vest x1
• Shoes x1
• Slippers x1
• Green socks x2
• Shoebrush/kiwi x1
• Grease x2 (not too sure the army caller meant briefs instead. Anyway I reckon lubrication to be more important than anything else in the world)
• Toothbrush/toothpaste x1
• Soap x1
• Torchlight with AA batteries x1
• Insect repellent x1
• Field pack x1 (what is that?)
• SBO x1
• Water pouch x2
• Toggle rope x1
• Jack knife x1 (for opening up jackfruits, doubtless)
• Ammo pouch x1 (WITHOUT BULLETS PLEASE)
• Helmet with army camoflauge

only to realise that he could just as well pack pockets of air and nobody would care.

A walking oxymoron prefers to be safe than sorry but ends up feeling sorry for himself, after learning that the "market rate" for a silent MOB with Full Battle Order actually means a half-pack of Full Pack, complete with 8 Days, FHM and an iPod with batteries. No helmets or SBO please, unless you want to look like a moron.

A walking oxymoron is a soldier in peacetime, a weekend activator, asked to be ready for combat at the snap of fingers, tasked to defend his motherland against imaginary foes, and you wonder why he always ends up looking like a moron.

A memorable farewell to Kallang Stadium

2007-02-05T21:08:00.000+08:00

It was a balmy evening, one of those purple nights when you don't know if the weather would hold out. Arriving half an hour before the match, it was already turning out to be a logistical nightmare, especially if you're trying to communicate over the network. The air waves were literally jammed with frantic SMSes destined never to reach their intended recipients. With a little persistence and a huge dose of luck,

my group of friends and I were able to settle into a clearing with a great view, facing the grandstand and directly in line with the goalline. Well, at least we could weigh in with truly expert views on those "Did it cross the line?" debates.

As soon as we settled down, and inspected the equipment, the familiar strain of Majullah Singapura came on. What was unfamiliar was the way the words were belted out with so much pride, causing even the most hardened, antiauthoritarian taxi-driver to have those patriotic lumps in the throat, I'm sure. Now, why doesn't this happen in school assemblies and army parades?

And so the match is underway... I looked on in despair as a friend whipped out his 70-300 zoom and fired away. This was the best my 17-70 Sigma could muster.

Suddenly there was a lot of action at the Thai penalty box, with the ball ricocheting back and forth between the Thai defenders and the Singapore players, before rolling into the net. Er....was that really a goal? Can't blame us, everything happened very fast, and worse, there was never going to be a replay.

Judging from the cacophony of cheers and feet stomping, I guess Singapore must have been one-nil up. Switching my viewing channel to the scoreboard,

Ahh....that was reassuring indeed! 1-0 up, and I started jumping for joy, along with the rest.

After the goal, the play generally settled into the type normally played with coconuts in a kampong village. There were 50 yard passes to players 30 yards away. At least these bobbed away harmlessly. It was on one of those 3 yard passes to players 5 yards away that Thailand finally capitalised. Breaking from midfield, the Thai players were swift, perhaps too swift and swiftly rounded our poor Lionel Lewis. It must have been a wretched feeling to be rounded like that, even more wretched if you witnessed the whole thing right before your very own eyes.

The crowd became much more subdued after that. My friend and I soon launched into a debate on whether Thierry Henrys of the fantasy world or the Thonglaos of our world were faster, as the game was fast petering out to a 1-1 draw.

Then came the defining moment of the night. Suddenly out of a harmless looking cross in the 81 min. the referee seemed to be pointing to the spot. PENALTY! And for Singapore too! Wooohooo! In harsh times like this, fair play is the last thing to worry about.

Unfortunately the Thai players had something up their sleeves. They felt that they were unjustly penalised, and for justice to prevail, they simply could not continue the game.
Of course, the partisan crowd of 60000 could not have disagreed more. Amid jeers of "Thailand BAPOK! Thailand BAPOK!", which of course I participated with perverse delight, the Thai players marched off the field.

Now this game was fast degenerating into a farce. Many of us were bewildered at the bizarre turn of events. The crowd were getting seriously impatient and restless, and spontaneously launched into those famous Kallang waves for entertainment.

The wave coming nearer...

Even nearer...

Oh no! What shall I throw up in the air? My mind was racing and my eyes were darting. Grabbing my D70, I gave it a second thought, decided against it and took this shot instead.

The Thais finally decided to play ball instead of masak-masak, and trudged back rather unwilling to the field. It's a dreaded feeling Saddam Hussein would concur on his way to the hangman. The crowd sympathesied, and encouraged them with random cheers of "Balik kampong", "chao agua", "thailand bapok", and of course, our national slogan, KNNBCCB.

Our Fahrudin Mustafic, Serbian-born foreign import, as close to a German penalty machine as Singapore could ever afford, slammed home emphatically!

What a farewell to the Kallang National Stadium. The 2-1 victory was to be the first, and last time Singapore beat Thailand at Kallang (or anywhere else, for that matter).

And all around the Kallang stadium, the tribal victory dance began.

Poland is a state of mind

2007-01-28T13:15:00.000+08:00

The image from the Pianist that is etched forever in my mind: that of a devastated Warsaw, lifeless and weary, the flow of revolutionary blood long run dry, and the low moon gazing helplessly upon the ruins. Chopin would have wept in his grave.

From this land we barely recognise as Poland, flourished great musical and artistic geniuses: Chopin, Konrad (Joseph), Kieslowski, Polanski, eminent figures who transcended their respective fields, and their tortured motherland.

The recent passing of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski prompted Neely Tucker from Washington Post to pen these eulogies:

"Maybe there's something about those brutal winters on the high northern plains of Eastern Europe, stuck defenceless between Berlin and Moscow, the peasant huts and concrete arpartments smelling of dank clothes, boiled cabbage and lost hope....
Kapuscinski used his Polishness as a lens to look at the rest of the world...and translated its effect on the soul to the the Third Wrold Nations he wrote about, and thus is both the source and product of his insight."

