An Information Joint

Moving House

2010-09-04T17:15:00.002+08:00

This blog has moved to http://aidancte.wordpress.com/!

CUMaS Freshers' Banquet

2010-08-29T19:44:00.006+08:00

I was jetsetting to KL again despite being back in Kuching from KL just over a week ago: the CUMaS Freshers' Banquet 2010 passed yesterday night, with much success I would say (the success of the event, not some other meaning of success the third-year guys are referring to!). Our new freshers are a rather dynamic bunch and plenty of academic disciplines are covered, but again there seems to be a heavy tilt towards medicine.

The banquet attendees:

They're already tagged on Facebook, so i'll spare myself a lot of effort here.

The undergraduates are:
Tan Kee Chong (Caius)
Lee Kin Wai (Emmanuel)
Stephanie Poo (Newnham)
Ho Gen Nen (Robinson)
Farid Nazer (Homerton)
Iskandar Mohamed (Churchill)
Ian Beh (Girton)
Sin Fang Yen (Fitzwilliam)
Nathaniel Jinho Clement (Corpus Christi)
Nicole Soh (Magdelene)
Latifah Hamzah (Peterhouse)
Haw Sue Hern (Peterhouse)
Zerline Lim (Fitzwilliam)
Amanda Chong (New Hall)
Arsha Kaur (New Hall)

Two postgraduates attended: Tan Chin Kiat and Isaac Yong (both Hughes Hall). I may have omitted some names or forgotten some, but there's ample time to update this post later.. One of the reasons for posting this list of names is, in good spirit, to see which of the freshers google the names of other freshers and end up here!

They deserve another round of congratulations for making it into Cambridge, and I'm quite sure most of them will do well academically.

The affair was quite informal (with a formal dress code though - I made sure to wear proper shoes, not sneakers, to escape the wrath of the President), with good food at Renaissance Hotel. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, but Elyse brought her DSLR and most of the shots are on Facebook. Had quite some fun chatting with the freshers and building up some "family ties" before we all move on to Cambridge. Here's my family:

Left to right: Stephanie Poo (stepdaughter), Haw Sue Hern (college daughter), myself, Parisut Kimkool (wife), Melissa Kong ~~(not part of the Cambridge family)~~, See Tian Feng (course daughter), and Tee Sui Poh (Parisut's dad?)

I guess we will do a family formal in Peterhouse, as I suggested.

And the news has been out for some time, but I should mention again that we are proud of Dhruva Murugasu for topping the economics faculty in Part IA of the Economics Tripos at Cambridge! Our very own sponsorship officer sets the bar high for all of us. Needless to say he has many claims to fame already during 'A' Levels, as a simple Google search will reveal (this is how I get information about several distinctive personages, which includes some of the aforementioned freshers - a Khazanah superior told me that google searches on people before you meet them are important). ~~Fortunately, he doesn't read this blog.~~

As an aside: I discarded my suit soon after the event started because Nassim Taleb said that most "experts" who offer financial advice and perform no better than the market wear suits and ties. At least I'm minus the suit. (It is hard to quit idolizing the guy.)

Thanks again to Elyse for letting me bunk over at her place! She also says that Kuching kolo mee is very nice - tribute to Kuching! And now I'm back here to soak of more of this laid-back hometown of mine, and to enjoy some good local food. Cheers!

F**k you money

2010-08-24T16:24:00.003+08:00

Sound bite:

"This is sometimes called "f*** you money," which, in spite of its coarseness, means that it allows you to act like a Victorian gentleman, free from slavery. It is a psychological buffer: the capital is not so large as to make you spoiled-rich, but large enough to give you the freedom to choose a new occupation without excessive consideration of the financial rewards. It shields you from prostituting your mind and frees you from outside authority—any outside authority. (Independence is person-specific: I have always been taken aback at the high number of people in whom an astonishingly high income led to additional sycophancy as they became more dependent on their clients and employers and more addicted to making even more money.) While not substantial by some standards, it literally cured me of all financial ambition—it made me feel ashamed whenever I diverted time away from study for the pursuit of material wealth. Note that the designation "f**k you" corresponds to the exhilarating ability to pronounce that compact phrase before hanging up the phone." - Nassim Taleb

Hence the need for me to have some money squirreled away by the time I graduate, that allows me to sneer at sycophants who need to do lots of sucking up in careers they don't like. You see, we need to live lives instead of earning livings. Thinking and reading is a good lifestyle - although in order to be a fully functional member of society I think one must also perform some charitable works. And reduce excess, spending on expensive goods that one doesn't need, etc.

However, a colleague has pointed out that I have taken idolizing to a whole new level by quoting Taleb all too frequently (and rarely, on occasions where there is no link). At this juncture, I emphasize that I also read Nouriel Roubini, George Soros, Benoit Mandelbrot, Arnold Toynbee, Niall Ferguson, and a range of other historians, economists, and philosophers to maintain a "balanced" (that is, my notion of balance) of these soft sciences.

Much more reading to be done!

Quotes from Dr Doom

2010-08-19T14:25:00.003+08:00

Nouriel Roubini is a good friend of Nassim Taleb and one of the only economist who predicted the financial crisis of 2008 (before the crisis, he was labelled "Dr Doom" and a naysayer). Some sound bites from him:

“Anything that makes your attempt to buy an asset more risky can have a material effect on the amount of investment we get. These days, we'd be lucky if we get lots of foreign direct investment. We should not restrict it. We should make it easier.”

"I am not going to say I told you so, but I did."

“There is definitely a big split in Europe at the moment. Europe is getting leaner and meaner, but that causes nervousness at the household level.”

“Global imbalances are growing, cross-border financing needs are increasing and a smooth-functioning financial system is now essential for this.”

"This consensus optimism is, I believe, not supported by the facts.At some point Investors will realize that bank losses are massive , and that some banks are insolvent . Deleveraging by highly leveraged firms - such as hedge funds - will lead them to sell illiquid assets in illiquid markets . and some emerging market economies - despite massive IMF support - will 3experience a severe financial crisis with contagious effects on other economies . So while this latest bear - market rally may continue for a bit longer , renewed downward pressure on stocks and other risky assets is inevitable "

"The likely scenario for advanced economies is a mediocre U-shaped recovery, even if we avoid a W-shaped double dip. In the US, annual growth was already below trend in the first half of 2010 (2.7% in the first quarter and estimated at a mediocre 2.2% in April-June). Growth is set to slow further, to 1.5% in the second half of this year and into 2011.Whatever letter of the alphabet US economic performance ultimately resembles, what is coming will feel like a recession."

"The challenge we face is how to integrate the Muslim world into the global economy. Asia has become part of it, but not Africa or the Middle East.One could realistically think about a Marshall Plan with respect to this part of the world, to succeed in integrating the Muslim and Arab world into the global economy as we did in Europe after World War II. For example, we’ve wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on the Iraq war. Had we taken a third of this money and invested it into a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, the benefits would have been ten times more than wasting it on a war."

"The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown."

Robustness and Fragility: The Black Swan

2010-08-16T19:06:00.004+08:00

I just finished reading the second edition of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. It contains an additional essay on Robustness and Fragility. Again Nassim Taleb doesn't hesitate to take a swipe or two at bankers and executives with sentences such as "We have two eyes, two lungs, two kidneys, even two brains (with the possible exception
of corporate executives)". Previously it was "we humans have the largest cortex, followed by bank executives, dolphins, and our cousins the apes." That guy sure deserves a pat on the back - after re-reading this book I don't see myself going into banking, finance, or consultancies, for various reasons. There are further signs of humour from him in that last section, such as:

"I tell everyone to avoid attending (orthodox) economics classes and say that economics will fail us and blow us up (and, as we will see, we have proofs that it failed us; but, as I kept saying in the original text, we did not need them; all we needed was to look at the lack of scientific rigor—and of ethics). The reason is the following: It is largely based on notions of naïve optimization, mathematized (poorly) by Paul Samuelson—and this mathematics contributed massively to the construction of an error-prone society. An economist would find it inefficient to maintain two lungs and two kidneys: consider the costs involved in transporting these heavy items across the savannah.

Such optimization would, eventually, kill you, after the first accident, the first “outlier.” Also, consider that if we gave Mother Nature to economists, it would dispense with individual kidneys: since we do not need them all the time, it would be more “efficient” if we sold ours and used a central kidney on a time-share basis. You could also lend your eyes at night since you do not need them to dream."

Somewhere it was also mentioned that econometrics as a field shouldn't exist - it rubbishes mathematics by applying it to the most insular of fields, that of economics (the field which quotes the least from outside itself).

Perhaps the most useful thing to glean from this section are these 10 principles:

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and riskbearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the
government. This is surreal.

3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.

4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.

5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have
proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.

6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning. Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them “hedging” products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.

7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.

8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.

9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).

10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.

In short, high finance is overrated and largely filled with charlatans - men in suits and ties who dispense advice when in fact they don't know better (they caused the crisis). Perhaps then it is true that we need more real engineering and less financial engineering, but unfortunately our best and brightest are motivated to go for finance because of the rewards and excessive bonuses it pays. Much better to go for a career that provides real economic value (and by that I mean something that really sustainably increases the long-term well being of society or the person paying for your service). Maybe I should be a teacher or engineer - but then Khazanah Nasional will not condone it; I am much more likely to be some sort of analyst using Sharpe ratios, debt-equity ratios, and so on. As long as I heed Taleb's teachings I should be in good stead.. or so I hope!

More on the real message behind the book another time!

Yayasan Khazanah Annual Dinner 2010

2010-08-13T13:21:00.007+08:00

Yesterday marked the Yayasan Khazanah Annual Dinner 2010 - held to celebrate scholars and offer a chance for company executives and Khazanah trustees to mingle together and network/talk about interesting issues. Parents of new scholars, of which the number was 47(?) this year, were also invited. The family has expanded quite aggressively from last year and we "upgraded" from Sheraton Imperial to Mandarin Oriental this year, in the word of Dato' Mustapa, our Yayasan Khazanah chairman.

It was good to catch up with the other scholars over this buka puasa dinner and exchange snippets on life in universities, working in Khazanah under various departments, books, academia, and so on. My current bosses under the Khazanah internship, Mr Farouk Mohamed and Ms Aileen Buang were also at the dinner, as were my YK superiors, Puan Suhayati, Mr Hafiz, Ms Noorlida, etc. To have everyone in one place can sometimes be too much of a good thing - there wasn't enough time to talk to everyone! Add to that, the fact that some of Malaysia's brightest minds were present last night (I further add that the brightest can be brighter - frequent use of superlatives should be discouraged). A further shock came in the form of the discovery that some parents and scholars there actually read this blog - I should start some form of monitoring visits here, but I'm just too lazy.

An aside: Many people monitor traffic to their blogs because there is a psychological benefit from doing so - we like to believe what we have written is important and the illusion of progress gained from seeing a lot of comments and visits is endearing. I try to ignore such human sentiments and forcefully make myself more rational.

'To 'Pa, as some of us call Dato' Mustapa, reiterated that the Khazanah scholarship is the premier scholarship in Malaysia - that only the best and brightest fill Khazanah's ranks. Again we were reminded of the need to build up human capital in Malaysia, or be stuck in the middle income trap between highly innovative economies and low-cost base economies.

7 of the scholars also did extremely well in the CIE 'A' Level examinations this year - results were out yesterday morning. Farid Nazer and Low Wen Zhen (among the star performers) will be my juniors in Cambridge. I must say it's a pleasure to see our scholars doing well - my hope is not to disappoint the organisation next year!

