Milk craving

I wanted to watch the movie Milk.

Then I realized a couple of good friends wanted to watch it too, so I really wanted to watch Milk.

When Cathay stopped showing it and other theaters were showing it at limited timings and locations, the “they’re going to stop showing it soon!” scare made me desperate to watch Milk. So I frantically called up my interested friends.

But despite setting up several meetings, we didn’t get to watch it. By then, the craving for Milk was driving me nuts. So I thought I’ll just go watch it on my own some day after school. 

When even that plan didn’t materialize, watching Milk became my short term goal in life.

Anyway, I finally watched it today, although I knew it’s not an absolute must-watch movie or that I really wanted to see it so badly. If theaters made use of such scare tactics more often, I bet the box office will rake in millions even on the most unpopular movies.

But Milk was good. Great acting. Inspiring and funny in subtle ways. It’s refreshing to see a movie without exaggerated acting, corny lines and too much silly humor. =)

320gb for my life

Every time my laptop hiccups, my heart skips a beat.

That’s what happens when your life is not properly backed up, especially so if you’ve lost practically all your music, photos and work documents in a freak accident when your water bottle decides to leak in a superbly waterproof bag.

I finally decided that I do not want to suffer a heart attack should my failing laptop do, and made the decision to invest in another hard disk today.

But there’s actually not a lot of important information that I can’t live without. So it seems rather irrational that my heart should put so much importance on some bits and bytes.

Maybe it’s because they’re the only tangible evidence that I existed, did some work and went to some places, and because it’s tangible, nothing else could be as easily and completely preserved. There are too many things that I can’t keep from changing, decaying or disappearing by simply spending some money and a couple of hours copying the data.

So imagine how it feels like, when you have to hand over a defective hard disk with your whole life in it to some complete stranger in exchange for a new one (damn those warranty policies). That’s exactly what I had to do to the hard disk before the one I drowned. Well, no one is probably going to be interested in recovering some unimportant documents of my pathetic life, and I didn’t lose any data, but handing them all over without knowing the fate of that data is really pretty scary.

I hope manufacturers of hard disks and their factory workers are all extremely responsible people. At least I think Maxtor understands that, because I was pleasantly surprised by the words “save your life” on the sticker holding together a plastic wrap containing the wire. I’m glad they understood why I bought the disk in the first place.

In any case, I have 320gb now for my life, something like 20x more capacity than what I immediately need. I actually paid a bit more for the bigger one, believing I’ll have enough life to fill it.

Math in Prose

Studying math, to me, has always been like reading a story book without going into the literature. As far as I’m concerned, math is a tool that can be used to solve problems, not as a study of abstract concepts and rigorous arguments.

But now, I pretty much need to study math in all its abstraction before having a clear idea of how it can be applied. That’s like walking into a war zone without knowing which side I’m on, or even why I’m there in the first place.

Anyone who has done this will understand my need to grumble. So please allow me to say, 

This is painful.

If only I could find a book that explains financial mathematics in prose (i.e. plain English, not Greek), even if every mathematical proof needs to be written with a 5,000 word essay. If only the book also links the significance of every math concept to its financial relevance. Or better, if only I’d wake up tomorrow with a full appreciation of the beauty and elegance of the mathematical language.

Fulfil my Chinese New Year wish, pretty please?

A Journal Entry

Some work’s been done, just enough for me to realize I’m pretty much done for. Maybe this time, I’ve gone a little too close to the edge.

If anyone ever feels like touring an university, forget the designed co-curricular activities and open house day, see it in the crunch week – that’s what real life feels like, because we normally don’t make handicrafts and display them on booths where we gather to play games.

Well, we normally don’t walk around like zombies either, but in real life, there are times when you sleep at strange hours and wake up at even stranger hours, only to come to school and see people with the lives drained out of them. This post was started at 9.20am in school, perhaps the first (and hopefully) only blog post to ever be written at such an ungodly time and unholy place.

Cramming for the exams is not fun, but ironically (and unfortunately), it is the necessary evil for really remembering and understanding some things that we’re learning. Sometimes, all it takes to facilitate understanding is a little last minute panic. It adds some excitement and dread to our otherwise mundane lives too. I’ve mastered the art of self-delusion.

Today, someone told me that up to this point in life, I’ve spent all my time trying to make myself better at doing things, as oppose to managing people. Partly true, considering how I’m going to be tested individually on my cramming skills yet again, but it better not be entirely true, because if it is, then I’ll be really sad because I’m still not doing things perfectly.

At some point, it becomes somewhat like a hobby. Learning things for myself just so that I can do it too. And then I forget that, it’ll be way cooler if I can do things myself, but never ever need to.

New friends

Ripped this off Wiki images, but that’s how my new friends look like.

Lessons learnt:

1) Friends can be bought from retail shops.

2) Cute is irresistable.

Damn the weakness for rodents.

Overheard

As bus 74 approached the bus stop, a young boy turned to his father and said, “I know 74 is coming. You know how I know that?”

I thought what a stupid question that was, it’s obvious that he saw the bus coming.

To my surprise, the father asked the question his son wanted him to, “How do you know 74 is coming?”