And the ballade is my take on what it's like to peer through this elusive Polish lens.
http://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=23126.0;id=2685

Pieces of April

2006-09-17T00:36:00.000+08:00

So, being a huge Stephin Merrit fan, it's inevitable that I start checking out movies he graciously pens the soundtrack for, based on the somewhat flawed "If its Merrit-endorsed, it must be good" theory. With that in mind, I eagerly anticipated Pieces of April.

The title proves apt, as the dialogue is pretty sparse for a movie shot in New York. Instead you get to piece April's life together, through snippets of her very believable interactions with the people around her and snapshots from a Nikon SLR running parallel in another story. Charming little product placement, noted this very biased reviewer, himself a proud owner of a Nikon SLR.

At the deathly early morning of 7:00am, April struggles to wake up to a special day--thanksgiving in fact. She's supposed to prepare the feast for her family, who hails a day's drive away from the suburbs. But she's not particularly adept at it, and when we find her to-do list having only one item, "1. Pre-heat oven.", we know she's in for some adventure.

The simple premise could very well be frivolously centred on Katie Holmes's Gothic persona when the universe conspires to spoil her day. There was much light-hearted humour involving her turkey, who had the unfortunate experience of being roasted in no less than 4 different stoves. But as the story unfolds, the human insights and the emotions that come with it start to cut much deeper than is expected of an amiable light-weight comedy.

Running parallel to the culinary adventure is the road trip that her extended family, together with all their dysfunctionalities, took to New York. April's character is not very well developed. Instead we feed on scraps of information about her through the conversations and bickerings from the road trip. The gravity of the thanksgiving dinner is slowly revealed to us in the Nikon snapshots provided by the avid photographer in her brother. April and family had not been in the best of terms, she of the wild ways estranged from the deeply religious mother. The mother is dying, and the family is spiritually compelled to make good this last dinner, whether they like it or not.

Peter Hedges has written a very heartwarming tale of redemption, shot and directed it with a few dollars, a digital camcorder and a whole lot of heart. He is ambly supported by his casting, which makes for a very realistic story-telling. Contrived scenes there were a few, especially the ones involving a British neighbour who, with his posh tastes and immaculate manners, leave me wondering how could he have accepted dwelling in the derelicts inhabited mostly by the marginalised. Nonetheless, a big fan of his other work, a screenplay adaptation of Nick Hornby's About A Boy, I am ranking him alongside Richard Linklater as the American names to look out for.

Weird, funny, honest, intelligent, and very very touching, it's a typical Stephin Merrit song translated onto the silver screen. What's more, running at just under 80 min, it's the perfect movie if time's not on your side (for the day, that is!).

Rating: 7.6

Next up, through the lenses of Peter Hedges again, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?.

Random Quotes

2006-08-27T05:21:00.000+08:00

On Business Travels
Spend half the time in tedious airport queues, and the other half alone in gawdy hotels...that's business travels for you. But of course, if you're afraid of the dark, you can always purchase some company for a small fee.

On Travel Spending
Consumer habits of tourists are limited not by the buying logic but by how much local currency they have left in the wallet. There is a compulsion to clear the currency to the last cent. If I have HK$18.50 left, and a cheeseburger that I normally wouldn't touch pass by cost exactly that, it represents a huge moral victory to my finances.

The Japs
The Japs infuriate me. They strut about in their business suits and ties, looking so prim and proper under the summer sun, that I am envious while feeling sorry for them at the same time.

On SMSes
Clearing the backlog of SMSes on your mobile is much akin to reliving the past few days of your life, depending on how backdated you are.

On Logistics
Logistics is the Archilles heel of the modern world, and terrorists are fully aware of it. How many more years can they afford to screen through air luggages so thoroughly before one bomb finally slips through?

On Logistics #2
If I miss out on indexing even a single title to my burgeoning DVD collection, it's as good as I had never owned it.

On Gifts
Why do you need to shower your loved ones with gifts? Sometimes that's all they will ever remember you by (if they don't happen to dispose of them).

On Assumptions
It's impossible to make head or tail of the world without making any assumptions. So let's assume assumptions work.

On The Little Prince
The world loves sentimental drivel like the Little Prince and Tuesdays with Morrie simply because they are fantasy--everybody wishes everybody else behaves like this, but nobody dares to make the first move, and risk being labelled self-absorbed and sanctimonious idiots.

Memoirs of an Artic cyclist

2006-08-27T05:13:00.000+08:00

Figure shows cycling trail in green. Started from Trondheim via Heimdal and ended in Trondheim via Flakk.
Approximately 200km total.

3 day 2 night trip around Trondelag.
...3 days 2 nights, that's the sales pitch of a typical tourist agencies marketing the latest weekend get-aways, and this is anything but!

A journey of superlatives! How could I ever forget my brush with the cold trondelag night, which left me with the bone chilling mind-numbing experience of my life. The scenery was spectacular, as usual. Miles and miles of Trondheimsfjord can dull one's senses a bit, blasphemous to say! Hope I don't utter too early, but do I regret this journey one bit? NO.

Feb 14 (Fri) 2003

7:30am:
Set off from Moholt Alle. Took off from Jonsvannveigen (as usual) and got down to Holteammsveien. The conditions were extremely wet for a cyclist, which was rather daunting. My heart wasn't set for such adventurous ideas as skating on ice, just yet. Confidence is key in such uncertain times. I reckoned I should walk quite a bit.

8:00am:
The road to Heimdal was surprisingly smooth, and so beautiful.. Here I was, cycling down slope, with about 1 m of snow piled up on its sides, and a stream flowing parallel to the path. I felt like an artic squirrel, burrowing my way through snow. The air was crisp, and smelt of spring. The white kingdom beckons.

Nice house? Think again. The nearest amenity (aka hawker centre) is miles and miles away.

My mitigation plea--The D70 wasn't yet invented back then! Classic example of how snow glare can ruin a photo.