I was hoping to ask a couple of questions to Tan Sri Azman, our Managing Director of Khazanah, but there wasn't a Q&A session this year:

1. Is there a possibility of creating an online library or some shared system of books for Khazanah scholars that promote multidisciplinary perspectives (e.g. economics, finance, psychology, self-help)? Could we submit claims to Khazanah if these books are deemed beneficial by Yayasan Khazanah?
2. Would scholars be allowed to engage in start-ups with the backing of Khazanah instead of directly working for Khazanah Nasional or other subsidiary companies during the scholarship bond?
3. Would Khazanah/Ministry of Finance ever consider carving out or spinning off a separate wealth fund to manage surpluses from currency reserves or commodities like Norway’s SWF or Singapore’s GIC? Why not have a separate entity investing in Asia-Pacific ex-Malaysia to capitalize on growth and know-how in other countries in Asia?
4. Which nationals would you encourage Khazanah scholars to build networks with (e.g. nationals from UAE, Jordan, Germany) for the future benefit of Malaysia in an era of economic interdependence and globalization?
5. How important is a culture of intellectual curiosity to Khazanah and how can we encourage and incentivise scholars to read more and practice “scholarship with erudition”?

I am, in particular, passionate about the idea of the online library - my reading list will run into thousands of ringgit as it is (although I doubt I have the time to read all of them, optimism is good - that's the Upside of Irrationality for you). Also, all this reading should be done in the next 5 years because our gray matter simply loses most of it's absorptive capabilities by that time. Thus, time to cut down on computer games (although Starcraft 2 deserves a lot of plaudits - it is definitely a cut above Command & Conquer 4) and other forms of "noise" and concentrate on the real stuff of life, or "music".

Instead, some scholars including Yvonne Lim were coaxed into giving speeches on stage about their opinions of the scholarship.. and given the opportunity to ask the next scholar to speak. Needless to say, I made myself a little more invisible while she was up on the podium.

In a weeks' time, I also end my internship - it will have been my 6th week at the MDO's office at Khazanah Nasional by then. The experience has been enjoyable (nice colleagues, good coffee, free Starbucks!, fast internet, engaging although sometimes clerical work which increases at an exponential pace, and a good view of Kuala Lumpur/Klang Valley).

What awaits me the week after is a planning of what needs to be done next year in Cambridge - housekeeping and business before leisure, I would say. Have to get started on some Cambridge Math Tripos Part IB courses including Optimization, Quantum Mechanics, Markov Chains, and Linear Algebra (let me not be too ambitious for now - there's still the reading list mentioned above. For the record, the reading list includes, among others:

Crisis Economics - Nouriel Roubini
Fault Lines - Raghuram Rajan
168 Hours - Laura Vanderkam
The 4-Hour Workweek - Timothy Ferriss
The Sages - Charles Morris
The Upside of Irrationality - Dan Ariely
Empire - Niall Ferguson
Colossus - Niall Ferguson
The Cash Nexus - Niall Ferguson
The House of Rothschild - Niall Ferguson
The War of the World - Niall Ferguson
The Wisdom of Bees - Michael O'Malley
What The Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell
The Raffles Conversations 2008/2009
Chasing Goldman Sachs - Susan McGee
13 Bankers - Simon Johnson and James Kwak
EConned - Yves Smith
The Big Short - Michael Lewis
Too Big to Fail - Andrew Ross Sorkin
The Plundered Planet - Paul Collier
Irrational Exuberance - Robert Shiller
The Subprime Solution - Robert Shiller
Animal Spirits - George Akerlof and Robert Shiller
Identity Economics - George Akerlof
The (Mis)behavior of Markets - Benoit Mandelbrot
The Fractal Geometry of Nature - Benoit Mandelbrot
Superfreakonomics - Stephen Dubner
This Time is Different - Carmen Reinhart

Quite a long list, but the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Also, I just re-read the Black Swan - I should post a review of that awesome book at some point.

Then I get to enjoy some Sarawak laksa (endorsed by Anthony Bourdain as, arguably, the best breakfast in the world) in peace and meditate about the workings of the world. Some topics for meditation might plausibly include the link between finance and the real economy, Inception, and what a meaningful life means (after all, you don't just want to make so much money until you're so poor that you only have money left. If it's all about the money - just sell drugs).

Finally, it's Ramadan and Hari Raya is just around the corner - guess I will be in Kuching to enjoy the fireworks!

Fooled by Randomness

2010-07-21T17:04:00.004+08:00

In the last half-hour of my internship workday for today, I decide to blog. Shortly I have to use the Bloomberg Terminal and prepare my daily market commentary.

Today I finished the book Fooled by Randomness while at work (my supervisor's in Switzerland, so I had more leeway to do some other things, but I strongly believe I've done my fair share of work for today! Work ethics lives on). This is Nassim Taleb's second book, I believe, and he has done a great job. It's the prequel to The Black Swan, which has an updated 2010 version with a chapter on Robustness and Fragility.

The book is, simply put, about randomness disguised as determinism. An example includes certain fund managers disguising their luck in the stock markets as investing skill when his profits are attributable to noise. This noise refers to randomness.

This book is highly intellectual and borders on philosophical, which makes for good reading: some of the important things he talks about are -
1. Effect of randomness on social pecking order and jealousy.
2. Alternative histories.
3. Mathematics as a tool for thinking and meditating, not blind application. The Monte Carlo simulation.
4. How Darwinism and evolution are concepts that are poorly understood in the non-biological world.
5. The problem of induction.
6. Why the terms "bull" and "bear" have little meaning outside of zoology.
7. Why it is not scientific to take science seriously.
8. Survivorship bias.
9. Loser takes all - the nonlinearities of life.
10. Randomness and our brain - we are probability blind.
11. Why journalists who say things like "the stock market went up 1% today because of increasing confidence in the US economic recovery" are charlatans.
12. Why I am privileged to be "the fool of all fools" and to be aware of it.
13. Marrying yourself to ideas is a bad thing.

It's actually quite a profound book to me, and I'll have to reread some parts of it and corroborate it to The Black Swan. I'm happy to discuss ideas from the book. Overall, I like the book because it challenges conventional wisdom about many things, and encourages us to be Skeptics. Now I believe nearly everyone is a lucky fool.

Mr Taleb's website is also interesting and has links to interviews with him!

Inception

2010-07-19T09:39:00.006+08:00

Over the past weekend I was at a Personal Mastery camp at Mines Wellness Hotel (at Mines Wonderland) for Khazanah scholars. It was nice to network with the other scholars (this batch consisted of those who had just finished 1st and 2nd years in university). The camp was so-so and deemed to teach us about mastering ourselves, our subconscious, understanding our personalities and personality type, how to handle people, control ourselves better, and so on. Games were also introduced to teach us concepts about conflict and cooperation, but I think they could have done a lot better on those games - the games I've studied for H3 economics back in Singapore are much more enlightening from the perspective of behavioral economics. To be fair though, not all the scholars are studying economics so not all of them can be expected to expect high-level games!

One of the highlights of the weekend event was a speech and interactive session by Mr Ahmad Shahizam, a law graduate who went into banking and who now works for Khazanah under the Principal Investments division (a restricted access floor of Khazanah's). He works closely with our Managing Director Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar as well. I had the chance to sit next to him (opportunistically, because I waited for him to sit down before I sat down!) and ask lots of questions. Turns out we are both fans of Nassim Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan (there is, by the way, an updated version of The Black Swan with a new chapter). He also recommends books for Tan Sri Azman once in a while and highlights certain chapters and sentences which he feels are important. I discussed the 2008 financial crisis, Islamic finance, and Khazanah's work-life balance with him. He actually sold Khazanah pretty well.

However... I must say the highlight of the weekend was the movie we watched: Inception. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page (of Juno), and Cillian Murphy (from Batman Begins), among others, and directed by Christopher Nolan (of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight vintage), it was like The Matrix and Call of Duty combined. It's kind of a philosophical movie because it explores dreams and the possibility of extracting information by entering other people's dreams. And then... there's something about a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream. 4 levels of dreaming. Five minutes of real time would appear as an hour in the first dream, which feels like 10 hours in the next level, and so on, according to the movie. So our subconscious can purportedly explode while we're sleeping. If that's true in the real world.. we could learn things a lot faster if there were really a way to plant ideas in our minds while we're asleep. It's a newfangled sort of movie and something to make you think about reality and what it means to live. How do you know the difference between dreams and reality while you're dreaming? For me, it's probably the movie of the year.

And, now I'm back to work at KLCC!

NEM, Industrial Policy, Inequality

2010-07-14T10:17:00.015+08:00

There is currently an Economist debate on industrial policy, an interesting read (arguably, only to some).

This brings to my mind the Malaysian government's policies and the NEM to transform Malaysia into a high-income economy. The moderator comments thus:

"The notion of sparking entrepreneurship may appear to make sense. It is far easier to found a new firm if there are many peers nearby. For instance, if entrepreneurs are already active in the market, investors, employees, intermediaries such as lawyers and data providers, and the wider capital markets are likely to be knowledgeable about the sector and what strategies, financing, support and exit mechanisms it requires. In the emerging industries, the actions of any one group are likely to have positive spillovers—or, in the language of economics, "externalities"—for their peers. It is in these types of settings that the government can often play a positive role as a catalyst.

But however reassuring this logic is in the abstract, there are reasons to be profoundly sceptical about the efficacy of government intervention in emerging industries in the real world. In particular, two well-documented problems can derail government programmes. First, they can simply get it wrong, allocating funds and support in an inept or, even worse, a counterproductive manner. Second, their efforts can be captured by parties seeking to benefit themselves, and not the greater social good.

Turning first to the problem of competence, history is rife with examples of government leaders who did not think carefully about realistic market opportunities and how their initiatives would affect behaviour. A failure to understand the basic nature of the entrepreneurial process is a frequent problem. Consider, for instance, one of the crucial patterns among high-growth industries: that there are, at best, only a few large winners. The typical outcome is disappointing. In the language of statistics, the distribution is highly skewed. Whether we look at the values of individual patents, the returns from investment in firms, or the patterns of firm growth, a few winners account for the bulk of the activity.

Yet in many cases, government officials proceed under the assumption that success is the typical outcome. One illustration of this unwarranted optimism is the disastrous history of most loan programmes to finance high-growth entrepreneurial businesses. In many cases, governments have launched these efforts under the assumption of high repayment rates. But these programmes have a fundamental flaw: they do not share potential upside returns, but assume a significant portion of downside risks. For example, the Danish Business Development Fund was established in Denmark to provide high-risk loans to start-ups and established enterprises in emerging industries. Generous provisions for renegotiation were put in place, so entrepreneurs whose project proved disappointing were not pressured to return the money. As a result, the fund shared the downside risk with entrepreneurs, but received only a modest fixed interest for commercially successful projects. Not surprisingly, more than 60% of total funding was lost on the 900 projects the fund supported in its initial years.

These tales of public incompetence seem bad enough. But much of economists' attention has been focused on a darker problem that affects these and similar programmes. The theory of "regulatory capture" suggests that private and public-sector entities will organise to capture direct and indirect subsidies that the public sector hands out. For instance, programmes geared towards boosting nascent entrepreneurs may instead end up boosting cronies of the nation's rulers or legislators.

The annals of industrial policy abound with examples of efforts that have been hijacked in such a manner. Economists point out that these capture problems are not seen everywhere evenly. Rather, they appear where there are individuals or firms who stand to gain substantial benefits and whose collective political activity is not too difficult to arrange. As Nobel laureate George Stigler points out, even very small firms can organise to benefit from public largesse.

Consider, for instance, French efforts to promote the electronics industry in the 1980s. Following the ascent of François Mitterrand and the Socialist Party in 1981, the government spent about $6 billion on acquiring a number of lumbering electronics giants, including CII Honeywell Bull and Thomson. Meanwhile, a number of promising smaller firms in the industries were either acquired directly by the government or pressured into merging with the giants. The results were an unmitigated disaster. At the existing firms, once the government subsidies were in place, a tide of red ink turned into a torrent, with annual subsidies for annual losses growing from $226m in 1980 to $4.6 billion in 1982. The vast majority of the ideas championed by young firms were extinguished as they became part of stultifying bureaucracies. Nor did the government put any real pressure on the established firms to develop their younger partners' ideas: the public bureaucrats' focus was on preserving the status quo at the large existing factories.

