Powered by glolg
Display Preferences Most Recent Entries Chatterbox Blog Links Site Statistics Category Tags About Me, Myself and Gilbert XML RSS Feed
Thursday, Feb 07, 2008 - 23:14 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Rats!

Another year, another trip back to my parents'. A spate of last-minuting before that, though - switched off the telly in the 92nd minute on Saturday when it seemed United would go down to a rejuvenated Spurs. Unsurprisingly they equalised in the final seconds through a Tevez goal/Dawson own goal, although a draw nowadays is not much better than a defeat in the big picture.

Hadn't found a project group for my E-biz module on Monday with the formation deadline at noon Tuesday, and after a false positive I got down to compiling a list of students who had not yet been declared in a group, and mass-spammed them along with all groups which had not yet reached maximum size. Didn't think it would save me as I did it in the wee hours of Tuesday, but to my surprise I got three replies from group leaders (and one fellow straggler) and managed to clinch a spot in the nick of time.

More of the same at night, with Assignment 2 for Facebook programming due at 12 a.m. - Wasn't too sure where the main programmer for the assignment was (at least, nothing more specific than Malaysia), though he had done quite a bit before that it would still be curtains if we did not have the code to submit. He reappeared just after ten, and we squeezed in the submission right before the folder, which sneakily displayed a closing day somewhere in May, disappeared.

Moral: It's (almost) never too late.

The first random realization of Chinese New Year Eve was that each single HDB block could handily qualify as a village - take for instance my own block, which has 25 storeys of four units. Conservatively assuming four people per unit, that's still a population of some 400 souls, and 100 units is likely to be on the small side as blocks go; Hundreds of villages, as far as the eye can see, remind me why I prefer man-made urban architecture over the unworked-for beauties of nature all over again...

My other grandma's place had been extensively upgraded. Spanking new multistorey carpark, covered walkways (in progress), and most impressive of all, a lift literally to the doorstep. A couple of new baby cousins were on show, and they reminded me of hamsters with their puffy cheeks. Could barely restrain myself from the reflex of stuffing them with food, what with that irresistible Wen the Eternally Surprised look on them.

Much of the time at Chai Chee was spent poring over my sister's secondary school/junior college subscriptions of TIME magazine, bringing back memories of that own period of my life when I too had weekly reads to look forward to. However I don't think many people actually do continue with the TIME/Newsweek habit voluntarily, and may have their teenage years as the high point of their perusal of global news literature.

Another form of regression was realised when my Dad drove us to the local manual carwash en route to Chinatown. Weren't we using those entertaining behemoth machine scrubbers when I was a kid in the early nineties? Instead, we had a single overworked guy doing all the splashing, foaming and wiping for six bucks a car, though I must add that he did an exceedingly thorough job. A sober reminder that many toil at backbreaking work for a living. Not sure of why the machines were ousted - were they just more expensive, or was it to create jobs for our expanding population?

Chinatown was as crowded as I remembered, and after the expected jostling for the right to be deafened by firecrackers at the turn of the year (recorded dutifully by dozens of raised camera phones), we observed an auction taking place by rows of obviously fake soccer jerseys. No close inspection of the goods appeared to be expected, and I was befuddled by the bids for what appeared to be slabs of ordinary rock with glitterdust applied, but what do I know, diamonds and glass are similar too right?

The auctioneer did allow participants to freely give opening bids (leading to a few derisory S$2 ones), though of course he would have his own people in the crowd to rescue the prices to an acceptable level. His marketing was impeccable too - when faced with one glitterdusted rock which was sloped, he praised it as symbolising 高高在上, or roughly translated "(Being) high high on Top". The rock could hardly slope such that it could not be arranged to go up, could it?

Immersed myself in TIME from when we got back to about four a.m., when the England-Switzerland friendly began. Learnt from a recent issue that Singapore has two Sovereign wealth funds in the "Big Seven", the GIC fund with approximately US$200 billion and the Temasek one with US$100 billion (differs quite a bit from Wikipedia which puts then at US$330 billion and US$160 billion respectively, likely sourced from The Economist), which either way comes out to around a cool hundred thousand per citizen. Combined, we are second behind only Abu Dhabi, which does have enough in its US$1.3 trillion fund to make each of its some 850 thousand residents instant millionaires. The mysteries of wealth.

I wonder sometimes if anyone really understands how the global economy functions. One could imagine Richard Feynman and Alan Greenspan somehow coming across each other. "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.", Feynman would say, and Greenspan could reply "I know that for a fact about macroeconomics." Jérôme Kerviel, a futures trader who allegedly lost some five billion Euros for Société Générale, may agree.

There have been more mundane errors which do not even qualify as bad bets, such as the Mizuho Securities 40 billion Yen (some US$400 million) data entry error due to a broker mixing up his columns and selling off 600000 shares for one Yen each instead of one share for 600000 Yen. Just one misclick, and there goes the GDP of a few third world states.

Sat through the first half of Capello's first game in charge, and all I have to say is that England need to improve if they are going to have a realistic chance at going for the next World Cup. Decided to go to sleep at half-time.

A bit of trivia, from a 2008 calendar "inspired by our PM Lee Hsien Loong", "presented by http://www.singportal.sg" and in actuality disseminated by a cute little (as in maybe six, seven years old?) girl holding balloons at Chinatown. Here's the full calendar if you are interested, but the focus is on the picture displayed:


Supposedly, if the cowherd isn't wearing shoes, the year's gonna be relatively sunny. The copy that I have of last year does indeed have the elderly cowherd shod, so this means it is play ball time!



comments (0) - email - share - print - direct link
trackbacks (0) - trackback url


Next: Traditional Research


Related Posts:
To Kingdom Come And Gone
Economics Thus Far
Open Bookame
Davydov And Pratchett
We Are The Game (Short)
Back to top

Copyright © 2006-2025 GLYS. All Rights Reserved.