8:15am:
Had a near collision with another cyclist who was coming head-on. KEEP LEFT? RIGHT? LEFT? RIGHT.....ARRRRGH! My mistake. I was supposed to keep right, or rather, as much right as I could in this narrow burrow, but didn't. A barrage of unfriendly Norwegian went my way, but this is a lesson for me to bear. KEEP RIGHT AT ALL TIMES!

8:30am:
Reached Heimdal! With sky high confidence! I thought if I could clock 10km in less than an hour, I could cycle to the end of the world. Grand visions about travelling to Hitra then to Brekstad came.
Travelling along Heimdalsvegen was perfect. Started referring to the map, and reached Burvika soon enough.

9:00am:
On the road to Orkanger (around 30 km), while the sign, somewhat comfortingly, proclaimed Alesund (or was it Kristensand) to be 250km away.
The start on E39 was great, contrary to what some websites say. Traffic was going Trondheim, and as usual, I got my morning timing spot on. It's always easier to cycle on the side of the road with few vehicles.

10am:
Visgja came soon enough. I knew the road to Orkanger was 60% complete. Started taking pictures at regular intervals.

10:30am:
Nearing Orkanger, my bicycle chose the most inopportune moment to dislodge. Having totally no choice, I had to fix it back, while cursing the Sykkelbua guy who fixed my bike mutteirng under my cold breath. It was surprisingly easy, but got my hands soiled with grease, and what was I to do but to deposit as much grease and as fast as I could in the snow. Bare hands in snow, not a good idea. Also, the 3rd gear seemed to be totally dislodged.

Took pictures of a kitty and soon forgot about my chain worries.

The cat must have thought me nuts to... Cats are always contemptuous of humans regardless of what we do.

Turned in 710, which was to be the crux of my journey. Gruelling 54km. A nice lady wished me, "God tur!" when I asked her where Valset the ferry terminal was. She mentioned 54km away. I wondered how could she have gotten it so accurately measured, until later when I encountered a road sign stating Valset was 54 km away. She must have driven on 710 before.

4:00pm:
reached Valset. Replenished water supply at toilet.

4:15pm:
Boarded ferry. Tried to bargain for a student discount, but the man good-heartedly rejected with NEI.
22 kr for the trip. So far so good.

5:00pm:
When I touched down from the ferry, Brekstad seemed like a foreign land. The weather suddenly took a chilly turn, a forewarning of what was to come that night.

5:45pm:
Explored the small town of Brekstad a bit. The cafes sold delicious hambergers, which I could certainly do with, but they were priced at 100 kr++(S$25++). Instead, I settled for the next best thing, 7 kr worth of bananas from Coop Mega.

6pm:
Sky was getting dark, very dark. Panicking, I went out in search of Austrått. Unfortunately I never made it. It was so dark and so so cold.

6:30pm:
Unable to withstand the bitter winds, I took refuge at a bus shelter labelled Skaun, which i was to find out later, had neither seen a single bus nor much shelter. It was strewn with rubbish, but that was the least of my worries. At least I thought it kept me from the wind, but to my horror, not from the cold!

Shivering....shivering....I had never shivered so much in my life before....my mind began to race in pulses....tried to build a fire...laid in shadows....discovered my buckle used to strap my stuffs on the bike broke....worse...it was entangled with the wheels...decided to unentagle it....

Bad idea. Took all of 10 min grappling in the dark and a lot of my body heat trying to unentagle it. Some bad beat.

Tried to sleep...but it was impossible. I wrapped myself up in layers of clothings and blankets. Just when I though I had triumphed with the next layer, that apparent warmth evaporated into the icy air, and I had to scrample for another layer... My ears were ringing, and my hands numb. This battle with the cold went on and on...until I...

3:00am:
...almost shivered to death. Had to leave my temporary abode and find somewhere else.

4:00am:
Found road to Austrått. At that point in time, it could have been Auschwitz. My hands, if I could even see in the complete darknes, (gloved of course!) were frozen to the metal bike handles. Trempled too much to balance on the bike. Had to walk.

Was there anyone who could help me out here? Ok...I realised my huge mistake in wandering off into the Artic night at a time like this. Please somebody just take me in!

Tried knocking on a few doors. No responses. Finally stumbled onto a deserted horse range, and inevitably a horse shed, which was twice as big as the bus shelter. Approached with trepidation, luckily there weren't any horses in them. Bus stops with no buses, and now, horse sheds with no horses. Anyway, I had to take it. Immediately, I was greeted with an unpleasant smell, but what choice do I have?

Parked my bike, and buried myself with the stacks of hay inside. Drifted in and out of consciousness. Dreamt about my family back in sunny Singapore, and what was I doing out here inside a stack of horse hay.

Think I even managed 2 hours sleep there.

7:00am:
Set off for Austrått. Was rather disappointing. What? I had struggled so hard just to make it to a deserted camp site? But the thought of spending the next night shivering in cold was enough to set me off to Rorvik at once!

8:00am:
Could not bear to leave Austrått. Still lingered there, even found time to deposit my Coop Mega bananas.. They came down shaped just like bananas, which I find amusing. Not so amusing was where I chose to deposit them. I wondered if the camp site people would be delighted with a early round of spring fertilizers for their garden flowers.

Was hoping to catch some spectacular sunrise photos, but they never happen in winter I guess. The sun goes down in sunrise and rises in sunsets? When you are way up north, the celestial stars simply stop behaving themselves.

About the most cheerful sunrise you can find in the North.

9:00am:
continued the 710 journey.

12:00am:
710 ends, and I took 715.

12:30pm:
Took 718. Great scenic route, spent my film trying to capture it. My sole aim though, was to be back in Moholt Alle enjoying a hot pizza watching movies on my comp! Time was not my side. Had to rush!

Yet another ferocious waterfall? *yawn*

3:00pm:
Took 717. The first sight that greeted me...a huge climb that took the fight out of me ON THE SPOT. Now, how high was that? I have no idea. It would be fun to know, but I know my pizza dream was ebbing away.