These problems of capture in industrial policy are hardly unique to France. Many initiatives, from countries as widespread as America, Australia, Britain and Malaysia, display the same problems. Given the pervasiveness of these difficulties, and the inadequacies of the tools to address them, we can never be optimistic that industrial policy will work."

But in Asia in general the model for economic growth has been state-led. We see this in Singapore (Keppel Corp, SingTel, electronics and wafer fabricating companies), South Korea (POSCO, Samsung, Hyundai, Ssangyong and the chaebol culture), Taiwan (Acer, BenQ) and Japan (Sony, National, Panasonic, Toyota). These governments have nurtured national champions and succeeded at it. Malaysia has its fair share of national champions, namely CIMB Group, Sime Darby, Axiata, PROTON, and so on. A large number of these fall directly or indirectly under the influence of one Khazanah Nasional, tasked to transform these GLCs (gov't linked companies) into globally-regarded companies with global best practices.

The problems in Malaysia with nurturing national champions through industrial policy are already cliched: corruption (in Sarawak alone?), nepotism, lack of meritocracy, flaws in education system (unsuitable for a modernising economy moving towards services), and brain drain. Correlations almost certainly exist among all these factors. Cronyism directs public money to the wrong companies, usually the biggest and most politically organised. In Malaysia, Renong (UMNO's "investment vehicle", now incorporated into the UEM Group, I believe) is the most famous example. In Southeast Asia in general, there is plenty of rent-seeking activity by bureaucrats: monopolies that generate huge profits for certain politically connected people but add little economic value. We already know about Approved Permits in Malaysia. Powerful companies often seek transfer payments from government coffers that directly or indirectly pad their profits. Politicians may acquiesce to such transfers to politically connected companies (we need look no further than Tun Mahathir, Ananda Krishnan, and a licence for Maxis to operate as a telco, or the construction of the Twin Towers from Petronas grants. If you want to go further, there's Port Klang Free Zone as well). The fact that these firms are not the best ones in their industries to receive funding, or that the subsidies to the industry in question are unlikely to have broader social benefits, is difficult for outsiders to assess. It's like taking 50 sen from every Malaysian to give to some politically-linked company: hardly anyone will feel anything, but there is a direct economic cost to the country as a whole (heck, why not take 50 sen from every bank account in Malaysia and channel it to Aidan Chan, Sdn Bhd? Malaysians may benefit more from this in the long term!)

Let's look at education: the education system at the SPM level has several notable weaknesses - learning by rote is too much a large part of it. Subjects like Moral Education are frankly, in my opinion, useless. We cannot teach a man to have good moral conduct merely by making him memorise moral values and definitions for which he will be wronged if one word in the precise definition of the moral value is quoted wrongly. The Malaysian History syllabus at SPM level is also seriously lacking in analysis and too focused on memorisation. The last time I taught history, I was merely highlighting points for my students and telling them what to memorise to score points in the exam. As much as I didn't like it, that was the way the system worked (and still works, I believe). Mathematics is also too spoon-fed in nature: problems only appear in specific contexts and pupils are told "if this problem appears, use this solution method". They learn by doing lots of problems and memorising solution methods, rather than maintaining a small toolbox of mathematical techniques which can be applied, with critical thinking, across a wide range of mathematical problems. In short, there is a lack of a problem-solving approach to mathematics (and the sciences as well). Even the economics syllabus lacks analysis and evaluation, and is focused on memorising key points.

Worse still is the retrogress in moving teaching of science and mathematics back to Bahasa Malaysia. The result of this morass in our education system is a mushrooming of the private tuition industry in Malaysia, estimated to be worth some RM5 - 7 billion, from which tax evasion on a grand scale happens (someone I happen to know in Kuching earns about RM20,000 a month and doesn't pay taxes).

All these contribute to a dearth of talented Malaysians equipped for the global 21st-century workplace. While some manage to overcome the system and prevent themselves from being 'brainwashed", more often than not these are the very Malaysians who choose to study and later work overseas (perhaps even settling down abroad). It is estimated that there are 1 million Malaysians in the UK, US, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand alone (don't hammer me for reliability of statistics - this is something random I recalled from somewhere).

Wealth and income inequality is also a basket case in Malaysia; in fact, we are one of the worst countries in Malaysia in terms of income inequality. Gated communities with private security for the rich exist in Kuala Lumpur, where not far away, run-down and crime-ridden precincts co-exist. The question for the wealthy (some of whom have wealth which is ill-gotten) is "What's the use of all that wealth when you're afraid to go out at night?"
Clearly it's the government's job to address inequality through tax collection and allocation of money to lower-income groups, but a good job is clearly not being done. In our affirmative action policy, for example, Bumiputeras are given 5-7% discounts on residences in some housing projects. But this appears flawed at first sight because it unfairly helps rich Bumiputeras as well (perhaps they should give this discount only for houses worth RM500,ooo or less). The rich have to start helping the poor at some point if we are to prevent class conflict in Malaysia. People are leaving in droves because they lack opportunities for social mobility and ascension of the income ladder.

Natural resource exports have largely maintained the Malaysian status quo (talk about 90% of Sarawak's primary forests being stripped clean), but we don't have infinite wells of oil. The day of reckoning is approaching, and we have to change before then. We need to go back basic ethics. So this is why the Khazanah project is a good thing. We need some sort of public-private coordination to make business and foreign direct investments in Malaysia a success, but we need to prevent too much cosiness and revolving doors between government and corporations. Perhaps it is not too late to reverse and change things, but some things, like the momentum of brain drain, just can't be reversed. You know, Animal Spirits and all that. We need our human capital, first and foremost. Winston Churchill is still right:

"The empires of the future are empires of the mind."

Green Buildings

2010-07-13T15:38:00.006+08:00

I'm also an architecture and environmental buff and there's a lot of unsustainable building in urbanised areas today, I thought an excerpt of an interview by The Star with Datuk Ken Yeang was interesting. He was named as one of the '50 people who could save the planet' by The Guardian newspaper (January 2008).

You are known as the inventor of the bioclimatic skyscraper. Tell us a little about that. What makes a bioclimatic skyscraper?

Yeang: Low energy. It performs as a passive low energy building. Bioclimatic means (being) responsive to the climate of the locality. Each different parcel will have a different environment. Like (in the) Tropics, the sun’s path is different. The seasons are different. Islands like Hong Kong are different because the wind directions are more predictable. Here, the wind directions are not so predictable. There are aspects of climate that you can use to the benefit of your design. So for instance, if you shape your building properly, you can contribute towards low energy performance (of a building). Shaping orientation involves the walls, the facade design, the way you use the vegetation, the way you layout the plan. For example, we are on the equator. The sun goes from east to west. If you have a thin vertical building, a good part of the sides are heated up in the morning and evenings. So let’s say you shape your building in a more horizontal or broad approach (with plenty of roof area), the sun only heats up at the sides (smaller area).So that means this (broad) building does not get so hot. So it is easier to air-condition because it is cooler. But the worst is a diagonally-shaped building, because that means the top and sides all get heated up (throughout the day). So, orientation is important. Now, let’s say for a house. You shade one side to keep the sun out, but half the day the sun is at the top. So in a terrace house, the roof gets very hot. So you need to insulate it. All these are what I call bioclimatic design. For instance, if you start putting trees at the sides of the house, then trees provide shade to the house. Bioclimatic design means that you are taking advantage of orientation (of a building). You design with proper shaping of the building, making use of vegetation, making use of facade design and colours. For example, black colour absorbs heat. Instead of reflecting heat, you are absorbing the heat. So, this is what you call bioclimatic. There is a whole science of designing building. What I have done is apply it to skyscrapers.

What are the main challenges in designing green buildings?
Yeang: There are a lot of challenges [laughs]. First of all, you see, so much of it is in its infancy. Trying to do within cost is very difficult. Second, is to find the technology for it. It doesn’t always exist. Trying to make it work is difficult. Trying to get it built is difficult. Trying to convince clients to go green can be difficult.
We are doing a project in Singapore, the Solaris project, it’s under construction now. It’s Singapore’s Green Mark Platinum, the highest you can get. Platinum is 95 points, we are 97 points. It only costs 6.3% more than the industry’s standard (cost). In other words, you get a green building which costs only 6.3% more.

How much will green buildings help in our PM’s vision of reducing carbon emission by 40% in 2020?
Yeang: We have to confront it, not just the developers. It is a mandatory thing we should all do. By the time you experience it, it is too late. It will take a natural disaster like the volcano (eruption in Iceland) to bring people to their senses. And it will happen suddenly. Suddenly, you see the water rises. Then all the island countries will disappear. Right now, they are looking into re-planning of Maldives. Because the water level has reached so high that the island is disappearing. Have to relocate. It’s a serious matter, you see. They say that if this happens, a good part of London will be flooded. And it will happen suddenly. When that happens, it’s too late.
It’s not just developers. It’s you and me. We have to change our lifestyles. For instance, eating beef contributes to 20% of climate change. If we eat fish, it is less environmentally disruptive. So, it’s a lifestyle.
The way we use electricity, the way we use water. When brushing teeth, we should switch off the tap water. That’s clean water (we are wasting). And we use clean water for flushing. Isn’t that a waste? Some parts of the world, there are no water and here we are using clean water for flushing. 40 percent of water in the house is used for flushing. Pure drinkable water, just for flushing. What a waste. So our lifestyles must change.

What does a green masterplan entail?
Yeang: Well, the green masterplan has to respect nature. You see, what we do as human beings is that we chop up nature. We not only chop up, we remove nature. Once you chop up nature, you are fragmenting nature. It doesn’t work as an ecological system anymore. [Starts sketching] The species from here (one place) cannot come here (be placed at another location). The whole ecology is gone. So a green masterplan is one that respects the ecology and replaces it.
So what you want to do is to maintain connections, from corridor to corridor, so that there is continuity. The linkages in the ecology system are there (remains). These linkages are not just vegetation. There are water systems. There are flows. There are processes that you have to respect. There are many results of clearing land. (When you) clear vegetation, (the) earth becomes exposed. Once (the) earth is exposed, you have erosion. Where does the erosion go? It goes to the water waste. The water waste kills the aquatic life. So what you do here has impact on the physical environment.
So that’s what a green masterplan is. It is not just planning. It is looking at the whole process, from the location to surrounding.

Are skyscrapers the most ecological way of building?
Yeang: No. We should try to keep (to) medium-rise if we can. Low-rise is wasteful of land. High-rise is wasteful of material. High-rise is high energy. Because (it takes) more energy to produce, more energy to build, more energy to operate. But high-rise can be justified if you have it near a transportation hub. Reduce transportation movement. So when you design something, it’s not just the energy consumption of that building. It includes transportation implications as well.

In Malaysia, though, property developers tend to be focused on short-term profits rather than long-term sustainability (though the same can be said of bankers and other professions). That's why Keynes was probably right: in the long run we are all dead!

Internship in Khazanah, KL

2010-07-13T12:12:00.011+08:00

It's about time to blog again, I guess, after nearly a month! I hardly have the inspiration or time to blog nowadays because I'm working (hence the title of this post) and I'm generally occupied from 7.30am till 7.30pm. Work time is about 8-9 hours but the extra time is for lunch, travelling, etc.

I'm having a homestay with a kind friend of mine here in KL, for which I'm grateful (it is awfully hard to find a place to rent for 6 weeks as most contracts require 2 months' advance payment) - the house is close enough to an Ampang Line LRT station to make getting around KL easy for me, although not in the case when the LRT system breaks down, which unfortunately, happened 5 days ago. This favour, I will find hard to repay in kind. I take the LRT (Ampang line) 6 stations to Masjid Jamek, and switch to the Kelana Jaya line and go to KLCC. I work at level 33 of Petronas Twin Towers, Tower 2. Bird's eye view of Kuala Lumpur!

