p88 - china's ipad

Right after I wrote the previous post, I read about China's P88 tablet PC that was launched a few months before Apple's iPad.

山寨

Right when Google and China are mired in issues regarding privacy and piracy, came 2 new sites. Not sure if this is China's way of telling Google, "you are right we have a huge problem with pirates. But, anyway, that makes you dispensable. We have our own 校内 to replace facebook. Now, not only do we have 土豆网, we have youtubecn.com as well. You can ban BitTorrent, but there is nothing you can do about 电颅. Msn be careful of our QQ. Google how would you like to have a chinese sister site too? We will call it Goojje. Never heard of it? Go and baidu it."

"youtube山寨"-cj

"goojje"-cj

diplomatic war.

time wrap

People I talk to online wish me good afternoon at 9pm Singapore time. I read the straits times at night, sleep in the afternoon and take my dinner at 4pm. Time stopped when I saw her. My friend's gf says I look young; like a poly student. The 50yr old aunty doing the grave yard shift at 7-11 talks to me about her grievances until the wee hours of the morning. We lost track of time. My friend's parent passed away. I thought my 16yr old cousin was still in Secondary 2. Time flies when I was in Paris. My watch is 15min fast. I am getting my time all wrong.

I am 25 already.

offer

It's at times like this that I sit down and ask myself, "Oh man, how the heck did I get so freakin' awesome?"

how i melt..

2 is better than one.

serenade me.

uninspired

Research is all about breakthroughs and ideas. Ever asked yourself what is happening between the ideas and breakthroughs? Half a year into research, I realised that my ideas are sporadic and surprising ambitious. Honestly, moments of brilliance do not come very often. Hardly, actually. Most of the time I am just persevering and wondering what is wrong with my hypothesis. Facing repeated failures and living off false hopes, is this what the life of a researcher is about? Or is it the hope that someday, something great might just happen? Not my cup of tea.

Meanwhile, I need more ideas on how to achieve a good balance between explorative and exploitative search.

Blame It on the Pop

don't worry even if the sky is falling down.

hyperbolic discounting

“Hyperbolic discounting” – a tendency to weigh immediate costs too heavily and ignore longer-term benefits. Took me a while to find this term that is kind of fitting of my present predicament. heh. Economics seems to have a term for everything. I am, perhaps , trapped in this discounted paradigm. High paying job offers are really a pity to let go. Maybe the time isn't right yet. Maybe I should concentrate at the job at hand first and focus on graduating early. It's too early to tell anything.

perhaps my supervisor is right. just perhaps.

pity

Sometimes when the whole world is turning in your favor. Opportunities just drops from the sky like rain. Imagine you were getting yourself ready to run out into the rain to collect all the opportunities when you felt a hand holding you back. You turned your head only to hear him say,"Opportunities like these will come again." You struggled to break free and he held on tighter. Frustrated, you went back inside the house and stared out of the windows. The drops of opportunities splashing on the ground; wasted. Now, I would have to write an email to reject credit suisse as well. :(

its really excruciating to see job opportunities slip away like that..

"you should not be looking for work now."

it keeps coming back to haunt me. how can I not? I am graduating in dec.

tired

When I knocked on his door, I was expecting him to be more supportive on my plans to seize a job opportunity. I naively believed that we share the same belief - the purpose of education is to ultimately prepare the student for work. Though I thought I had a strong case, but there was no room for negotiation. My request to take a 3 months no pay leave was rejected. His argument being that if he approves this, it will set an example for other students to follow. This was despite the fact that I was willing to delay my graduation by 3 months. There was no institutional red tape. The minimum length for studentship will still be fulfilled.

I had lived my life grabbing opportunities with both hands, I was not about to let this opportunity slip away like that. "Opportunities like these will come again."he said. But before I can tell him how much I want to become a quantitative analyst, he made this stand clear. "you should not be looking for work now. you should be concentrating on your research."..."you look for work only when I have decided that you have done enough." Enough for him is 3 journals publications. "Why do some masters student get to graduate without even a single conference paper? I might as well publish 4 and graduate with a PhD." I thought to myself. But right then there was no need for such useless irresponsible statements of comparison. "I cannot allow you to go. I do not believe this internship is best for you." There. He made a decision for me which my parents would not even make. Much that I would like to tell him that my decisions are my responsibility to bear. There is no need to create more bad blood.

I kept quiet and rested my case. There was no point in trying to convince him to see how good an opportunity this would be for me. I hope to graduate as soon as possible. He, on the other hand, hopes that I will stay in research to publish more papers. I am not an academic paper mill.

i should take a rest. take a long holiday.

the red queen says..

"Be what you want to be. Or if you'd like it put more simply- 'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'"

give yourself a pat on the back if you manage to decipher this

what is your ikigai?

or rather, what is your reason for waking up every morning? This is one of the key questions Dan Buettner asked when searching for the reasons behind longevity. Dan Buettner is a holder of 3 world records for endurance bicycling. It is during his bicycling trips when he became interested in the blue zones . What is common among these centenarians is that all of them have their own ikigai - their reason to wake up every morning. For some of them it is the moment of holding their great grand children, for others it could be something as simple as the desire to fish for his family. Yes, you heard me right. A japanese centenarian goes out to catch fish 3 times a week for his family. I asked myself the same question now. What do I look forward to when I wake up every morning? I have figured out mine. So what yours? Go figure.