4:00pm:
Cycled aimlessly up, awaiting my doom. By now, I know I have to get settled by 5:00pm, or before you know it, darkness would have already swallowed you up, trapping you helpless and defenseless against the deadliest of all monsters, the Artic winds.

Saw a church, Stadsbydha Kirke, and tried my luck. Voila! A fine modern toilet in the midst of nowhere. Trust the church goers to treat themselves well! No doubt this toilet is the high of my journey. I'm spending the night here. Went a mile further to a quiet suburb and bought some foodstuffs there, following directions by a man in his 40s who jogged faster than I could on my bike! Was grinning from face to face, all because I had found a toilet which I could bunk in.

10pm:
Penning this whole entry from the comfort of the toilet. Gonna sleep soon. After cleaning and washing all the dirty linen, the bad horsey smell still cling on to my pores. Had to throw away a blanket, and lots of cloths that were making me ill. Anyway, this Stadsbyddya Kirke has certainly renewed my faith in bicycle trips.
Total spent to date:
22 + 7 + 29 + 24 = 82 kr = S$21!

Worth it?
Not a doubt.

Comfy hotel room. Though I must admit the layout is rather strange, with the toilet placed as the centrepiece of the room.

Farewell to Hotel Lavatory

Fancy being miles away from civilisation with not a single soul in sight? Then Norway awaits you.

SuperCool says...

2006-07-10T22:45:00.000+08:00

...with a shrug of his Gallic shoudlers, "It's football, isn't it? When a game goes to penalties you have to accept it. It's the way things are sometimes."

Ominous....ominous...

2006-07-01T18:03:00.000+08:00

No bravado talks, no sneering, no juvenile talking down like the boys from Spain, the Brazilian coach Carlos Parreira only has a venerable air of respect for France. In fact, he got it spot on with his quiet observations --'Our rivals are no ordinary team, they were world champions.'

'We know what awaits us,' he continues. 'They are in no hurry to play their game, they play with a certain calmness and suddenly explode with a fast manoeuvre.'

His words carry a certain aroma of ancient wisdom, notably from China, when Sun Tze decreed elegantly in his Art of War:

知己知彼, 百戰百勝

Tersely intepreted as Know thyself, know thy enemy, a hundred battles won, will France perish by the Brazilian sword of wisdom?

The ghost of 1998

2006-06-30T01:11:00.000+08:00

It's time to lay to rest the ghost of 1998. Wasn't it France who lifted the trophy in one of the most entertaining competitions ever?

Ronaldo's ghost. The final, in which France triumphed 3-0, was forever remembered by Zidane's goals as much as Ronaldo's supposed mystery illness that caused him to appear listless during the match. The world has not, and could not, give due credit to this French team, who, before the tournament, has been written off by all and sundry. They could not be blamed, for history has shown that France has been woefully inadequate when it comes to anything requiring some mental toughness and real fights. Wars and football matches are just beyond most Frenchmen it seems.

But this squad is special. Those who have witnessed only the French triumphs in 1998 and 2000 would not realise some distinct oddities about this squad. For it was the exact squad who contrived to almost draw with Andorra in 1999 Euro Qualifying Match, but for Franck LeBeouf's last min goal, and the same team who bored me to near death in a 0-0 draw with Czech Rep in Euro 96. The boredom was so intense that I thought it impossible to be upstaged again, mumbling professors in antiseptic lecture halls notwithstanding.

The same team brought as much grief as joy to the full-time supporters like me, beating the likes of Portugal, Spain, England, Italy, but they have their Senegals and Greeces. For lack of a better word in English, doppenganger, German for shadow or double, is the best thing to describe France. This France team has the knack of playing in fits and starts, but shadow copying what the opponents do. Play against a slick team, and France will be slick. Play against a team completely bereth of ideas, and France will be completely ruderless. Play against a samba team, and France will samba through the night.

So, come Sunday, show the world how these band of doppelgangers can beat Brazil in their own game and lay to rest the ghost of Ronaldo!

It's all Park Ji Sung's fault

2006-06-28T05:21:00.000+08:00

Following the English penchant for laying blame on everything from dry grasses, frivolous girlfriends, the scorching German heat for their less-than-stellar performances on the field, it's time now for the Spanish to look for a scapegoat for their demise in the World Cup 2nd round.

Spain have gone into the tournament looking like the regal conquistadors of medieval yore, boasting somewhat threatening names like Torres, Iniesta and Pernia. They conjured a majestic 4-0 win over Ukraine, followed it up with a gritty come-from-behind 3-1 win over Tunisia, and rounded up Round 1 by fielding a team of reserves against the luckless Saudi Arabians---for all their money in the world, their search for a replacement for the 37-year-old Ali Daei have so far been futile.

The stage was all set for Spain to impose their latin influence on the latter stages in the world cup. Such a young team, averaging 24 years of age, and such boundless talents like Fabregas and Torres, who run the fields like the wind, they are the neutral's favourite.

But for a quirky change of fate in the other group match. France was casually strolling to a victory against the Koreans, which would most probably give France the top table position, steering France and Spain well clear of each other's path. 83min--Park Ji Sung had no right to be there, but pop the goal he did into the French net. 1-1. Spain has no chance against France. It was written in the stars.

So was it youthful naviety? Was it Raul the not-so-golden boy of Spanish football? Was it Alonso who inadventently headed the ball back to his own goal? Did the Spanish backline play too far out? No, it's all Park Ji Sung's fault.

Anyway, what's a World Cup without some Spanish tears? Ahh....some things, comfortingly, never change.

Henry and Saha -- dream pairing?

2006-05-31T22:26:00.000+08:00

My Winning Eleven buddy, with whom I have spent the better part of my life hunched over the console box, have often dispensed advice as we prepare ourselves for yet another England-France friendly. "No way I'll put Trezeguet as a striker. Put Saha lar!" As advices go, they often fall on deaf ears.