I've also learnt to take the LRT pretty well, and there may be plans to introduce a RM36 billion MRT system in KL soon to ease the congestion and dampen Malaysia's record of one of the highest levels of car ownership in the world. I hope this project goes well, because I spent 2 hours in a taxi the other day just getting to the aforementioned friend's house from KL Sentral. The traffic jams are abominable, but better than those in Cairo (more on my Egypt trip in another post).

Anyway, the work environment and human capital at Khazanah, where I'm interning, is first-class. Business wear is mandatory (long-sleeved shirt, tie, suit), but colleagues are friendly and informal. Everyone addresses each other by first names, and there's plenty of friendly banter during work. Although I'm intern, my "colleagues" always invite me for lunch with them. Yesterday, my superior and scholarship coordinator (for the lack of a better or correct term), Puan Suhayati, met myself and 2 other Yayasan Khazanah scholars for lunch. We spoke about Khazanah's recent round of scholarship interviews and tests, and the work culture at Khazanah.

Now, all Khazanah employees get a free Blackberry and 3G services and are required to check their email on the go. However, they are not obligated to reply to emails on Saturdays and Sundays. They get 22 days' leave a year, and unused leave can be forwarded to the next year. You might call it 44 days' leave every 2 years, then. Also, meetings are rather informal - I attended a breakfast meeting at Starbucks the other day! This was so that team members within a department could update each other on things without the bother of office phones ringing or fax machines beeping. Sometimes, however... when people are using Blackberries during meetings, it may be to update Facebook statuses!

The first day I was here, the IT department immediately gave me a HP desktop with a 21-inch screen - it's awesome for Excel spreadsheets and Youtube (which is not, by the way, blocked in Khazanah's computers. Neither is http://www.blogspot.com/ banned, which is why I'm here now. Even more surprisingly, http://www.facebook.com/ is not banned). However most webmail websites are banned, including hotmail. Khazanah happens to be a fan of Facebook, as Puan Suhayati tells me. Also provided was a swivel chair, office phone with a manual (that teaches you how to make conference calls, etc), a three-layer tray with all the stationery that I'll ever need, and a tour of Khazanah's office floors in KLCC. Facility-wise, it's top-class.
I also have a clearance card which can access most of the departments except for the Investment floor.

My work is considered private and confidential so I will not elaborate on the nature of my work here - for otherwise I might find myself named as a defendant in a lawsuit for allegations of insider trading, or some such.

So far, so good; and Khazanah is purported by my colleagues to be one of the best places in Malaysia (or more specifically Kuala Lumpur) to work, especially if you're young and driven. Since I intend to return to Kuching some day, though, I don't know how long I will work here after I serve my bond. I may be rotated to other Khazanah departments or companies under the Khazanah portfolio - especially CIMB since my interest is in finance/economics, and Black Swan theory.

Oh, and I have a holiday reading list of mostly economics books to trawl through. That, the internship, and some Cambridge University Malaysian Society financial issues should keep my holiday occupied.

All told.. I'm taking a break from work for lunch!

10th Malaysia Plan

2010-06-12T19:13:00.003+08:00

Just yesterday Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak unveiled the 10th Malaysia Plan, which comes with a development allocation of RM230 billion. The purpose of this plan is to steer the country to a high-income economy amid challenges of shrinking foreign direct investment and external uncertainties (truth be told I think internal problems are more paramount than external ones; more on this later). Under this plan the government aims for 6% annual GDP growth and increasing living standards and quality of life. 6% is achievable physically because we are growing from a lower base, being a developing country. Whether it is achievable politically is another thing.

The other crucial part of the 10th MP is the plan to reduce the fiscal deficit from 5.3% of GDP in 2010 to below 3% by 2015, in line with European Union standards.

There are 10 ideas on which the 10th MP was based:

1. Internally driven, externally aware;
2. Leveraging on our diversity internationally;
3. Transforming to a high-income nation through specialisation;
4. Unleashing productivity-led growth and innovation;
5. Nurturing, attracting, and retaining top talent;
6. Ensuring equality of opportunities and safeguarding the vulnerable;
7. Concentrated growth, inclusive development;
8. Supporting effective and smart partnerships;
9. Valuing our environmental endowments;
10. Government as a competitive corporation.

However, one thing is worryingly absent: combating corruption. Nepotism and cronyism is still rampant in Malaysia (not least of all, in Sarawak). If nothing is done about that, retaining talent will be difficult because talented young people have no stake to claim in the economic pie. Already, denizens of cities like Sibu in Sarawak are complaining that their cities will become places for old people because their young people leave for brighter opportunities abroad. Big businessmen with connections to government keep getting contracts, which keeps out other companies competing based on merit. There still isn't full transparency on bidding for projects, or an open tender system. If the bumiputera policy is to survive, then there must be some give and take - more meritocracy. Najib has pledged to deliver on this, but only time will tell. Again, we cannot expect Malaysians to be charitable and come back to work in Malaysia once they graduate if the pay they receive is not commensurate with their performance, after living costs have been taken into account. For example, paying an engineering graduate from a reputable university RM2000 a month is just going to make him cheap labour for the Singaporeans!

I'll address all of these points:

1. The external environment in Asia is good - economic growth in China and India will continue to push the region forward, and Malaysia should benefit from this if it gets its policies right. But so far, we have failed to deliver on a superb education system. English is the language of international business, finance, science, and technology; yet the government recently made the bad decision to revert to teaching science and mathematics in Malay. As a result private English-based schools such as Lodge in Kuching will flourish and the income divide may become wider because only a small elite can attain a good English-based education. Many people will be unable to climb out of the poverty trap simply because they (or their children) cannot get a good education. If we are internally driven, this is one of the first things to address. The system of vernacular schools can be said to be broken. We should follow Singapore's model and make English (in science and economics) and Malay compulsory, with every ethnicity required to learn his own vernacular language.

2. I'm not quite sure what this means; if it means promoting Malaysia abroad, I am already doing that in Cambridge by inviting international students to Malaysian events like our Garden Party in 2 days' time!

3. Specialisation and free trade is indeed a good way to increase a nation's wealth. We must, however, have more research and development in place to ensure specialisation in high-tech sectors is sustainable. Malaysia's strengths are certainly plantations and primary products - we just need to continue moving up the value chain in these sectors. Notable progress has been made in palm oil and we are the largest exporter of gloves in the world (if I am not misinformed).

4. In order to increase total factor productivity, we need better education and automisation where necessary. Computerisation in many cases improves efficiency. What we lack is efficiency. Productivity is also hampered by bad infrastracture or malinvestment in it; an example would be urban sprawl in the Klang Valley and the public transport system, which is unable to attract much public use due to its unreliability and lack of reach; hence most people choose to drive and this results in congestion in Kuala Lumpur. Again, the roadblocks towards building a better public transport system are probably political - if Singapore can do it even with a lack of land space, we should be able to deliver as well.

5. Attracting or retaining top talent requires a liveable city and good pay packages as well as fringe benefits. Otherwise, there is no reason why expatriates should not choose to work in Singapore for the higher liveability and currency. However, I don't describe Kuala Lumpur or any big city in Malaysia as particularly "liveable" as yet. Crime rates have to be combatted, greening of the cities introduced (e.g. more trees, water catchment areas, parks), and more covered walkways built to encourage people to walk. The city needs to be pedestrian-friendly as opposed to car-friendly. The Financial Times special report on the Future of Cities could point us in the right direction (I hope some of our leaders read the FT). The top talent to be retained are Malaysians; it is better to educate a Malaysian well and open his mind than to offer a higher pay package to an expatriate, in fact.

6. Equality of opportunities can't really exist if bumiputera targets of 30% ownership of the economy exist. So we should say "equality of opportunities under constraints" to be transparent. While I am not against affirmative action, I think it should not be race-based, but poverty-based. Even if it is race-based, there are many bumiputeras in Sarawak that have yet to reap the benefits of the NEP. The main reason, as we all know, is corruption.

7. Concentrated growth involves economic centres, e.g. the Iskandar Development Region. Well-planned and targeted, it could be a good economic driver and we could reap synergies from across the Causeway. Iskandar could provide a low-cost environment for some back offices of Singapore-based companies as well as provide space for front offices as Singapore is getting congested and land space is only so much.

8. Effective and smart partnerships involve those such as getting the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to invest USD2 billion in the planned upcoming Kuala Lumpur International Financial District (if it's well done, I'd want to work here). Cost savings and economies of scale could be achieved through smart partnerships. In the automotive industry partnerships are also being forged with foreign automakers like GM and Volkswagen.

9. Malaysia has a super-diverse ecology; this should be preserved and maintained. However, there has been a lot of mismanagement already; 90% of Sarawak's primary forests have already been levelled for timber and a lot of corrupt tycoons and government officials' pockets deepened. When a Sarawakian minister claims that they have looked everywhere for corruption and have not found it; he has probably not looked into a mirror. We have to start protecting nature in our homeland and concentrate on making our cities greener, as I mentioned earlier. We have to be less carbon-intensive, invest in green buildings that make optimum use of sunlight and absorb less heat (only applicable in the tropics though). Concrete jungles and skyscrapers could become edifices of a decadent future if they are not green.

10. Under the Government Transformation Programme and Khazanah's initiative, we are already trying to transform Government-Linked Companies (GLCs) to make them globally competitive. Companies like Sime Darby are still keeling from years of malinvestment and misaligned incentives. So this will be my part to do at Khazanah in the future, perhaps!

MATLAB

2010-06-09T17:32:00.003+08:00

I am attending a MATLAB practical lecture at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences; and then when I saw the words "This document can be downloaded from..." on the lecture notes I realised I shouldn't have come. I'd much rather be reading things from the comfort of my own room. In fact, I'm making preparations for obtaining next year's (Mathematical Tripos Part IB) notes already so that I can skip some lectures next year and take university in stride and freestyle. After 13 years of formal education I'm still anti-establishment.

The past few days have been spent just chilling around in Cambridge; having formals with Peterhouse Ruby Port/Lussac St. Emilion wine, afternoons by the River Cam sipping beer/cider (Kopparberg and Bulmers!) and eating strawberries, playing bridge, and watching Prison Break. Longtime classmate of 13 years Kok Ming is here in Cambridge for a couple of days and we had some Malaysian gatherings to talk about business and politics in Malaysia. The best sentence of the discussions was (however ironic):

"A ho lo chim set is banned in Kuching. You can only buy it from the police for RM200."

Other aspects of the political discussions should be left out of this blog for obvious reasons.

2 days ago the Lim family also made a trip to Cambridge and Kok Ming and I had fun taking them around the august and historic city of Cambridge. Lim Chern Wei studies at LSE (and is a GIC scholar) while his brother Chern Han is at Princeton. The brothers are certainly good at bridge, which forces me to up my game.

Then there's a Peterhouse Mathematician's Garden Party on the 10th of June 2010 in the Fellow's Garden, and a Malaysian Garden Party at Harvey Court on the 13th of June (I invited several Peterhouse friends for this one). Tonight I'm also due for a chess match and perhaps weiqi after Johannes' wedding formal. Gotta save some pennies and port for tonight!

The Cambridge IA Mathematical Tripos

2010-06-02T15:03:00.013+08:00

Can you tell what these symbols are?

Now that my first year is over, it might be useful to write a little reflection on the Cambridge Part IA Mathematical Tripos. If you don't already know this, the Mathematical Tripos is legendary at Cambridge and the picture that you usually see on mathematical tables in the past is that of King's College, Cambridge. It's also the oldest taught course in Cambridge, and in the past, students of all subjects, not just Mathematics, had to take some mathematical courses as well. This is because, as I think, numeracy and solid reasoning acquired through pure and applied mathematics is extremely helpful in building your logical flow, train of thought, and presentation of arguments. I myself have had many of my views of mathematics reversed after spending (nearly a) year here studying mathematics. There are parts of it I like and parts of it I don't like!

