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- current events - Another new year, bringing with it the realisation that what one wants to type, one forgets when placed before a keyboard. It is a certainty that Mr. Ham is getting thinner, which is Not Good News for respectable hamsters, even if he seems more energetic nowadays. His butt has shrunken to the point of vanishing, but however it goes, at least the furball has seen four years (2007, 08, 09 and 10). Not A Resolution About Work Let us then begin with my work, which after another semester of taking (fewer) modules has finally caught up with me. [An aside: I only recently learnt that fewer is used with countable objects, and less with uncountables, in general; in fact, I often forget what a verb or an adjective is, but this has never bothered me too much since the answer is always just a Google away, and it has never stopped me from writing or speaking, so whatever] For the uninformed, as I am currently a graduate student (or postgraduate, to the Brits), my main function should be research, or finding out things that absolutely nobody else in the world knows. Or, if they do know, have not yet bothered to claim that they do (racing to stake a claim is not unknown in academia, and for the romantic enough might be reminiscent of intrepid explorers striving to be the first to plant a flag on some new land in the Age of Discovery), or if they can know but do not yet, have not been bothered to try. As what we do not know far surpasses what we do, for the former is infinite but the latter is finite, one supposes that academics are about the only people who are unaffected by scarcity. There is a catch, of course, in that while knowing something that nobody else knows is not at all hard, knowing something that nobody else knows that they would need or like to know is; I alone may know how many minutes it took to type this paragraph, but I suspect that no one else cares. Now then, at least in the sciences, there are the huge problems that everybody would love to solve, but few can and do. Beneath them, there are problems of all sizes, a few of which might even contribute towards solving the huge ones. From what I have read, a graduate student is supposed to find an unsolved problem (or perhaps be handed one by his advisor, which brings about its own considerations) that is difficult enough and general enough to be interesting, and solve it, or failing that explain why he could not solve it and reveal what valuable insights were gained by not solving it, before being allowed to move on. [Of course, the difference between solving and not solving a problem can often be fixed with a small change in the definition (or presentation) of the problem, but since academics are not supposed to be vulnerable to these frivolous framing issues, it should be best to ignore them unless external grant committees which have a vocabulary of just two words - success and failure - enter the picture] But after one has a problem (scope negotiable), what does one do? Usually, one reads papers about it, during which sufficiently overconfident students might groan and think that they could have written those papers. Most of them, anyway. Since it is likely that P != NP, this suggests that verifying proofs in a paper and discovering those proofs are two different things, not that some self-belief would be amiss. I should be immersing myself more fully into this... Not A Resolution About Fitness This follows on from the above, and some self-analysis swiftly revealed that I could do with spending more time and energy on my work and studies, but as we all know, these are limited commodities. Scraping together a combination of adrenaline and willpower as deadlines approach is one thing, but a higher baseline level of energy appears to be the medicine I require. There are at least two ways to acquire energy that I know of, and one of them is exercise, which might be one of the most ordinary (and commonly broken - 49%, according to Men's Health, Feb 2009) of resolutions, which thankfully this is not. It might be a bad reflection on my part, but not a few of the targets I have sporadically set when the mood struck me, have remained unmet - with the latest being the cessation of the Twenty Pull-ups Challenge soon after I broke ten again, most of which were in proper form. Of course, one might try setting higher targets with the expectation of premature abandonment leading to fulfillment of the actual desired target, but as has been observed in bargaining, this approach shouldn't be advisable. How to get about exercising is also no secret - set strict timetables, and realistic and measurable goals (alright, this applies for just about everything). While a brief scan of the online literature on exercise shows that overtraining might have a detrimental effect, my tendency is probably towards the opposite direction (and of reading too much and doing too little in this respect) Then, what goal should I pursue? A honest twenty pulls is still on the cards, and I've always wanted (or at least thought I wanted) to complete a marathon. Touching a regulation basketball hoop (requiring roughly a 30-inch vertical leap) would also be nice, as would getting a gold on the IPPT (getting ahead of ourselves, aren't we?)  (Data obtained from: Grandma's Little Notebook of Useful Grandchildren Statistics #5, 2001-2009) For all of these, getting rid of fat and putting on muscle should be a very useful first step, and the consensus on this is that aerobic exercise (i.e. running, swimming etc) is a must. Weight is a tricky measure since it does not distinguish between fat and muscle, thus the ambition to be at 10% body fat percentage or below by end-March, from the current near 19% (not that bad, but nearer flab than fab) Credit must go to my cousin lwei for loaning me his stack of Men's Health and assorted gentlemen's magazines (it must be said that, eye candy aside, they are rewardingly informative - local censorship rules may well have robbed us of both aesthetics and erudition), and for sharing his during-NS weight loss regimen, which consisted mainly of eating next to nothing and exercising moderately for at least a week. Another cousin, currently serving in the infantry, provided additional motivation by hovering around the magical 10% body fat level, proving that it is indeed feasible. More in-depth web surfing on the subject brought up a host of opinions on how best to go about attaining that first step, with many of those being contradictory. But some approach has to eventually be taken, and my current plan for the next fortnight or so is:
Not A Resolution About Attitude if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain." - Winston Churchill, who was anything but moderate This is almost certainly the toughest of the three, since it entails shifting one's worldview. In two words, the changes I wish to embrace are positivity and hope. Once, when I was back in primary school, I was a talkative and extroverted character (seriously!). Since then, I have indisputably become more cynical and withdrawn, for better or worse. I put it down to being too introspective, which unfortunately has promoted a negative vibe - better sad than incorrect, no? I'm not sure any longer. On the second point: 随便, i.e. whatever, has been my favoured approach to life for some time. No need to push too hard - it doesn't matter - okay can already - if it comes, it comes, otherwise never mind - I don't need so much - let everybody be happy. It turns out that such an attitude does not promote lasting happiness, if such a thing exists; contentment, maybe, for a while, before a nagging disquiet begins to crank up in the subconscious. Humans do seem to get acclimatized to happiness levels quickly. That is not to say that achieving and winning does, either, but it would at least be a change. And: "...no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw. What is happiness, anyway? Do I need it? What's the point? Maybe there is no point. Maybe it all doesn't matter. But I am now a bit too bored, and tired of being bored. I may be true that limiting worldly desire is the way, as propounded by many religions, but I figure I'm still too young and unready for this. I have honestly (I think) tried to look for some answers, but did not find them. Perhaps later in life. It may be stupid, but I'm going to start chasing again. Frankly, I can only recall getting a satisfying high from physical exertion several times - a couple from when I was still dragonboating like eight years ago, and again during the period when there were long runs twice a week back in the army, when somehow I just felt like keeping ahead of a random guy who was chasing me down, although there was absolutely no need to. Ditto for effort in other areas, even if it's not quite the same feeling. Here goes. Let's see how long it lasts. CHIONG AH! GOGOGO! And Other Stuff On New Year's Day, the ratio of people who appear on both MSN and Facebook Chat to people who appear on Facebook Chat only appears to diminish. More data is required on other holidays to test this hypothesis. Next, the alleged hit and run incident by a Romanian diplomat. In brief, their embassy car ploughed into a few people, killing one, before zooming off and getting abandoned, with its loss reported only after the accidents. The charge d'affaires, Dr Silviu Ionescu, quickly returned to Romania for diabetes treatment, with witnesses describing a man of his appearance engaged in suspicious behaviour coming out of the woodwork. All in all, I suspect that there was sufficient circumstantial evidence to hold Dr Ionescu to help in investigations, if he did not have diplomatic immunity, which basically means he can get away with virtually any offence, since Singapore has no legal right to try or even detain him. This is not quite as lousy a deal as it sounds, since it is a reciprocal arrangement protecting Singaporean diplomats overseas. As the good doctor is now back home, the expected response from the Romanian government would be to request that the Singaporean police cooperate in their internal investigations and deal with the case under the Romanian justice system, or waive his immunity and hand him back to the Singaporean authorities. The actual response would be in all probability rather different. For whatever reason, the citizens of a country are usually reluctant to condemn their countrymen - the Flor Contemplacion case strained Singaporean-Phillipines relations even though she was likely guilty (and had even confessed), and quite a lot of Indonesians took Widjaja's side against his professor in the recent NTU stabbing incident; if the situation were reversed, I would guess that some Singaporeans would not be eager to hand one of our own back to Romania either. While Dr Ionescu has said that he will return later in January, in which case I applaud his honourable act, hit-and-run incidents carry relatively low sentences of anywhere from a month to perhaps a year or so anyway, and it is not impossible that some discreet and completely casual discussion between the relevant authorities may be taking place on the proper and mutually beneficial length of the sentence and possible medical exemptions in a similar case, an idle contemplation which of course has no bearing whatsoever on Dr Ionescu's predicament. Alternatively, Dr Ionescu might for some reason or another become uncontactable, in which case I suppose the government can send a very strongly-worded missive to the Romanians and perhaps expel the few remaining staff members from their embassy, to which they would almost certainly do the same to the Singaporean ambassador in the usual tit-for-tat, and the case will be considered closed after the niceties, since neither country can do much to the other due to the lack of ties and dependencies. An online petition calling upon the Romanian government to do the right thing has been set up, though I doubt it will have any impact on the decision taken. More interestingly, the first name on the petition is that of a professor I just took a module under (no idea if it's indeed him, however), and another of my old lecturers (probably Romanian) got on Page Four of the Sunday Times thanks to the case. For the record, I didn't sign it because I felt that it would be a complete waste of time as almost all online petitions are, but it might be argued that some statement of intent is better than nothing. Not enough for me, still. Tangentially, this led me to recall something I had read on diplomats blatantly disregarding parking rules and the resulting fines, since although they could legally be ticketed, the punishment could not be practically enforced. A quick search found a research paper, Cultures of Corruption: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets. It turns out that we can be pretty proud of our representatives - Singapore's six New York-based diplomats chalked up just 3.5 unpaid violations per diplomat, and Romania coincidentally had exactly the same record! Fifty-three of the 146 nations were even better, however, with 22 having perfect records, among them the UK, Japan and Canada (Malaysia has just 1.4). Worst of all was surprisingly oil-rich Kuwait, with over 246 unpaid violations per diplomat. More on Avatar, as posted on Facebook by psw: it reads like a complete ripoff of Pocahontas, except for the "resolve their differences" part. Finally, Woods can't get a break, with peter's shaved pet dog humping his tiger soft toy during the JC class gathering at his place. Poor guy. Next: Quad Damage
anonymous said... so many other important unsolved problems in the scientific world and u choose the one that rhyme with your name F U BSTD
gilbert said... and what might that problem be?
anonymous said... if you drop a hamster from the top of the dubai burj will it die
Mr. Ham G. Bacon said... Firstly, it's the Burj Khalifa now, and secondly, my simulations show that the first few hundred thousand probably will, but after that the survival rate is much higher.
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