Try as I might vehemently deny, I'm actually quite a sentimentalist, and a pretty disturbing one at that. I could just see myself as a really bad manager, and an even worse referee. What? Drop McManaman from my first-team, even if I'm painfully aware of his inability to pass, dribble or shoot. What? Award Manchester United a penalty? With abundant goodwill, I'll most probably just wave any appeals away, with a yellow-card for diving if he happens to call himself "Ruud".

So there, Trezeguet happens to be a player I kinda admire. I have known him since the days of ....Championship Manager 2, when he and Thierry Henry were bosom buddies under Wenger at Monaco. Wenger and a few other coaches (including virtual ones like me) were raving about the two French fledgings. Nobody really listened, even after Trezeguet banged in a 30 yard stunner to knock Manchester United out of a Champions League quarter-final, back in 1997. The seeds of my admiration for him was sown.

His golden moment came, not in World Cup 98, but 2 years later in the classic final against Italy, when he became an overnight star by scoring the golden goal which clinched Euro 2000 for France, baring his emanciated frame in the process. It was an image that burnt forever upon the memories of all who watched that match, whether they liked it or not. Ah! Those were heady days indeed when France ruled the soccer world with a Napoleonic fist.

Since then, he's established himself as a top striker for Juventus, the closest thing to a fox-in-the-box in the modern game, though he never really endeared himself to the Turin faithful the way Platini or del Piero did. But that's just because he's too quiet, too selfless and too thin.

Saha, on the other hand, did not possess such a polished pedigree. Not born in Argentina like Trezeguet was, he plied his trade in unfashionable Fulham, before compounding the problem by committing the cardinal sin of joining the Red Devils. Somehow, I am never truly excited by his blistering pace and deadly finishing, which he demonstrates on a weekly basis for Alex Ferguson. Therein lies the whole problem, I'm utterly biased when it comes to Manchester United.

Raymond Domenach, though, has put one ahead of me. Henry and Saha have been named in attack against Denmark in a warm up friendly. Putting aside my tribal rivalries and my feeling sorry for Trezeguet, I shall wish them both the best tonight.

The goal that brings me tears of happiness

It's a French thing

2006-05-30T21:21:00.000+08:00

If you, like me, get high from reading bad news, you should seriously consider supporting France. Now, those England fans would be up in arms to contest what they believe is their sole ownership over the domain of bad luck, what with unfortunate injuries at the most inopportune moments on the most important players. "Metartasal" has catapulted itself onto the English consciousness in recent times, even the grannies there can give you a verbal diagnosis if you are ever in need of one.

No, I don't mean bad news that boil down to strange quirks of nature or fate, rather, those that you take a gun and shoot yourself in the foot, or the metarsasal as an Englishman would be quick to point out, and you go, "fuck.....that HURTS!"

So every morning, I eagerly turn my copy of The Straits Times over its side, bypassing the truly depressing "Thousands perish in quake" and going straight for the jugular. "Thousands boo France team". Just a few days ago, Coupet walking out on France team made mini headlines in my local newspapers and brought a wry smile to my face. But booing your own team for no particular reason just about ranks up there in the "shooting yourself in the foot" category.

'You would never see that in England,' said Henry. 'Even when we're losing at Highbury, the fans keep cheering and supporting us. Fabien received a yellow card at one stage and you had the impression that it made the fans happy.'

Liverpool forward Djibril Cisse was also surprised by the hostile reaction from the fans.
'I can't believe it', he said. 'In England such a thing would be unthinkable. Maybe it's just a cultural thing but it is a problem.'

So there you have it. It's a cultural thing, some sort of national pasttime. It's some innate French need to be, to borrow from Hokkien colloquial, "sibei kwailan", a trait which filled our history textbooks with unapologetic revolutions and our soccer annals with unforgettable anecdotes. Just ask the Crystal Palace fan who was famously kung-fu kicked into notoriety.

Trawling the Net for more updated France news, I was not disappointed with the day's offerings:
"Cisse unwanted at Liverpool"
"Trezeguet may play in Seria B"
"Giuly swears never to play for France"

Maybe its about time to call it a day. C'est la vie.

World Cup:France Watch

2006-05-28T16:49:00.000+08:00

The die is cast. Raymond Domenach has selected his 23 men tasked to lead France to glory once again. But his whirlwind decisions left a lot of fans in its wake grieving at his list, which was bizzare to say the least. My heartfelt condolences goes out to Ludovic Giuly, and to lesser extent, Pires and Coupet, whose place in the France setup was revealed to him in one ego-crumbling "Barthez shall (forever) be my No 1" phrase.

What? Barthez the Botak? Bathez the spitter? Barthez the clown? Whatever incarnation this Barthez fella comes in, he does not inspire fear or command respect. The highlight of his Manchester career was marked not by goalkeeping heroics but by one particular incident where he valiantly tried to con di Canio to stop playing football just as he was about to score, hoping that the wily Italian would take to his tricks. Well, as the story goes, Manchester went out 1-0 to West Ham, and his place in the goalkeeping gaffes is assured.

>Bartez Hailing Taxi

What irks me though, is that Barthez was banned for 6 months this season for spitting at a referee whose decisions he did not take particularly well to. So, 6 months of idly his time away as Marseille struggled, while Coupet toiled hard in a Lyon team which was going places both domestically and European wide. Coupet deservedly picked up the French goalkeeper of the year award, but that, somehow, wasn't good enough. Domenach insists that he prizes experience over competency, but how does he explain away his decision to pick Chimbonda and Franck Ribery, 2 uncapped French players? He didn't. He muttered something about the planets and stars on the day the names were released and strutted off-stage, without fielding a single question from the reporters. Glenn Hoddle would have been proud.

And what about Giuly, Pires, Mexes, Anelka, Dacourt, Zebina, Malbranque and half dozen other French names plying their silky trades across Europe? Instead, we have Jean-Alain Boumsong, someone whose Mum would be proud of if he can find his way home everyday, and Alou Diarra, a Liverpool and Bayern reject. How many more rejects do you need to claim to earn the enthusiastic approval of Domenach?