There are 8 subjects in Part IA of the Tripos (First Year):
1. Vectors and Matrices (Linear Algebra I in most US universities)
2. Dynamics and Relativity
3. Differential Equations
4. Vector Calculus
5. Probability
6. Numbers and Sets
7. Groups
8. Analysis

I would say the first four are applied courses and the last 4, pure courses (but I like to argue that Probability is applied because we don't have to be as rigorous in our arguments as in Groups and Analysis). In pure courses you have to make very precise arguments and there can be no leaps in logic. As my Director of Studies once said: "It has to be precise, it has to be definitive, and there is no wishi-washiness."

Here are some excerpts of my work from pure mathematics:

You need to be careful when taking limits as n tends to infinity.

Hand-waving will not do. Write our all arguments in full, with no leaps of logic!

Again, no unsubstantiated statements.

Sanity checks will help. "That's a very big group!" is meant to be sarcastic here.

Logical equivalence is very important.

Don't simply use the "therefore" sign!

Hard pure math about functions.

There were marked by my Director of Studies and supervisor (Analysis, Groups, Numbers and Sets), Dr. Andras Zsak. This guy is a genius who did his PhD on Banach spaces under Timothy Gowers, renowned Fields Medallist and Cambridge professor. He insists on very rigorous proofs and if you make a statement he will ask "Why?" until he is sufficiently satisfied by your explanation.

My other supervisors are Dr. David Essex (Vector Calculus, Dynamics and Relativity), and Sean Lip (Differential Equations, Probability, Vectors and Matrices).

Dr. Essex was the Senior Wrangler for Applied Mathematics in Part III of the Tripos in his year. He is basically an integrating machine and has the ability to do differential equations and integrals extremely fast. Right after our Part IA exams finished yesterday he came to our Hall for dinner and sponsored some red wine for the mathematicians' table - this resulted in some jealousy from the rest of the First Years because we were already living the high life while they were still mired in exams.

Sean Lip needs no introduction to most Malaysians in Cambridge. He was top ten in Singapore Mathematical Olympiads while he was an ASEAN scholar in Hwa Chong Institution in Singapore, and was also twice an Australian Math Competition medallist. In Cambridge, he got some full scholarship that required him to be in the top 20 in his First Year, top 10 in his Second Year, and top 5 in his Third Year (needless to say, he met all the conditions). He is now a second-year PhD student in Cosmology at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics here under Trinity College, and also lectured a non-examinable on Algorithms this year. How many Malaysians get to lecture in Cambridge before they're 25 years old?

Here are what I think are the mottos of my three supervisors:
Dr. Zsak: Prove it!
Dr. Essex: Have we solved your problem now? *with a chuckle*
Sean Lip: Do more work!

I conclude that i'm not really a "serious" mathmo after one year here - I just enjoy problem-solving math as a hobby and I tend to lean more towards applied math which can be related to real-world problems in practical situations. Other "purists" like Giorgos Artavanis (another Peterhouse mathmo in my year) insist that "maths should not be used in banking" and that "investment bankers are legal thieves". Too bad I'll probably go into i-banking after graduating from Cambridge!

However, my opinion still stands that Cambridge is the best place in the world to do mathematics - the professors are world-class and the work thorough and rigorous. What's more, most mathmos are quite a cool bunch. In Peterhouse, we play lots of Go, chess, bridge, and debate on the Euro, Greece's financial crisis, investment banking, and other things.

A typical dinner sentence among mathmos:
Simon: I thought you were good at math and finance.. why are you buying expensive cereals?
Me: The key word there is "thought".

More updates to come soon to make up for the recent lack of it - but i'm headed off to London now!

Exams are over!

2010-06-02T00:46:00.003+08:00

I've just finished by Mathematical Tripos IA exams at Cambridge! To say the least I was tipsy 15 minutes after my exam finished - a very nice Third Year student from Peterhouse was there to open 2 bottles of champagne for us, complete with chocolate. This isn't over since the other First Years are out at Sainsbury's buying alcohol! I'll throw in a bottle of red wine tonight.

In short order i'll blog about how my academic year went by here - complete with some pictures probably. As anyone can surmise my long hiatus from blogging is due to studying for exams. While I have a good feeling about the Tripos overall, I may not get a First, but I guess if that happens it does give me a reason to work harder next year (or else Khazanah Nasional will be breathing down my neck). But for now, the mathmos will be enjoying life, playing Call of Duty and watching some Prison Break!

Eyjafyallajoekull (a name to remember)

2010-04-22T09:02:00.014+08:00

I'm still stranded in Malaysia due to the Iceland's Eyjafyallajoekull volcanic eruption that sent fine ash over Europe's skies and closed airports for a long time - I can't fly back to the UK yet and am waitlisted for the 24th of April. This means I'll start Easter term late in Cambridge and may have to stay back a little later after Term ends to "keep Term" (some Camb tradition where you HAVE to be in university premises for 70 days a term at least).

However, it has led to some spectacular sceneries in Iceland and my dad wants to visit Iceland at some point because of this. Which means, I get to go of course! These pictures are all awesome stuff:

Eyjafyallajoekull before it erupted.

Volcanic ash plume enveloping Europe.

The volcanic ash trail from outer space.

Purple Bolts at Iceland Volcano during a volcanic storm.

Fire, Ice and Lightning.

Icelandic lavafall at Eyjafyallajoekull.

Tourists silhouetted against lava eruptions, watching the eruption.

Tourist gather to see an eruption of Eyjafyallajoekull.

Sunset at Fjord Thingmannaheidi.

Iceland Fumerole Geysir Thermal Area.

Icebergs on Jokulsarlon Lagoon.

Jetlagged, Again

2010-03-23T11:37:00.003+08:00

Despite the lingering jetlag from my West-East flight, this period has been fairly productive. Kuching's full of good food and warm air as usual, and I like the prices here a lot better than the UK. Sure makes me feel rich.

My daily schedule is something like this:
12am-3am Sleep.
3am First breakfast.
3.15am - 6.30am Vector calculus/Special relativity/some other mathematics
6.30am Second and bigger breakfast.
7am A walk in the garden for some fresh air and nature, or jogging.
7.30am Reading WSJ, FT, The Edge Financial Daily, and some other publications.
10am Brunch.
10.15am Finance/investment books or some Cambridge math work.
12.30pm Lunch.
1pm - 5pm Sleep.
5.30pm Exercise and some sun.
6.30pm Dinner and shower.
7pm - 10pm More reading and mathematics.
10pm Supper
10.15pm - 12am Reading news and wrapping up the day.

Well I guess this schedule is quite productive. However the drawback is that I'm eating 3 extra meals or so a day!

Also, in this week's copy of The Edge, there was an advertisement for the Khazanah-Cambridge scholarship. Glad to see they're finally advertising in our premier business editorial!

Khazanah Session in London

2010-03-13T22:36:00.004+08:00

Dato' Mustapa Mohamad, Malaysia's Minister for International Trade and Industry and also the chairman of Khazanah Nasional just met all the Khazanah scholars in London at the Malaysian High Commission. As usual he wanted to be as informal and as friendly as possible, so he declined to use a microphone. He gave a speech that highlighted the thrust of Malaysia's economic growth and its dependence on human capital as it progressively expended its natural resources. He revealed that the Malaysian government spends RM3 billion a year to provide loans and scholarships to Malaysian students and that 33-40% of Malaysian students in the UK are on scholarships or loans. This, in fact, makes Malaysia the top country in the world to spend so much on sending its students overseas, especially at the undergraduate level. Thus he said it was important for these students to bring their degrees back and help the nation move forward.

Dato' Mustapa then explained about his trips overseas to Delhi, Amsterdam and Frankfurt to promote FDIs in Malaysia. His schedule was absolutely packed. This was followed by a discussion about Khazanah's portfolio.

He hoped that all the scholars were well-read on current issues in Malaysia, and he spoke briefly about Malaysia's Economic Plan for the next 5 years, which would be tabled soon. In particular he spoke about the need for wages to rise in Malaysia: if the wages for an engineer in Malaysia are an order of magnitude lower that those of an engineer in the UK after all costs of living have been imputed, "we cannot expect Malaysians to be charitable and come back to work in the country".

Finally he spoke about London's position as a political hotbed and he warned us not to be swayed by some opposition politicians who were coming to London soon. Anyway, Khazanah scholars are not supposed to be involved in politics!

This was followed by a Q&A session, where a few scholars including myself asked questions (my question(s) was number 2).

1. Net FDIs to Malaysia were zero last year. How will the Malaysian government fix this problem? Also, I'm not trying to be political, but what are your views on the oil royalties and the Kelantan issue?

2. What do you think about the future significance of the Iskandar Region, and in view of Singapore's position as a financial hub, how will it affect Malaysia's aspirations to become a hub for Islamic finance?

3. Bio Valley in Malaysia has been a failure. Where do we go from here and what lessons have we learnt from that?

4. In Malaysian corporates and multinationals based in Malaysia, most directorships are held by non-Malaysians. Is the government doing much to address this?

5. Collaboration between academia and industry in Malaysia is not very strong. What is being done about this?

He provided very well-thought out answers, but I shall not enumerate them here because they were rather long. However, there was plenty of food for thought. Our chairman is indeed quite a friendly guy.

Otherwise I spent the time getting to know the other Khazanah scholars from London and Oxford. Intellectual conversation was the order of the day and the networking was great. Good start to the day!

Refresher

2010-03-09T00:58:00.005+08:00

Well, it's nearly the end of term.. and it's going to end on a high note, it seems. Last weekend Kok Ming and Sally came down to Cambridge and we had, in quoted words, a ball of a time and a really refreshing weekend. For Sally it was an express holiday because the moment she arrived we had to run to catch a formal at Downing College! Sing Yue looked like Batman with his college gown.

Anyway, the best part is the company ;) There was just plenty of talking about politics, business, philosophy, etc and chilling out till late in the night. What's more valuable than time with friends and a good bottle of wine!

Also, I have been skipping lectures for a while, but it's nearly end of term.. time to chill. Except I have a meeting with my Director of Studies now!

Whirlwind

2010-02-24T03:05:00.002+08:00

First, I must apologize (don't sing "It's too late...", please!). Namely, for a one-month absence from blogging - however that's due to my laptop having crashed (after all, my trusty Acer is 5 years old). When I get back to Kuching I will hunt around for a HP Pavilion DM3 Notebook PC, advertised by Kenny Sia. Perhaps..

In the meantime, a whirlwind of events has happened - primarily, Malaysian Night, in which I acted in a play, is over! Unfortunately, some of us actors and dancers are starting to get MNight blues, or withdrawal symptoms. Given that my role was a psychopath/sadist/school bully, I should be glad to leave that all behind.

Secondly, I've decided to run for the post of Treasurer of Cambridge University Malaysia Society; I've submitted a manifesto and need to think of speech content and possible questions during hustings. Can't be all that hard though because this Treasurer-applicant knows a fair amount of finance. Whatever I don't know I can ask the past Treasurer. The only innovations I can think of are unlocking CUMaS's reserve funds to invest in higher-yielding assets. Right now we've got a substantial amount of reserve money sitting and getting eaten away by inflation. Unfortunately I also have to run sponsorship drives to raise funds for this august society, and that's the hard part. Given that the global economy has started recovering and things look better in Asia and Malaysia, it's worthy for a man in my position to be optimistic.

Thirdly... the mother of all work has descended upon me. I have 3 example sheets (possibly 4 after tomorrow), which means a lot of time spent being antisocial and finishing up some work.

In conclusion I have to make all the right moves in all the right places, and have all the right friends and all the right faces. So yeah, we're going down!

