Branding is the cause of making people think that a bottle labelled as “mixed herbs” has contents different from another bottle that is labelled as “italian herbs”, even though both bottles contain the same thing.

I really don’t see the difference between the italian herbs and the mixed herbs. Others may think that there are, at least in my case I don’t see the justification for buying mixed herbs instead of the italian herbs.

————–

Monday

It was Chinese New Year. In the past, most of the shops were closed and your meals would depend on whatever that was in the refrigerator. So if there was no food in your fridge, the next best thing that you could hope for is that someone invites you over to their steamboat and solves your hunger problem for you.

But now I notice that some fast food restaurants were open during the CNY. Thank goodness.

In the same day, my relatives visited my family. A few of my cousins were married recently, and they had just given birth to babies. It makes me think when my turn would come. Que sera, sera…

Tuesday

The second day of Chinese New Year, and is still an official public holiday. Apart from Chinese New Year, each of the rest of the holidays spans only one day, and never carries on to the second day. I wish it happens, so we can have twice the number of public holidays! Of course companies having to close down on such days twice as long will frown at the potential profits that they could have earned if there were no public holidays.

Wed to Thu

Start of school. Schools are always boring, except on Thursday when I get to leave school early and sleep at home. I think this semester is quite slack for me despite taking 5 modules (including my FYP). My friends are already in a “retirement mode”, taking only 3 modules. I don’t want to waste another golden opportunity to learn in the university by subjecting myself to retirement. I will always stay faithful to LKY’s adage, that one should not stop working till he dies.

Of course that’s bullshit. At certain times, one should know when to rest and not. But this is certainly not the time for me to rest. The person who gives me this motivation to work hard whenever I can is Argerich. There are possibly other people like Horowitz or famous mathematicians who might have motivated my in other ways, but I like her because of her motto: “Move on”.

Friday

TGIF! I used to think not so well of functional analysis because I find it boring. But I like it gradually because the lecturer is quite slack and slow-paced in his teaching. So there is not so much of stress in learning.

2) I have submitted my application for Masters programme at Ecole Polytechnique. It feels weird to 1) apply to graduate school when I have nagging feeling of finding a work and starting a family. 2) apply to a university in a country where I don’t speak their language. 3) To be away from my country for a long period of time.

As for 1, if I were to do that, I will still get a nagging feeling of wanting to do graduate studies in math. It is a matter of which nagging voice is louder when I choose one or the other. As for 2, I hope that my preparation for french language might serve me well in their math courses. As for 3, I don’t know what to say…hm…

3) Speaking of my FYP supervisor, I wonder where is he?

4) Things are starting to heat up. Yeah? Keep the tutorials coming in.

5) Classic quote 1 from my lecturer: If you don’t know, you can sms me. No, I mean email me.

6) Classic quote 2 from the same person: What lesson do you have?

Us: Topology.

Lecturer: Aiyoh, algebraic topology arh. Very difficult.

Us: No, only point set topology.

Lecturer: Orh! Point set only arh. Aiyah, easy la.

—–

It is so hard to hate my lecturer. How can anyone not like him?

ME!

10-12: Functional Analysis lesson. A bit interesting than the last two sessions. I need to revise to catch up.

12-2: Topology. Things are getting heated up as soon as we have finished generalising metric spaces to topological spaces.

2-3: FYP talk 1: Some optimisation talk on finance models. I think financial math talks are the most painful talks to attend. In this one, it is about linear or quadratic optimisation of some portfolios, which I have no idea what is it. There are a lot of matrices, and it just gets bigger.

3-4: Computing project. The words are easy as there are just these two words: read and write. But somehow, the speaker managed to turn these two words into something so complicated that I don’t know if I have entirely understood these words. I think FYP presentation is an art of turning simple things into complicated concepts.

4-5: Another financial talk. This one uses hard analysis. A lot of Fourier transforms, inverse Fourier transforms, European call option, and even more FT’s. There is one equation that went out of the screen. The speaker kept pointing at one particular equation and say: This one is hot. Hot as in many people are studying this equation.

5-6: My talk: basically I know what I am talking. But after my profs asked a few questions, I realised that I don’t know what I am talking about.

I didn’t have lunch for the day. Time to grow fat today.

1) I thought that career workshops are team building sessions where the employees are forcibly sent by their employers for yet another sado-masochist training. The team-building sessions made the headlines when one of the employees who attended them was not happy to be made to crawl between his colleague’s legs, or to be shouted at by the trainers, or to shout at each other in a war cry, possibly to beef up their courage. But this career workshop that I had attended was just a 7 hour talk by an external agency and the atmosphere was cordial. People were free to raise questions without fear of being ridiculed because all of us in the room knew that we suck at writing resumes and impress our prospective employers in an interview.