Only recently, Coupet, unable to tolerate the clowning Barthez and the delightfully unreasonable Domenach any longer, almost walked out of a team-building session up in the Alps. Suddenly, the Les Bleus are living up to their names too literally.

It would be good if these woes consigned themselves off-field. Unfortunately, France have never acquired the art of free scoring. When they had the likes of Dugarry and Guivar'ch, strikers who can't score in a Thai massage parlour ( phrase coined specially for Crouch though) it was understandable, but the problem becomes more perplex with the likes of Henry and Trezeguet leading the front line.

People have questioned just how someone can dazzle like only true-blue legends do on a Saturday, then play like Boumsong WITH Boumsong on a midweek, then turn on his va-va-vroom again on a Saturday. With his usual nonchalance, Henry waves that away with his usual sage-like demeanour, "I'm not a machine, you know." Fair enough. His achievements at Arsenal have rendered him virtually untouchable. Referees think twice before yellow-carding him, and mere mortals struggle to breathe in his divine presence.

(For Thierry's sake, Henry's French, not English, despite his blessings to England, and his name is pronounced ON-RI, not HON-RI, or HEN-RI, or ON-NE-RI or any other permutations you can come up with. I will not hesitate to stop you in your tracks and correct you on the spot.)

Lastly, woe betide Zizou the saviour designate, who, at the ripe old age of 34, besides worrying about receding hairlines and impudent kids, has to somehow find a way to inspire his jaded bunch to the Jules Rimet. Things do not bode well when a nation places so much expectation on the square shoulders of any being, man or god. Just yesterday, France managed to overcome Mexico at their favourite stadium 1-0, courtesy of Florent Malouda. But there was another compelling statistic which releases a sense of foreboding to any France fan out there: Zidane gave the ball away 7 times, and was so awful he had to be substituted by Vikash Dhorasoo after half-time.

Facing a tigerish South Korea, a youthful Swiss and an athletic Togo team, is another first-round exit on the cards for the moribund French?

Miserable in Heaven...

2006-04-30T00:41:00.000+08:00
...or happy in hell?

"The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. Ch. 14):
"Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire...And these shall go away into everlasting punishment" (Matt. Ch. 25):
"He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath, never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation" (Mark, Ch. 3).

What is mere eternal damnation when people have not an ounce of belief in themselves, and allow their minds to be paralysed by fear, and stained by evil? The day bigotry rules is the day reasoning dies, and with it, drags humanity and progress.

So dear God, prepare the curses, spew forth the fire, sharpen the spikes, you have someone who is hell bent on going to hell.

The cold comforts of nihilism

2006-03-24T20:00:00.000+08:00
Stephin Merrit The Lonely Robot

Having ended all life, absorbed all other robots,
ruler of the cosmos, she walks into the sunset.

But there is no darkness. Her laser-gaze is itself a weapon. And no sleep defends her from the nightmare of oblivion.

So she wakes a new world made entirely out of lightwaves, memories of movies, and chance determinations.

Then she watches random characters and situations, endless combinations with very little input. But she sees the ending. Every clock finds its equilibrium. So she introduces the absurdist contradictions.

Anything can follow, but the actors can't believe that, so they keep pretending the script is real and means things.

So the lonely robot, with no feeling for the actors, just erased the whole thing, which -- true -- had not existed. And a trillion stories all came abruptly to a non-ending, and a trillion people suddenly stopped non-existing.

Thus was born a new world from the movies of the old one, and the lonely robot was given non-existence.

Auditioning as a Football365 writer

2006-02-06T10:05:00.000+08:00
the aftermath of the Chelsea-Liverpool shambles of a match. sigh...

'I am in a hurry because I must go to the hospital because the injury was so serious that maybe he (Robben) will be there for one week,'
--Benitez, in no mood for the press conference, as his heart reached out for poor Robben

'I have just finished a big game, a game that we won and played very well. A game where we scored one of the most beautiful goals in the Premiership this season and the referee didn't allow it. A game that leaves us in the countdown to be champions. A game that gave us the 50th victory in the Premiership in the last one and a half years. A game that out of nine against Liverpool in this period, we lost one. A game that proved we are the best team in the country and so I am happy with all things.'
--Mourinho, giving an inspired speech on why he is contented with life at the moment

'Why should I comment on Rafa's words. He can say what he wants but sometimes we say things without thinking, especially after we lose."
--Mourinho, ever so empathatic towards fellow colleagues

'When they are defending and the result is not against them, they are fantastic and defend very well. But if you score first against them you know that you have great conditions to do what we did at Anfield.'
--The Special One, a self-proclaimed guru on many things in life, offers advice on some random topic

'What kind of professional can you be against another professional if you leave the other player not playing for three games. It is crazy.'
--Benitez, on poor Reina not playing for the next 3 games, conveniently forgetting how a certain Jerzy Dudek has not played for 50 games. Talk about favouritism.

'William Gallas was touching Reina but did Reina dive? No!'
--Benitez, on a parallel universe where people are expected to crumble onto the floor when when touched

Movie Review: 15:The Movie

2006-02-02T22:52:00.000+08:00

The last time a local film actually garnered critical acclaim, Cleopatra Wong was still karate chopping up policemen in shorts. Hailing from 21th century Singapore, I was all eager to watch 15. Too eager, on hindsight, as I passed up Broken Flowers and Julie Delpy for it.

Opening sequence with 3 leads playing bow-and arrows in a metaphorical wasteland (Nope! There's no desert in monsoon-ravaged Singapore), a sense of foreboding crept up inside me. A film which purports to capture street life grittiness but opens with some high arty farty concept, is suffering from a clash of ideologies, something akin to getting Jesus and God of Mercy tattooed on your back.

So the movie meanders down this slippery path of pseudo high concept art. We find Ah-bengs, or 'street thugs' in colloquial Hokkien, not in the streets spilling blood, but hanging around in their not-so-spartan HDB flats musing about the vagaries of life and occasionally breaking into colourful song-and-dance. Sounds a lot like my life, thank you.