Malaysian Investment

2010-01-28T00:30:00.006+08:00

The Economist recently had an article about Asian economies needing to invest more, not less. In recent years, Asian countries have primarily been portrayed as mercantilist, export-oriented emerging economies, whose economic growth depends on a large way on demand from the American consumer. So there is talk of the need to reduce imbalances - Americans need to save more (in fact, they still need to up the savings rate although things have recently improved) and Asian economies need to shift more towards domestic consumption. In fact, the article states that while this is largely true, Asian economies (except China) as a whole need more investment, not less. This means investment not wholesale in factories that produce goods for exports, but on infrastructure (better roads, national electric grids, IT systems), education, and so on.

Some interesting excerpts from that article:

The goal of economic policy should be to maximise households’ well-being and hence their consumption—but over time, not just today. Consuming too much today will make the next generation poorer. By investing (and saving), a country sacrifices current consumption but future output and consumption will be higher. The optimal level of investment is the rate that generates the highest sustainable level of consumption over time. That, in turn, depends on a country’s “marginal product of capital”, or how much output is produced by new investment. The higher this measure, the more it should invest. Assuming extra investment increases output by progressively smaller amounts as the capital stock expands, then at some point extra investment will reduce, not increase, the long-run sustainable level of consumption.

Calculating the marginal product of capital is devilishly difficult. However, it is likely to be higher in emerging economies than in developed ones, because their capital stock is much smaller in relation to their labour force. Estimates by Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, an economic adviser at MasterCard, suggest that in China, India, Indonesia and Thailand capital per person is only 2-6% of that in America. This means there is huge scope to boost productivity by giving workers new machines and better infrastructure. The optimal rate of investment will therefore be much higher than in developed economies, and may even justify the pace of China’s investment of more than 45% of GDP. Yet in Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand investment is no higher (and in some cases lower) as a share of GDP than in Japan or the euro area. This helps explain why these countries’ growth rates have slowed over the past decade. Mr Hedrick-Wong finds that among emerging economies, those that invest a bigger share of GDP tend to enjoy faster growth.

More developed economies, such as South Korea and Singapore, where both the rate of investment and the capital-to-labour ratio are relatively high, are probably not underinvesting. But Indonesia’s investment rate (27% of GDP) looks much too low given its tiny capital stock. Barclays Capital argues that it needs to raise it to India’s rate of 38% if it wants to achieve annual GDP growth of 8%. In the Philippines, which probably has the worst infrastructure in the region, investment is running at only 15% of its GDP. It is no coincidence that the Philippines has the highest rate of consumption (about 80% of GDP) in emerging Asia but one of the lowest growth rates. Higher consumption may suit the West, but more investment is in Asia’s longer-term interests.

While the first paragraph is quite technical, referring to Wikipedia quickly helps you understand most of the orthodox economic principles there. Put simply, most Asians should save, but also invest wisely (although this is not largely their fault because poor government policies drive away investments anyway). However, surveys indicative of spendthrift habits and a penchant for clubbing among the denizens of places like Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Manila do not bode well in general for Asia. There are simply too many people who want to live like Americans way before their country as a whole have the means to do so: it falls back to a simple understanding of the concept of deferred gratification.

All (or not all) told, I might provide other reasons for why investment (both domestic and foreign) in Malaysia has been lacking - while there are childish political fights and churches being firebombed, investors are not wont to feel very safe parking their money in Malaysia. In fact while emerging countries didn't fare too badly in 2009, Malaysia recorded the most forex outflows among countries in Southeast Asia.

So it's all up to the government and it's investment arm (which is also my benefactor), Khazanah Nasional to continue to shore things up from here. Things are quite positive on that front because Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar's tenure as managing director of Khazanah Nasional has just been renewed. I spoke to the guy and I quite liked him, along with transcripts of his speeches. Being a state investment arm though, Khazanah cannot be just profit-oriented: there must also be social benefits in the dealings it undertakes and this is a tricky line to toe. Lately they have been divesting of stakes in many assets in Malaysia to afford the local markets more liquidity. As financial markets in Malaysia mature things will get better, because in the long run people learn to do business in spite of tough political climes.

This is akin to the argument that predictable corruption (as opposed to disorganized corruption) is just a tax. China and India occupy about the same rankings in the Corruption Perceptions Index (which is to say, not respectable), but it's easier to do business in China because there is only one party to bribe (~~in Sarawak, they also say there's only one man to bribe~~). So let's keep corruption predictable if we are to have any.

It seems that Hong Kong and Singapore will definitely consolidate their positions in Asia as premier financial centres, but Malaysia can stand to benefit from this because it offers a natural market for plantations and palm oil. Co-operating with Singapore across the Strait in the form of the Iskandar Development Region may yet being synergies to the region. However, I want to see markets and the diversity of financial instruments in the Southeast Asian region grow in order to nurture economic growth and boost investments. Malaysia has a high savings rate (about equal to Singapore and China's) but most of the capital is probably in overseas accounts for reasons most of us know. However, I have optimistic feelings that it's all going to turn out well in the long run, if not exceedingly well. Still, I'll take out an insurance policy!

You Don't Dream in Cryo

2010-01-24T05:48:00.005+08:00

The Peterhouse formal last night was a good affair - salmon baked in honey, crispy garlic mushrooms, and pear and ginger pie. Sing Yue also brought wine, but between two people, there was rather too much of it. Some people living on my floor were highly surprised to see me because they thought that all I do is "stay in my room all the time and help them out with math whenever they need help"! I'll have all of you know I'm not so antisocial, but I am a busy man with an eye out for keeping transaction costs low. Tonight's gonna be a long post, I think.

I've recently been playing the soundtrack of the blockbuster and second-highest grossing film of all time within 3 weeks of its release: none other than Avatar. It seems to be good music for complementing studying, at least in my case.

BBC's review of some of the tracks were the following:

"Ostensibly an all-action sci-fi offering as the movie is, it’d be natural to expect James Horner’s soundtrack to be every bit as mercilessly assaulting of the ears as Avatar’s awe-inspiring visuals are the eyes. But the multi-award-winning composer – who worked with Cameron on Titanic and Aliens – takes an admirably counter-intuitive approach, with the earliest cues on this set notable for their restraint. Pure Spirits of the Forest threatens to break into a sweat, but its percussive punch is short-lived, much of its run time consumed by starry twinkles and strange whistles. It, like several pieces here, also exhibits string elements familiar to fans of Celtic music – something that’s become a Horner trademark, for better or worse.

The ethereal vocals of “You Don’t Dream in Cryo…” are teleportal in their suggestion of a faraway land populated by wonderful, surreal beings. The ‘aliens’ of Avatar, the Na‘vi – whose home world humans have targeted for its natural resources (the film’s ecological message not lost on today’s climate change-aware audience) – are represented aurally by motifs incorporating African rhythms, percussively playful but accessible enough so that world music-shy listeners can enjoy them – think more Paul Simon than Staff Benda Bilili. Climbing Up “Iknimaya – The Path to Heaven” is one such piece, vocally rooted in the rainforests and savannas but released to soar like the most stirring orchestral highs. Jake’s First Flight furthers this impression, its skittering beats and snatches of indigenous speech as suitable at WOMAD as they are complementing interplanetary adventuring."

That quite reflected what I thought - it's the kind of music that makes you think of distant worlds and foreign (read: extraterrestial) places and breathtaking landscapes (some of which were inspired by New Zealand's vast natural landscapes and the misty mountains of HuangShan). After 20 years on Earth, after all, I get quite tired of just existing sometimes because of humanity and all the problems we've created (I'm not a misanthrope, by the way). Within this genre of music, I think only Enya and Tony O'Connor come close.

Good thing is, Avatar will have 2 sequels as the film is an overwhelming financial success. I must say the storyline is a bit like Pocahontas, but the use of 3D cameras and imaging was ground-breaking, pushing the boundaries of cinema. I certainly hope to see more films like this in the future - I'm a fan of surrealism, etherealism, and pretty much anything that isn't a concrete jungle. For some reason, I hate unsustainable cities and man-made structures - most of London would probably fall in this category because there are too few greeneries. Singapore has done a good job here!

I've just about finished my Vector Calculus problem sheet #1 - this music is certainly conducive to my work. Now though, I have to memorise lines for my Malaysian Night script because there's a 6-hour rehearsal and filming tomorrow, and I'd better be up to scratch for want of the directors. Guess I have to postpone the new issue of Economist for another time!

P.S. At dinner I was arguing with George about whether Greece would have to leave the European Union in the future due to its sovereign debt and corruption problems. It seems interesting that there are striking parallels between Greece and Malaysia in terms of corruption (but at least they don't have race-based politics and fights over a word). I thought that eventually it would have to leave; George says instead that Greece is overwhelmingly good at persuading the EU leaders that it can rein in the debt, rid itself of corruption, improve statistics collection and presentation, and get its economy going. Greece apparently benefits from being in the EU because it gets a lot of subsidies and is one of the least productive economies. In a way, Germany is paying for Greece's profligacy (Greek bonds must offer 3.18% higher interest rates as German Bunds to attract the same subscription volumes) As the weakest sailor, why not ride along with a strong crew, eh?

P.S.S. What do you think of the saying:

"It's all well and good to talk about happy endings, but if a person can't deliver, if he keeps screwing up, well, eventually I guess you kinda just have to say f**k you... Or words to that effect."

Get Your Signs Right

2010-01-21T23:05:00.002+08:00

Today in the Peterhouse library toilet I saw this sign. Wait, that means I can't use the toilet!

Lent Term

2010-01-19T03:58:00.003+08:00

Full Lent term's been going on for a while, and I took a small break yesterday night to watch Cambridge's annual light show and fire show. This one marked the finalé of Cambridge's 800-year anniversary. The crowds were overwhelming and I didn't get a very good view of the fire show - just a few glimpses of juggling tricks with rings and sticks of fire. However the light show, done with giant projectors and genius programming, was certainly worth the night out since I'm a fan of representative and abstract art. If my art skills were better maybe I wouldn't be studying math now: architecture, aesthetic structures and designs are appealing - and I stay right next to the Department of Architecture in Cambridge.

I've received my first examples sheet for this term, and three supervisions are forthcoming this week; more examples sheets to follow (but I can afford to take ten minutes away to blog). There are also intensifying Malaysian Night practices - but they're actually quite relaxing apart from the fact that I have to memorize my script fast. To keep life relaxing I try to throw in a few games of bridge, chess, and Go every other night with the other mathematicians (who are the only ones who seem to enjoy strategic thinking over empty socialising) over some discussions about financial markets and global economic trends. I'm trying to follow more of the adage "small minds talk about events, average minds talk about people, great minds talk about ideas". So, ideas it is, as often as I can.

And on a random note, I present you all a toast to our future prosperity because Asia-Pacific is going to be the wealth creation engine of the world in the decade to come!

Peace and Harmony

2010-01-13T04:22:00.005+08:00

Recently there were attacks on 3 churches in Petaling Jaya/Kuala Lumpur after the Malaysian High Court authorised the use of the word "Allah" by the Catholic Church in its publications. Needless to say this whole affair is highly childish - it might even affect tourism and hence Malaysia's economy. I'm glad such things happen more in West Malaysia than in Sarawak. SIB church's Peninsula Malaysia president said that the recent spate of attacks against churches would unlikely affect the relationship between East Malaysian Christians and people of other faiths. Sarawak is probably the most harmonious state in terms of racial/religious relations - West Malaysians (or, a select group of them) need to start learning to live and let live!

Such infractions within the country present a detractor to economic growth - people are engaging in useless activities instead of productive economic activities. This is one of the reasons why Malaysia is racking up a less-than-stellar rate of economic growth compared to other countries in the region. Asia-Pacific is going to be the center of wealth creation in the next decade and in order to participate in the story, we had best get our political and domestic house in order. God bless us and our leaders to do so!