2) When I saw the training programme, the word that I like the least was “networking”. I have read online about different meanings of networking, and prevalent in my mind was the one that describes networking as someone who pull strings, praising people when necessary to curry his favour, and to get a job by underhand means which people in the world of business would euphemistically describe such a deed as “networking”. But today I learned that networking is just yet another chit chat session, in an environment of strangers who might be your future colleagues, and getting to know each other’s work. If correctly done, it certainly lubricates the process of getting the job, although it is by no means a sure fire way of succeeding.

I found out this week that after some changes to the time-table, I have 3 days that end early, one at 11 and the other 2 at 2pm. I know it sucks to see that throughout my four years in the university, I never have a semester in which I am fortunate to have a day free from lessons, but choosing modules based on this criteria of having at least a free day would jeopardise my education.  At least I have the whole of afternoon free for my final year project. No complains.

Secondly, I will have to write to the IRO and EP about my rent deposit again. Omg, I have never seen an administration that is so slow that I have not got back my 250 euros worth of deposit in 5 months. I think this is the time to write them yet another email to show them who is the boss.

Finally, I find that I have been too nice to someone lately, and that someone is too dependent on others for things to happen. I hate it when he says, “I think the TA will help me persuade the lecturer to give me the module”, or “I trust that my FYP supervisor will not give me a bad grade for my FYP”.

All I want to say is: F**K YOU!

If you have a problem with  you module, why trust your TA to settle for you? Your lecturer is going to decide who to admit and who not to, so talk to your lecturer!

And think by giving shoddy project will get you some sympathy points from your supervisor??? How can this be fair to people like us who have to work very hard for the project?

And so as of today, and now, I shall cease to be a counsellor for this friend who is under academic stress this semester. I know he did not ask for it, but I helped him anyway just out of concern, but seeing how certain things develop recently make me think twice about helping. Even a businessman charges his friend for a fee for his service, and so he is on his own for now.

Today is the first day in school. Quite relaxed because I only had one class as the other one, which is French course, is not going to start until this Wednesday.

Nothing much to say actually. Thankfully the circle line did not break down. Watched the parliament debate and was slightly touched by the dedication of the ministers. Most of the times the companies have communication problems with their leaders.

For example, remember what I have said about the graffiti incident at the SMRT depot?

And now the PUB’s use of the word “ponding” to describe the flood. The minister stepped forward and clarify that PUB shouldn’t have used the word. To him, a “spade is a spade” and he is not going to take a flooded place for a pond. If this is really the case, then I think the PUB and not the minister should apologise.

Finally, about the SMRT and its train breakdowns, I think the management of the company is in a total mess. Whether I should attribute it to the ex-CEO or not, it doesn’t matter anymore. The current task for the incumbent CEO is to clear up the mess of the management and regain public trust. I guess it takes some time to resolve, and I believe it will bring the problem to a satisfactory closure. On the other hand, the public has to wait.

School’s starting tomorrow and I really cannot believe that my holidays have passed so fast.

Last week, I was considerably stressed. It was the same stress that I had when I was a JC student. At that time, there was a scholarship fair at the elite schools, such as mine, for the elite students, such as us. They say choices empower, but for those who are not good at making choices, such as me, it robs them of happiness. I couldn’t sleep for nights while trying to see very hard into the future what I am going to do for the next 10 years. My crystal ball didn’t show anything, and I am just as good as a clueless person.

Last week, faced with the same problem, except probably with a bit more maturity, I did what any irresponsible person would do: I have decided to avoid the question. I would want to do a phd, but I am not sure if I could get one, and if I did, would the miserably stipend make me regret my choice? Or if I decide to join the Singapore workforce, while I would earn lots of money, would I regret for not pursuing my dreams?

So I have decided that I will not make any decisions unless my options are open. There is no point talking about it when my options are closed, are they not?

As usual, I have made previous posts private, so in case where you guys do not have a chance to reminisce what I have written, it is sometimes good to leave things behind us and move forward.

So why have I decided to go through so much trouble just to do this?

1) Things that are archived too long haunts me back in the future. In essence, this is some kind of self-censorship. I don’t want a post dated 10 years back to return and be used by someone in a libel suit.

2) Despite being extremely  conservative in my writing, I still believe that there are times when in a heat of anger, I may have written something offensive. I know someone will be screaming that this is the age of the internet and everyone exercises free speech. Let us say there is truly free speech in this world, and this world is free in the sense of freedom. Anyone can do whatever they want. So in the event when I criticise the government one day and be caught and sent to jail by the criticised the next day, do I sue the government for violating freedom while the government is free to arrest whoever “creates dissent” or whatsoever.

I am not sure how free speech and freedom in other constitutions are interpreted, but I know that if taken too far, we are as good as not having one.

3) Forgetting is a healthy thing. There is at least a biological reason to it. While the universe is infinite, our brain being subjected to constraints is finite, so we can’t possibly take everything in and process them all at once. Thus forgetting things allow us to prune useless information and retain only those that fulfill our purpose. Though this has nothing to do with making my past entries private, but there is a faith in this action that doing so relieves me of the burden of carrying my pasts on my back, and carry on with what I need to do.

Once again, happy 2012! Hope things go smoothly for everyone this year and many years after this!