Granted, there were a few great takes of self-mutilation and drug-smuggling, which was stomach churning even to the hardboiled. But the terrible pacing blunted the scenes and ruined the senses. It was with much gratitude that I survived the extreme tedium, thanks to my fingers on the FAST FORWARD button. Mind you, it was not just a casual fast forward, but a SUPER TURBO FAST FORWARD of 8x.

15 would indeed be a smashing hit as a 15 min long feature. Royston Tan shouldn't have dragged 15 out from the relative comforts of short films to the hazards of full-lengths. A full-length film needs to be sustained by a story, a heartbeat. Witness how blood courses through the veins of Amores Perros, or Cidade de Deus. A concept alone, even if wrapped up in garish lighting and high contrast colours, is simply not enough.

IMDb Rating: 4.7 (-1 for lack of Ah Lians in a movie about Ah Bengs. Oh! Ludicrious!)

Spiritualized

2006-02-02T20:45:00.001+08:00
there's always a first to everything. And now, the first gospel rock band that I whole-heartedly embrace. Can't believe myself.

But Jason Pierce's Spiritualized begs the question: aren't Christians supposed to be trippy-happy, like life's a one-way trip to heaven on a helium balloon. And here is Jason Pierce's singing of yearning, frustration, anger and bitterness, encapsulated into a wonderfully-named album Ladies and Gentlemen, We're Floating in Space. Beautifully secular, but once let loose into the airwaves, something sacred happened. The room chills, the furniture resonates, and my heart aches.

Broken Heart by Spiritualized

Though I have a broken heart
I’m too busy to be heartbroken
There’s a lot of things that need to be done
Lord I have a broken heart

Though I have a broken dream
I’m too busy to be dreaming of you
There’s a lot of things that I gotta do
Lord I have a broken dream

And I’m wasted all the time
I’ve gotta drink you right off of my mind
I’ve been told that this will heal given time
Lord I have a broken heart

And I’m crying all the time
I have to keep it covered up with a smile
And I’ll keep on moving on for a while
Lord I have a broken heart

Broken Heart

Ladies and Gentlemen We're Floating in Space

Calling SOS

2006-01-09T17:29:00.000+08:00
After 2-3 days of pracitising just that darned passage (Bar 5-12), it seems I have made little progress. Left with no other choices, I decided to appeal to the outside world (pianoforum) with my problems.

Below was my (quite urgent) message for help.

It seems that no matter how much I practice, I still have troubles getting my RH up to speed (around 150). At 130, my notes start to bundle together, forming at tata-tata rhythm , and I dunno if there are any better methods to practise the RH.I recorded my playing (Bar 5-12 only) to further illustrate my problems.

http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=1754
Same passage with speed digitally reduced by 70%.
http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=1755

Let's see!

FI RH Training (Bar 5-12)

2006-01-05T15:56:00.000+08:00
Started the speed training first. Bar 5-12.

At Speed 100, I was relatively comfortable. Save for Bar 8, and Bar 12, which showed slight uneveniess.

At 120, bar 5 and 12 shows slight weakness, esp 12.

At 130, all the cracks showed up.
Bar 5-6: note the D#-C#-D#-C#
Bar 7: D#-F# descending clique
Bar 8: grouped in tada-tada
bar 9-10: same problems as 5-6
bar 12: very poor. the tada-tada clique ruled the day here.

Overall general weakness shown in 1st finger over thumn, e.g Bar 7 and 8.

One method to annihilate cliques: practice the offending notes in all combinations, the more awkward, the better.
e.g. Bar 12, in the heavily cliqued group of (E-D#)-(G#-A#),
I cycled through at E-G#-D#-A# as much and as fast as possible, then followed by D#-G#-E-A#.
Hopefully I can see results tomorrow.

One thing of note: Play with MINIMAL STRESS at all times!

FI Strategy

2006-01-04T22:05:00.000+08:00
Identified 2 major issues with FI: rhythm and speed, and drew up corresponding methods (hopefully) to alleviate the problems.

Rhythm coordination training, aimed at drumming the feel of 3s on 4s, is to be done HT. Break up piece from Bar 5-24 and Bar 25-37.
Tools used: Finale and midi.
Method: Play the piece together with the midi file at tempo 40, and gradually drumming up to 150. Every note must be exactly in time, but most importantly, the feel of the rhythm must not be missed.

Speed training is to be be done HS, specifically RH, since FI, like Prelude No 16, asks a lot from the RH. Perhaps Prelude No 16 could be a good project to undertake simultaneously. For FI, I break it up into more manageable parts, namely, bar 5-12, 13-16, 17-24, 25-29(repeat), 30-36,37-40.
Tools used: Cooledit and electronic piano.
Method: Record playing onto Cooledit, and analyse playing in stretched tempo (slowed down 150%...go to Effects?Time/Pitch/Stretch) to identify cliques. You'll be surprised that what you thought was even playing would be cruelly exposed by this very powerful tool. The faster you go, the more cliques you'll fish out in the unlikeliest of places.

Ok, I've outlined the battleplan. Now, to get some sleep, watch some TV, and maybe some day, i'll get round to executing it......

FI Report 1

2006-01-03T12:09:00.000+08:00
what i've done over the last few days:

5-12: HT at around 60
13-24: technically very challenging. HS with lots of uneveness and tripping up. Esp the first 2 notes and last 2 notes of the 4-note appergios seem to form cliques of their own. It is technically challenging to bring out the accents of the 1st note from 13-16, 2nd note from 17-21, and no more accents from 21-24. Cliques, accents and phrasing, on top of the ever present rhythm, makes this passage a real killer.
25-34: HS

tried a few methods to conquer the 3s on 4s rhythm problem.
The trick, I think, is to find as many anchor points as possible. So far, the most obvious would be the coordinated landing of the RH 5th with the LH 4th. With this alone, I could play pretty much at ease. But who am I kidding? The LH always felt a bit off, while the RH seems to rush too much. Sigh...I needed more checks and anchor points.