Strada

2010-01-11T04:49:00.002+08:00

Tonight was a gastronomic adventure at Strada with Sing Yue - to catch up on life over good Italian food. I had an Insalata Romana while he had a Salmone con Lenticchie. I think the food was pretty good. Strada in Cambridge also has a good interior decor and is worth having a meal at to catch up with friends. It's not overly crowded either. This is where my college family also had our meal; their pizzas are also pretty good although I gave that a pass this time.What's more, you can get student discounts at lots of Cambridge restaurants by printing out vouchers from Studentbeans.

Turns out both Sing Yue and I are going back to Kuching in the Easter holidays - the cold weather here certainly encourages that sort of thing!

Winter Wonderland, with the sun

2010-01-08T21:59:00.015+08:00

Today there was sunshine and clear blue skies in Cambridge, and combined with a blanket of snow, it ~~transformed~~made the place look surreal, drop-dead gorgeous, breathtaking, and orders of magnitude more beautiful than when the snow first fell and the sky was overcast. The snow has a kind of sparkle and twinkle to it when the sun shines over it. There's also an aesthetic, light blue tinge to it - maybe it reflects the sky. Standing alone in an expanse of blue-white snow has a serene feel. You just feel happy to be alone in the beauty.

This has got to be one of the beautiful landscapes of the world, and it certainly warranted me taking a break from Hustle to come out and snap a few photos even if it meant getting "finger frostbite". Here are some photos right out of Peterhouse's back garden (Deer Park) - and I think you will agree that most are of postcard quality:

Deer Park.

Sun filtering through the trees.

Snow-filled expanse adjacent to Deer Park.

More of the same expanse.

Footprints in the snow. The set on the right is mine, of course!

Some council gathering venue? Well it might be good for an outdoor bridge gathering.

Fitzwilliam Museum to the left, William Stone Building to the right. Blue sky and sparking snow!

Snow accumulating on my boots after some trudging in a half-inch layer snow.

More of Deer Park with tree branches at the top.

I'm beginning to like winter! =D

Winter Wonderland

2010-01-06T21:53:00.017+08:00

I was out buying lunch from Pret A Manger today (Sustainable Salmon Nicoise - this proves my environmental efforts) when it starting snowing pretty heavily outside. The whole place was transformed into a Winter Wonderland and I went back quickly to retrieve my camera. I met Becky in Peterhouse's Court and we went on a mini-tour of Cambridge. The snow made the whole place exciting - my hands were numb but I didn't really feel it because this is the first time I've seen snow since 1999. The whole place now looks pristine and pretty, albeit with a grey sky. Here are some photos:

Trinity College fellows' residence.

St. John's College. Becky in foreground.

In front of Trinity College.

Right side of Peterhouse Court.

Gisborne Court, Peterhouse.

Peterhouse lawn.

Deer Park and Fellow's Garden.

Log bench beneath tree in Deer Park.

Fitzwilliam Museum, taken from Deer Park.

Driveway, St. Peter's Terrace.

William Stone Building in background.

Outside the bathroom window, St. Peter's Terrace.

Outside my room window.

And right now, I feel the pain in my hands as the blood starts to flow back to my palms. Ack.

Back In Cambridge

2010-01-06T04:50:00.003+08:00

Today marks my return to Cambridge after a 1-week chillout in London. It's considerably colder here; BBC says it's -2 degrees C at the moment (read: bloody cold). My windows have kind of fogged because I was boiling water in my room earlier. Outside you can see ice in the drains and frost in the grass.

Spent the entire afternoon buying things and unpacking stuff in my room. It's nearly all done now, except my pillow's gone missing from the storage room, so I'll have to pick a new one up from Argos if it doesn't turn up in the next few days. Someone must have misplaced it or buried it under some other luggage.

Anyway, I've been passing the time by watching Hustle, so kindly furnished by Kok Ming and Shih Yang. Unfortunately I'll finish watching all the first 4 seasons soon, at the rate i'm going. After that there'll be holiday homework to complete; been procrastinating on this for some time. But for now, more Hustle!

Plots

2010-01-01T23:52:00.003+08:00

It is said that there are just 20 plots: quest, adventure, pursuit, rescue, escape, revenge, riddle, rivalry, underdog, temptation, metamorphosis, transformation, maturation, love, forbidden love, sacrifice, discovery, wretched excess, ascension, descension.

Watch 20 such movies and you probably don't need to watch another movie in life again!

Welcome to 2010

2010-01-01T20:00:00.002+08:00

First of all, Happy New Year to one and all! I had a countdown dinner yesterday with Kok Ming (this one being loaded with meat - the only non-meat dish was noodles with prawns) with champagne at 12am. We managed to watch the fireworks at the Thames through live streaming in the restaurant - it was a good thing to avoid the crowds. We seem to be entering the new year still mired in a recession and all, but there's plenty of optimism to go around.

Resolutions:
1. Eat healthier and eat less for environmental reasons - cut down on meat and fats and eat more fruits/vegetables. (maybe semi-vegetarian)
2. Spend less time on Facebook.
3. Be 5% better in as many things as I can.
4. Reduce alcohol intake (but keep red wine as far as possible).
5. Healthier sleeping habits (11pm - 7am).
6. Read more non-fiction.
7. Watch more intellectual things.
8. Party less.

Oxford Street

2009-12-31T04:04:00.003+08:00

On my second day in London, I seem to be showing no signs of jetlag - I slept from 12am to 7.30am local time. This kind of vindicates the claim that Malaysians don't jetlag as much travelling from Malaysia to the UK than the other way round.

Anyway, I decided to meet up for lunch with Sally today and explore Oxford Street for a bit. There was a bit of bad luck because Sally mysteriously lost her umbrella in EAT, where we grabbed sandwiches for lunch. Someone must have taken it by accident -_-.

So we walked to Primark, and in the process I discovered that Oxford Street is damned long since it took forever to get there. I must have walked 5 km today - from Kok Ming's place to Primark being 2.5km. However, taking a bus might have been even slower because of Oxford Street's notorious traffic jams. All I bought at Primark was bedroom slippers which had pink insides - and Sally was really happy about that :P

As for the cold, I've adjusted pretty fast, but Cambridge is going to be a tad colder than this. So I've still got to shop for boots and a scarf!

Christmas/Boxing Day

2009-12-27T18:00:00.002+08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Boxing Day! Well, belated. I was tied up for those 2 days.

For Christmas I went for morning mass in church as my family does every year, which ended at 8am. Then I visited Brother Albinus, my Bible Studies teacher, who hails from Ireland. He hasn't been back to Ireland in a while though, and he asked me lots of questions about England and life in Cambridge (but then again, all my parents' friends do - off the top of my head the usual questions are "What are you studying?", "What will you do after you graduate?", "How do you find life there?"). Met Marianne's parents as well - she decided to joyride around Paris instead of coming back to spend Christmas with her parents. Makes me a good son eh ;) I have yet to visit her in Oxford.

And thereafter we went to the Archbishop's House, where there was the usual lunch with pretty good food - lamb curry, sweet-and-sour fish, stir-fried noodles, and roast chicken. I was talking with my sister and cracking jokes most of the time since I didn't know many adults there. Again, the adults who saw me asked the same questions.

Then we went to a Christmas party at my dad's former teacher's house, where delicious (especially cheese) cakes were served. I met a businessman, Jim Tietjen, from New York who has been living in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur for the past 10 years. He formerly served as a diplomat in the US Embassies in Singapore and Malaysia, and left government service a few years back to start his own business in Singapore. So we struck up a pretty interesting conversation about business, economics, and the politics of the region - Singapore's immigration policies, state-directed economic growth, Malaysian bureaucracies and politics, the ease of doing business in Singapore, Singapore's upcoming Integrated Resorts, the aging of the population there, etc etc. Most productive Christmas party I've attended so far, I think! Normally, conversations are banal and we end up making small talk.

And I sent my sister off yesterday afternoon. It's my turn to go tomorrow, so needless to say I've been ingesting copious amounts of local food.

Also, I've been torrenting as much as I can here, because I can't do that in Cambridge. In particular Lady Gaga's new album, The Fame Monster is pretty good. Good in the sense that the music is nice - a cross between techno and Gothic styles. Can't say as much for the lyrics, which turn out to be racy in some places though :P

Onwards and Upwards

2009-12-24T10:42:00.004+08:00

Something interesting I read in The Economist today - excerpts below:

The idea of progress

1.

For aeons people lived to the age of just 25 or 30 and most parents could expect to mourn at least one of their children. Today people live to 65 and, in countries such as Japan and Canada, over 80; outside Africa, a child’s death is mercifully rare. Global average income was for centuries about $200 a year; a typical inhabitant of one of the world’s richer countries now earns that much in a day. In the Middle Ages about one in ten Europeans could read; today, with a few exceptions, such as India and parts of Africa, the global rate is comfortably above eight out of ten. In much of the world, ordinary men and women can vote and find work, regardless of their race. In large parts of it they can think and say what they choose. If they fall ill, they will be treated. If they are innocent, they will generally walk free. The trouble is that a belief in progress is more than just a branch of accounting. The books are never closed. Wouldn’t nuclear war or environmental catastrophe tip the balance into the red? And the accounts are full of blank columns. How does the unknown book-keeper reconcile such unknowable quantities as happiness and fulfilment across the ages?

Even if you can show how miserable the past was, the belief in progress is about the future. People born in the rich world today think they are due a modicum of health, prosperity and equality. They advance against that standard, rather than the pestilence, beggary and injustice of serfdom. That’s progress.

Nor does economic progress broadly defined correspond to human progress any more precisely than does scientific progress. GDP does not measure welfare; and wealth does not equal happiness. Rich countries are, by and large, happier than poor ones; but among developed-world countries, there is only a weak correlation between happiness and GDP. And, although wealth has been soaring over the past half a century, happiness, measured by national surveys, has hardly budged. That is probably largely because of status-consciousness.

It is good to go up in the world, but much less so if everyone around you is going up in it too. Once they have filled their bellies and put a roof over their heads, people want more of what Fred Hirsch, an economist who worked on this newspaper in the 1950s and 1960s, called “positional goods”. Only one person can be the richest tycoon. Not everyone can own a Matisse or a flat in Mayfair. As wealth grows, the competition for such status symbols only becomes more intense."

People yearn for a sense of moral purpose. In a world preoccupied with consumerism and petty self-interest, that gives life dignity. People want to determine how the world works, not always to be determined by it. It means that people’s behaviour should be shaped not by who is most powerful, or by who stands to lose and gain, but by what is right despite the costs. Moral sensibility is why people will suffer for their beliefs, and why acts of principled self-sacrifice are so powerful.

And it is not just that material progress does not seem to be delivering the emotional goods. People also fear that mankind is failing to manage it properly—with the result that, in important ways, their children may not be better off than they are. The forests are disappearing; the ice is melting; social bonds are crumbling; privacy is eroding; life is becoming a dismal slog in an ugly world.

So if progress makes a nation richer as a whole, but some grow richer much faster than others, is that progress desirable? Here I will add a definition of capital allocation nearly everyone will agree with : Capital allocation is efficient if I get more of it. ;) Thus, most people will not mind inequality as long as they're on the side that owns more wealth and income, me included. After all, capital should be in my hands because I'm a better capital allocator than others - money can be used for the progress of society if allocated properly to sustainable energy, better education, better roads, facilities and public transport. The ~~government~~ capital allocators in Sarawak seem to be spending capital on mansions, yachts, and 40 cars per person!

Sarawak Maju Dalam Malaysia

2009-12-23T23:22:00.004+08:00

It's nice to have been referred to the website of Sarawak's Chief Minister recently. I've been reading with interest many news articles about the Pehin Sri's speeches and statements. All I can say is he's got a good command of English, unlike former Minister for Information Zainuddin Mydin, who blustered his way onto al-Jazeera news last year with famous statements like "You think that we Pakistan, we are Burma, we are Myanmar!" and "You-you-you-you are here with the idea, you are trying to project, what is your mind!".

