What time is it?

I am currently reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, as part of my Accounting Theory readings. Ironically, it is the only Accounting Theory reading I care to read because it has practically zero relevance to Accounting Theory – that’s why it’s so darn interesting.

I had to put it down after 3 chapters because it has given me an immense headache, and I was dizzy with excitement, like a child who first learned that plants photosynthesize. Why, in Stephen Hawking’s name, didn’t any Physics teacher recommend this book to us? I would probably have done a Physics degree instead. It’s like, why didn’t I listen to Isaac Stern’s recordings of Mozart when I was learning music? Well, too late. Now I can only hope to find a book that explains Ito’s Lemma as clearly as Stephen Hawking discusses Einstein’s general theory of relativity. (Or maybe, I should aim to write one! )

I was reading in Coffee Bean. As I put down my book with a spinning head and looked around at people walking around in the commercialized man-made heaven, I began feeling extremely extremely small. I felt like an ant, no, smaller, like the bacteria that lives in the guts of an ant. And the expensive coffee I was sipping is merely digested bread crumbs.

Watching the mundaneness of people shopping around feels like watching ants shift bread crumbs. The humanities and social sciences (which I’m usually more inclined to read than the hard sciences) may be interesting, but now they seem little more significant than the most intricate organization of ant colonies.

Like humans as “higher beings” take little interest in the crumbling of ant hills, actually, who gives a damn if AIG and Citigroup fall? It’s like, minuscule in the greater scheme of things. However big, they are merely two of the many companies on Earth, and Earth is only one of the planets in the solar system, and the solar system is one of many in the galaxy, and Milky Way is just one of the many galaxies in the universe, and the observable universe is probably just a small part of god knows what. So yeah, AIG may fall, the economy may collapse, men may go into extinction after destroying Earth, but the universe will still exist, and it doesn’t even matter if the expanding universe eventually collapses on itself because man will most likely not live to see it happen.

While most people were fretting over World War One, Einstein published his theory of relativity and showed that there is no such thing as absolute time, which means identical clocks in different locations measure time differently! Then what does it mean to discount expected returns to obtain option price when no objective measure of time is possible? At seemingly the same point in time, my option price can be higher than yours! What time value of money?

Apparently, bodies like Earth aren’t actually moving in curved orbits. They are moving in straight lines in the four-dimensional space-time, but appear to be moving in curved lines in our three-dimensional view of the world because space-time is curved. That means light doesn’t actually appear to travel in a straight line in space. Now which science teacher made me memorize the fact that light always travels in a straight line? Oh yeah, the same one who told me Pluto’s a planet.

Conversely, of course, I can maintain my worldly belief that whatever happens to the universe doesn’t matter also precisely because man will never live to see its collapse (if it ever does). What’s of immediate concern to us, is of course whether or not we can cling onto the guts of the ant to prevent being passed out, not whether the ant hill crumbles. After all, if AIG does collapse, my world (as I know it) would probably end and it doesn’t matter anymore whether space-time is warped or not.

I enjoy books that screw with my mind.

What have I been doing?

I’m an idiot.

That’s the sobering fact I learnt today, after not being able to score 2 extremely easy papers. When you’ve been in QF for a while, you kind of take for granted that you’ll get killer papers, and that no one else can do them too. It’s also well known that the marginal benefit from studying is very little, because unless you have a flair for the math and do some hardcore studying (read: tear through many books written in greek and know theorems with strange names by heart), you’ll never get it. Especially not when there are other courses and other committments that are more urgent and where the results are immediate.

That’s why we always laugh at the impossible to comprehend notes and the insane amount of work that QF gives us. But when you can’t even do the simple questions, it’s not funny anymore. To add insult to injury, it’s an open book exam where I had the answer right in front of me, but when I attempted to do the question myself, I make spastic algebraic errors even a secondary school student shouldn’t be making – and I submitted them undiscovered.

What’s left for today is bitter disappointment. I disappointed both myself and the professor with high expectations for me. He’s a professor I really respect and whom I actually care to impress, but I only disappoint him again and again. That’s the problem with over-promising, I’d much rather stay low profile and do well in my own way.

Making stupid mistakes in exams may be a small thing, well, everyone does from time to time, and I don’t have the delusion that I won’t. But not being able to answer simple conceptual questions quickly and accurately feels terrible – how can I call myself a QF major if I don’t get my fundamentals right? (Actually, it applies to accounting too, except that I’m only an accountant by training, and don’t envision calling myself an accountant – ever.)

The past 2 terms have been a joke – I think I’ve just been muddling through. I really need to get my act together, quit wasting so much time watching TV and entertaining silly interests, and get down to grinding through the math and setting my finance fundamentals straight. I should learn programming proper too. I need to stick to my goal of getting a good masters in financial engineering, which means I need to get myself enrolled in one and get someone to sponser it. That also means I need to prepare myself for it and do well enough at work to deserve a scholarship.

My job in risk will be demanding, and the department’s ties with my professors mean I really cannot afford to screw up. And I don’t even want to settle for mediocrity, so I seriously need to buck up. When I’m left with just 2 accounting courses next week, there should be no excuse for not spending more time and effort on finance. 

Ironically, after the exams, I realize it’s time to hit the books.

Overheard

I discovered that common knowledge is not very common. Common sense is probably not very common as well, but I can accept that because sensibility requires some thinking to understand and make use of information. But considering the amount of trivia we’re bombarded with everyday, there just isn’t any excuse to be more ignorant than a 8-year-old if you are older than 8.

Therefore, I always thought shows like “Are you smarter than a fifth grader” are completely rigged – they made the contestants act dumb so that idiots will watch it to feel better about themselves and boost viewership and producers can rake in the moolah from advertisers. But now I think I have to reconsider that hypothesis, especially after I overheard a mother teach her daughter (probably around 8 years old) how to do her homework.

1. She raised doubts when her daughter told her wool comes from sheep.

2. She couldn’t correct her daughter when her daughter told her silk comes from wool.

3. She agreed with her daughter that sunflower translates to 太阳花, and told her daughter to write “太阳花的样子很像太阳” in her exercise book.

Sitting beside them, I was itching to help her with it, but that would have been the equivalent of giving the mother one tight slap and telling her in front of her kid how ignorant she is (even though she is).

Ignorance is scary, I should read more.

Living for June

Now that there are confirmed plans for after graduation, there is only anticipation. Life’s going to be good, but only when June comes. That’s when there will be change – a different environment, different responsibilities, opportunities, and also, finally being able to concentrate on a specific area of work instead of dealing with 7 while simultaneously entertaining the various silly interests of mine that surface from time to time.

And all the fun I’m going to have in Australia. That will come, I have to be patient.

Meanwhile, I’m in both accounting and finance hells. I wish I could understand Finance Theory better though, or at least be able to sit still long enough to try and understand it. It’s incredibly mind boggling, which makes it interesting, but not very fun when there are 5 other courses to do. As for Accounting Theory, well, maybe… not.

Leaving school and moving on to a new lifestyle will be good. It’s time to get out of this 17 years (!!!) of structured education drudgery which my mind is beginning to reject, showing signs of restlessness. At this point in time, I actually find being the lowest life form in the corporate food chain a strangely attractive prospect compared to being the boss of my own learning. Furthering studies? Most likely, but just not anytime too soon.