“Because the 7 sticks to the 4 and the 4 sticks to the 7, so I know it’s 74.” was the boy’s answer.

It turns out that the boy was learning his numbers, and he was testing and showing off his concept. He came from an entirely different perspective and meant not what we commonly understood when he said, “I know 74 is coming.”

Never jump to conclusion.

There is no meaning in life

I turned on the TV and watched the news. All I saw was banks collapsing, bailout plans and some kind of food that is taken off the shelves because it contains some toxin. Then MOS is closing down and the most bizarre of all, a balcony dropping off from a building. News is too depressing. I once heard a reporter who said that reporters generally hope that the worst things happen, now I know why, and I think they must be having a jolly good time now.

So I changed the channel, and I see dinosaurs eating people (the rerun of Jurassic Park 3 for the nth time). There is no hope for the human race.

Eventually I retreated to Arts Central, which happened to be showing Simon Rattle conducting some orchestra playing some contemporary classical, which sounds weird. (I recognized him because some time ago, I got conned into buying Rattle’s Mahler album because the CD tester somehow broke down 3-4 minutes into the piece, and the first 3-4 minutes was good.) Good thing they played Mozart after that, which was good, but classical is too comical to watch. The solo pianist looks constipated at one moment, and then goes into spasms in the next. I should avoid attending live performances lest I start laughing out loud at them.

Make a list of tomorrows

This is a list of trouble I might find myself in for the rest of the 21st birthdays in my life, some wishful, some plausible and all bleak. If my life was a movie idea, it would sound like one of these possibilities.

(1) The Loveless Corporate Bitch

Pin everyone down with 4-inch stilettoes, stack the bodies and climb on them to the corporate throne. Live a life driven by greed and schemes, have a bank full of money I have no time to spend and wake up one day realizing I’m a person who knows everybody but has no friends.

(2) The Luck-addicted Corporate Slave

Muddle through the first job I get, get stuck in the same entry-level administrative position for 20 years and spend all my free time watching korean soaps. Struck lottery one day after faithfully buying tickets every week for all my life, snag an interview and be asked to give a brief autobiography. Stammer like an idiot on national tv.

(3) The Religious Banker

Dash to Wall Street sleep-deprived and grumpy. Have a life ran by the exchanges and mood swings as volatile as the market. Live by the words of the financial gods.

(4) The Dissatisfied Accountant

Emotionally imbalanced after balancing accounts for 20 years. At a stroke of creativity and with a spark of unburnt youth, decides to balance my personal bank account with the company’s. Makes it to the headlines and fulfills a life-long dream of joining the hippies in the cage.

(5) The Noble Philanthropist

Pool a sum of money from over-earning entrepreneurs, overpaid executives and bad pop stars. Set up a fund for micro-financing, save 10 families from poverty, squander the rest on 2,000 drug addicts and retreat into a life of defeat, dejection and hate for humanity.

(6) The Wife With Too Many Children

Clean after little bitches and bastards who stuff their faces using their hands and poop in my bed. Deliver them to school and have them return as rebellious teenagers who got pregnant or impregnate someone. Clean after their little bitches and bastards who stuff their faces using their hands and poop in my bed. Repeat ad naseum.

(7) The Rich Wife

Stuff my own face with all the foie gras I hate and pretend to like Loser’s Vehemence and Mahjong. Be proficient in small talk to the point of enjoying tea parties and cocktail parties without alcohol.

(8) A Combination of Number 2 and Number 6

Er, did someone say college fees? To hell with that, they’ll find a Korean prince.

(9) A Combination of Number 3 and Number 6

There are simpler ways to kill myself.

(10) Everything else

A football coach, an astronaut, an architect, an explorer, a museum curator, an academic… Waking up to find myself in the wrong profession.

Classy Biscuit Tins

The Gold Man’s Sacks remain full, while the Bear’s Stoned, the Layman Blunders and the Merry Leaks.

How many bank runs will you live to see?

Ghosts in the head

Sometimes, I feel the need to pick up some things I dislike, just so that I can understand why I like the things I like so much. Because absolute is too abstract and almost impossible to determine. Relativity is simpler. I’ve begun to accept that just because I enjoy something doesn’t make that thing good in the absolute terms. And sometimes I don’t even understand why I enjoy it and am really not trained to objectively evaluate the item. But just by subjecting myself to something I hate, I quickly learn the reasons for liking the other, and I can appreciate what I like better, making me like it even more. Knowing why I like the things I like also prevents me from accepting things that are similar, liking them even though I wouldn’t have if I knew what makes the first item so special to me.

—

If you ever find yourself getting too arrogant or if you’re feeling unchallenged, pick up quantitative finance. It’s guaranteed to make you feel worthless (unless of course, everything math and finance is your forte in the first place). Yet it is so impossibly interesting to me. Or maybe it’s because I only understand 10% of it and I have a tendency of lusting over something that I can’t understand easily. In any case, I just feel like studying it now, in the academic sense, in the go-away-real-world,-I-live-in-the-risk-neutral-arbitrage-free-dreamt-up-world way. That means that whatever I’m studying (and am interested in) could well be useless in any job that I get into in less than a year’s time, which will guarantee my dissatisfaction and misery. Damnit.