Catch you around in yr 2090!

playboy. in braille.

Originally posted in Banterist, but i decided to repost it here for reader's convenience. I mean can you believe it. Playboy. In Braille? Dated 1995.

"Most likely you are surprised that such a thing exists. You are not alone.

When I discovered Playboy in Braille years ago, it was in a box in an abandoned building. I found myself in a state of disbelief. The kind you feel when you're being chased by a leprechaun with a crossbow.

It's normal to not want Playboy in Braille to exist. Because it's weird. It raises too many questions. Questions like: Why is the government printing Playboy in Braille? And: How do you explain a naked woman to a pubescent, visually impaired teen?

"Elka leans against a wall, wearing only a carpenter's tool belt. She's hot. Believe me."

"Katsumi arches unnaturally over a coffee table. You can see the whole thing."

"Anja's Mediterranean skin is a warm brown, like the craft paper Playboy you're reading with your finger."

Playboy in Braille makes you think. It's exciting but uncomfortable at the same time. Like Courtney Love fixing your stove.

Run your fingers over the pages, never really knowing if you're touching a gorgeous blonde or an essay by Tom Clancy. Was that Cindy Crawford's bum, or an interview with Gore Vidal? Frankly, it's whatever you want it to be.

That's the glory of Playboy in Braille. November 1995.Volume XLII, No. 11.

It's number 2 in a 4 part series. I don't know where the other parts are, but you'd only miss them if you could read Braille. And you can't, because you're reading this.

This would be a terrible gift for the visually impaired, because you don't give the visually impaired one quarter of a decade-old Playboy as a gift.

But for you? Put it out on the coffee table like I did. Owning Playboy in Braille is like having a Day-Glo orange monkey that can curse in Farsi. It gets attention. People talk.

You want Playboy in Braille. Playboy in Braille wants you.

At least that's what I think it says."This is what I call having fun with fingers.

the literature says..

With all the questions that float in your mind while you watch this youtube clip, please bear in mind that i watched this clip as part of my TED series. In pursuit of innovation. Haaha if you do not believe me, that's just too bad. I am not going to embed this video on my blog due to young readership. That's the least I am going to do; but nothing is going to stop them from clicking the link below. Mind you. This is not an obscene video, this is an academic video. An area of research pioneered by Masters and Johnson.

Mary Roach: 10 things you didn't know about orgasm

girls did you hear that. there is an evolutionary reason.

yay

I am SAP ERP certified.

day 3

Finally 2 days of quiet for myself to study for my SAP certification. This is one of the few times i feel so unprepared for an exam. Guess I would have to put in more resolve into studying, hopefully, I am able to pull it off. So many acronyms. ERP. ECC. SCM. PLM. HCM. BW. CRM. FI. CO. PO. AA. OLTP. OLAP. LIS. SIS. TCO. ESS. R/3. QM. BOM. SD. MM. PM. TIS. PURCHIS. SFIS. QMIS. PMIS. G/L. MRP. SOP. ABC...

OMG. SOS.

2010 resolutions

I didn't make any last year as my path has been dictated for me. But this year, I want to

1) Get employed by the end of the year and be able to say I love my job.

2) Be back home for dinner with my parents more often.

3) Show more concern towards those that mattered. Revive a good friendship that I once had and still cherish a lot.

4) Run Standchart marathon; all 42.125km of it under 5 1/2hours.

5) Graduate.

happy new year to all!

2009

Yr 2009. My one regret. I thought that love do not have to be displayed explicitly, I was wrong. Everyone prefers more, rather than less, outward explication of love as validation of it. So if I can turn back time by 2 years, I would have done some things differently.

Other than that yr 2009 had been great. Everything just fell into place the way I wanted. This year had also been a year of adventure; certain parts of my life could have be filmed into a movie. I am not going to rewind the film reel for you, but you can go to the archive to read about them. So much happened to me over the past year that nothing much seems to be able to get to me now. Yea I am now a super cool cucumber.

Had many of my best experiences came in 2009.

first day of 2009

"1st January. The clock struck 12 and the whole of Warsaw turned crazy. Some polish grabbed me and planted kisses on me. Took me a while to break free. We bought a 40euros worth of fireworks and ran off to find a place where we have a safety distance 10m radius. We found a car park, lit up the matchstick and ran for cover. Boomzz. Hahaa. Ooops. The impact of the fireworks was so great that it caused the alarms of the 5 cars in the car park to go off! We ran from the crime scene and watched the fireworks shot into the sky and burst into a colorful ball above us from a distance. We then spotted a few policemen who came to investigate the commotion. New year was criminally magical. "

Beginning of 2009.