Realised that the last 3 notes(HT) form a ta....ta.ta (quaver on RH followed by 2 semiquavers, LH then RH in quick succession) rhythm. I became conscious of this rhythm, and this became another anchor point for me.

And thats it. If you can play at speed with these two anchor points in mind, you pretty much nail it. If its perfectly done, it's much akin to having the squares and pegs of a seemingly impossible puzzle suddenly falling into place. You can just feel the magic of the 1/12th Moire pattern being weaved from your very own fingers. It's elusive, but that's what makes it even more exhilarating.

Lastly, a sense of foreboding to me. Quoted:
There seems no fear that the Fantasie-Impromptu will suffer from neglect, as it is the joy of the amateur, who usually transforms its presto into a slow, blurred mass of badly related rhythms and its slower episode into a long-drawn, sentimental agony.

I have quiet confidence about it though...Just gimme some time.

http://www-atdp.berkeley.edu/9931/htsai/fantimp.mid

Fantasie Impromptu

2006-01-01T13:41:00.000+08:00
Ok, I've decided to blog down the trials and tribulations of trying to conquer this quite notorious musical peak, inspired in part by http://www.skytopia.com/project/articles/chopin.html.

Unfortunately, its cursed with the "overplayed" syndrome. Piano afficianadoes everywhere claim to have played it as their first ever piece. It appears randomly from Cantonese soap opera soundtracks to handphone ringtones. Even worse, Chopin was said to dislike the piece much that he refused to have it published. Hence the "posthumous Op 66". It was one of his earliest compositions and he thought it lacked depth. Maybe its like flipping through your diary entries of yesteryears and cringing at how could you have penned all those immature and juvenile comments. Fantasie Impromptu sounds flighty and flashy, and its middle section prods along painfully at times. Still, it remains one of the best-loved works of Chopin. And any self-respecting piano teacher SHOULD have it on his repertoire. Which was why I decided to commence on this journey.

A cursory run through of the RH from Bar 5 to Bar 40 revealed a lot of technical deficiencies on my part, of which Bar 37-40 would be the fiendishly difficult part. A few issues of note:

1) evenness at high speed (130) from Bar 5 to 24 deserts me. Still able to hold the fort at 110. HT sounds super amateurish to the discerning ear, but should get by to the rest.

2) how to play the 3s on 4s. There are 2 school of thoughts : one is, the 3s on 4s is a remarkable mathematical concept which Chopin intuitively understood. The more accurate you are on the 3s and 4s, the more it brings out a wavelike Moire pattern. It creates an auditory illusion to accelerate the piece up by 3 times. The second school of thought says that, it being a fantasy and impromptu, we should just play to our hearts and abandon all the mathematical rigidity.

We shall see...

Blogging is addictive!

2005-05-16T19:38:00.000+08:00
Immediately after viewing my first post, I got this un-explainable adrenalin which forces me to post again.
Wonder if this email to some colleagues would work perfectly fine as a blog entry in itself.

Random Soccer Musings

the most often heard sentence in soccer commentary nowadays...next season they (the relegated team) will face Mansfield in place of Manchester, Crewe in place of Chelsea, and Luton in place of(duh....you saw it coming miles away. But for the record, its LIVERPOOL! Yes, Liverpool is officially a big club which any other self-respecting teams would die to play with. But of coz, they are after all the Champion's Champions, come end of May). Ok, my grouge is this:why can't commentators be slightly more creative? At least pick words which actually rhyme...like "Swansea" for Chelsea.

Pity Fowler, condemning his club and his best fren Macca to a European-less season... Last minute penalty for man City, and he kicked it like Beckham...poor and predictable. Actually Macca doesn't care. He's been warming the benches all the way from Spain to England. Oh...I think he's not even in the teamsheet nowadays. He's lost his right to warm benches. Sigh....my fallen idol.

the celebration scenes at West Bromwich Albion was simply astonishing. Thewhole pitch was flooded with supporters in a never-seen-before sight on TV. How thrilling to finish 17th! YEA!!!!! Even Chelsea's fans never celebrate until like dat. One would think that it would be better to finish 17thrather than 1st.

West Bromwich Albion is actually pronounced West Bromwee Chiao Bien. The French Liaision at work! I love languages with liaisions, which was partly why I like French. Heard from a colleague Tamil is another language full of liaisions. I tested her with some Tamil of my own ."Yuan-de-bu-nen-na!", and true enough, she din understand a word of it. So she's juz bullshitting.

Winning Eleven on PC is realli damn shiok. Graphics are unfortunately much better than the playstation2. ( PC 1 Playstation 0 Mac -9999) It was $800 well spent! It would be very very very very very difficult for me to get out of my house ever again. Unless of course, my boss is not on leave and I have to report for work.

And lastly, this is an official invite to ES the trophy girlfriend to join the trophy girlfriends gang that Mediacorp Djs bring along with them. You can always sit around looking pretty while admiring the footwork of Glenn, me, Daniel and Mark.

So? I get to rub shoulders with celebrities. I get girls coming off the street saying "I love you" to me. And I get fellow bus passengers trying to stab each other with pen-knives on a Monday morning bus to work. That's my life...the life nobody believes.

Wah! 8:00pm! Going home liao lor! Once again, kudoes to blogging!

Woohoo!

2005-05-16T19:15:00.000+08:00
finally joined the blogging bandwagon. Its inevitable i guess. It's not the fact that every other first -degree friends you have is a blogger. It's not the fact that you have to be one to earn the right to speak in their blogs. It's almost, but not the fact that you can spout bullshit in a perfectly legitimate manner. Its when SM actually signed up for it, that it finally hits you on the head. SM, one of the truly laziest guys I have the pleasure of knowing, is now a proud owner of a corner in blogspot! I must be missing something big in this world. Something monumental. Something...free.

So what famous first words do I have? Er....."What the fuck?"