In particular his welcome message on that website states "Selamat Datang and welcome to my homepage. At this site, you will be able to read my speeches on numerous occasions, and I welcome any comments you may have on them." I think "any comments" is quite generous since some of the comments may not be so nice.

"Whatever hardships and difficulties we have been through all these years, we still remain united in facing the rough and tumble of everyday challenges in our daily lives. Such trials and tribulations can only cement and solidify our stance each day of our lives. Without the peace, unity and tranquility prevailing in our society today, Sarawak would have gone down a different path and history would have adjudged us differently."

If anyone's life hasn't been rough-and-tumble, it's probably his. A quick check on Google Maps shows his residence to be a palace on several acres, with a yacht and a helicopter (not always parked there, though) to boot. I remember a time when Pehin flew to Switzerland to check on his teeth, implying there are no good dentists in Sarawak; also, former prime minister of Malaysia, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, flew to Kuching shortly after he became prime minister, and allegedly left Kuching with 2 briefcases (something tells me they're not filled with briefs).

As long as he is Chief Minister, I recommend that Sarawakians buy shares in CMS Berhad, which stands for ~~Chief Minister and Sons~~ Cahya Mata Sarawak. It's going to be a monopoly on industry in Sarawak for some time still. Reportedly even the rubbish in Sarawak belongs to him!

That website ought to be fun ;)

Gold Bullion

2009-12-16T14:21:00.004+08:00

Just recently, gold prices hit an all-time nominal (but not real) high of US$1225 per ounce. 1 ounce is 31 grams, so that's about US$40 a gram - or RM145. Indeed, there are 1kg gold bars going for RM147k in some goldsmith shops in Kuching. There's a lot of speculation about gold prices now, with the economy going bad and all that. If you bought gold 10 years ago, you'd have quadrupled your money in just 10 years.

But a pure economist would argue that gold yields nothing. Apart from its price appreciation, it yields no return. Bonds pay coupons; equities provide dividends. But in the current environment of extremely low interest rates, the opportunity cost of holding gold is very low.

People (being silly humans) buy it or "invest" in it because they think the price is going to go up. Gold has not much use, other than as a circuit metal in certain electronics parts. But we certainly don't need 30,000 tonnes of it (total world central bank holdings) to sustain production of electronics. The demand comes primarily from jewellery connoiseurs and consumers.

That could change as soon as central banks start raising rates, which will increase the attractiveness of bonds or even cash. Gold, in normal interest rate circumstances, is a pretty expensive asset to hold - it costs money in vault fees and insurance premiums. Take the following excerpt about Warren Buffett's comments on gold:

Warren Buffett, the legendary investor who has been a gold agnostic over the years, once said that bullion had “no utility”. He added: “Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it.” Mr Buffett’s conclusion: “Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

Investors, bankers, analysts and traders have yet to agree on what is gold’s fair value. Conventional methods applied to other commodities, such as crude oil or copper, to reach a valuation fail with gold. One critical piece of data needed to value commodities is inventories – and in the case of gold those are plentiful. The world’s central banks keep in their vaults 29,700 tonnes of gold, enough to meet global demand – as measured by last year’s consumption – for the next seven and a half years. Other analysts rely on arbitrary ratios between gold and oil or the S&P 500 index.

From the supply side, gold mines worldwide are drying up - espcially the main ones like South Africa, Canada, and Australia. The same can be said about oil, though, where peak production is expected to arrive in 2020. So does the proverb aurum protestas est still ring true?

Continuity

2009-12-14T12:18:00.003+08:00

I'm reading a section about the formal definition of the continuity of functions, and it's certainly overly rigorous. However, it does make ~~you~~me think about certain issues.

If one second of sleep doesn't matter, I could sleep one second less than I did the night before, and after 10 years I'd be sleeping one year less than I usually do. So when I reach the age of 80, I probably won't have to sleep at all.

What's in expiry dates? If a loaf of bread can last 5 days, why not 5 days and one minute?

If the minimum wage is RM4 per hour, why not RM4.05?

There's plenty of continuity involved here, and ~~breadmakers~~policymakers certainly sound like they know a lot every time they set standards, but in reality they don't know better than mathematicians about economic trade-offs. In fact, there's no rigorous justification for most of the standards set in life, which certainly makes you think a lot. We should all just follow our intuition, shouldn't we?

Durians at 10th Mile

2009-12-13T21:24:00.007+08:00

Today I went to visit my late grandfather's grave at 10th Mile (in Kuching, we use terms like 15th Mile and 22nd Mile - they just mean that the place is 15 miles or 22 miles south from the city centre. Heading in all other directions, you get conventional place names). It took about 20 minutes to drive there, so it is rather far from my house by Kuching standards. Luckily, it isn't KL, or I might have taken 3 hours. My late grandfather liked Coke in his lifetime and would drink it nearly every day, so we put a can of Coke at his grave. I would like to have a copy of Financial Times and Economist, and some sushi/sashimi at my grave when the time comes.

My dad, who was driving, took an alternative route back and we came back through Tabuan Jaya. I have much to learn about Kuching's rural areas, apparently. I saw lots of villages I'd never seen before in the drive-around. Looks like much of the forests around Kuching have been decimated for timber a while ago, as the secondary forests are quite thick. Some mountains have also been levelled, and there are things like "CMS Clinkers" used to produce cement, and "CMS Quarry", which is a huge sprawling quarry at 15th Mile (pop quiz: what does CMS stand for?). Seems like Sarawak's wealth has nearly been totally purged ~~and transferred to the coffers of the Emperor of Sarawak, or spent on a few hotels in London, Adelaide, Shenzhen, and New York~~. In fact, it's an open secret that half of Sarawak belongs to one person - he should really be listed on Forbes as it would do Sarawak proud. But it does make you angry that billion of ringgit of land and resources have been expropriated and there are still so many poor villages in Sarawak. It's ironic that Sarawak is still the most backward state although it has a fountain of resources. The paradox of plenty.

But is was good to see the countryside; we certainly need more nature as we develop. I'm tired of seeing unsustainable cities and concrete jungles (e.g. Kuala Lumpur, although the capital has room for significant greening improvements a la Singapore). We have to have more green lungs and verdure. At the very least Sarawak is using dams to generate most of its energy, although building dams like Bakun involved inflated costs. The future is surely sustainability. In addition, Sarawak's forests should be slowly replanted so that a natural equilibrium habitat of rainforests like that during the pre-colonial era is achieved. ~~This is why I should be the emperor instead of the man with white hair.~~

Anyhow, we stopped to buy durians along the road at 10th Mile. Apparently, the best durians are those in which holes have been bitten by squirrels, because the squirrels have a better sense of smell and they know which durians are best. So my dad picked two durians with holes in them, and his point was proven when we opened them at home. I also had fun opening durians with the cleaver. At 10th Mile my mom also stopped at UNACO to buy some household items and give my classmate's supermarket some business. Well, her family's supermarket at the very least!

Also, another tactic to earn money in Sarawak - buy a mountain, level it, and sell the soil. I think Kok Ming will find that it sounds familiar ;)

What's more, I'm meeting Nicholas for breakfast Tuesday. He doesn't know about Kuching's most famous breakfast spots (surprising, I thought that should be me since I'm the mathmo), so I'm going to give him a hand, starting with laksa/Taiwan-style beef noodles/kolo mee/roti kahwin at Loong Siang Yen near my house. The Kuching food trail hasn't ended!

Productivity Ramped

2009-12-12T09:11:00.003+08:00

Today was absolutely productive (so far):

3am-3.05am Get up, brush teeth, drink 500ml of water.
3.05am - 3.10am Grab toast with honey.
3.10am - 5.30am Read some Analysis and Numbers and Sets (my Cambridge math courses).
5.30am - 6.00am Fruit juice followed by jambu (fruits) fried eggs and more honey on toast. What's more, prepared it myself.
6.00am - 6.45am Read Economist and Financial Times (and realised how much better these publications are than any Malaysian newspaper).
6.55am - 8am Jogging at Sama Jaya Family Park with my sister. Chatted about everything from neo-Gothic and postmodern architecture, social and public policy, poverty, and university life. Sure's good to catch up with family.
8.10am - 8.40am 3rd breakfast at Siang Siang Food Court, Tabuan Jaya.
8.50am - 9.30am Surfing internet, blogging, and doing more research on Mobius Groups, the Riemann sphere, and infinite cardinalities.

I must say I'd like to keep the ball rolling!

Jetlagged

2009-12-11T05:01:00.003+08:00

I thought the jetlag was over because I felt perfectly fine yesterday.. until I spent 4 hours tossing and turning in bed from 11.50pm yesterday night. So I decided to stuff it and sleep later when I get tired - and use the Internet for a bit. Might as well read Economist/FT or check out some of those books on my reading list on Google Books. This means I've gotten about 18 hours of meaningful sleep in 4 days - sounds like very little; I don't know how long this can go on for. ~~Hopefully I'm evolving into a human being that doesn't need sleep.~~

It just crossed my mind that if they find a drug (with no side effects) that could replace our sleep, we would have so much more time for all other things - more time to do work, eat, and have some fun. But that would depend on whether the individual values time awake more than time asleep relative to how much money one minute of his time is worth. Mathematical, I know - but this is inherently the "right" way to look at things!

So far, Animal Spirits seems to be very good. At this point the layman will ask what on earth I'm doing at 5am reading an Economics book - the answer is I value reading it more than time spent in bed. Time is relative and the beneficial ways we should spend it are all different.

Just 6 hours ago, I was watching Heroes/Criminal Minds. The former seems to have become a bit draggy and disappointing, but there's still good philosophy in it. Criminal Minds always offers some psychological analysis and insights, so I don't mind watching it even if the crimes become repetitive after a while. Sure beats stuff like One Tree Hill, for instance.

Oh, and another reason why I should adjust to getting less sleep is in case I become an investment banker (although they're the scum of the earth). I read something about a day in the life of an investment banker once. His friend randomly called him at 3am on Wednesday because he was drunk.

Friend: Wow, you're still awake?
Banker: Of course.. do you know what time it is in Tokyo? It's 3pm!
Friend: Okay.. what time do you sleep?

At this point, people usually say "4am to 9am" or something like that.

Banker: Sunday.

Readjustment

2009-12-10T22:17:00.002+08:00

I'm getting used to Kuching's weather again after 2 months in Cambridge - and I must say i'm doing very well. I didn't have difficulty breathing, don't feel too hot and my jetlag was over today. To be fair, the weather was rainy for the past 3 days so the transition was made easier.

Also, there's that small-city feeling again. Kuching is such a small place that at virtually restaurant I go to, I see someone I know. Last night I met ex-classmate Michael Wong while dining at Chef@Home, and tonight I met ex-classmate Vanessa while dining at a new Chinese restaurant with my family. I have to reiterate that I'm fonder of small, tight-knit communities rather than bigger cities (the obvious example being KL) although they offer all the amenities. Big (and disorganised) cities with tall buildings and no greenery kind of give me claustrophobia. Most teenagers my age would like big cities because of the clubbing and entertainment offered, but I'll stick with being anti-establishment.

I'm also checking out the FT Books of the Year list 2009 so that I can pick up a good book or two for my plane ride back to London on the 28th. Needless to say, I won't be going into fiction for obvious reasons. So it'll mostly be history, politics, finance, and economics - time, as always, to go into some grown-up stuff!

That said, I'm going to start on my holiday homework soon so that my Director of Studies won't look at me askance when I next meet him. Cheers.

Kuching sweet Kuching

2009-12-09T09:09:00.004+08:00

I must say it's a pleasure to be back again, albeit for a short while! One of the first things I did was to eat some beef noodles in Loong Siang Yen, which is 5 minutes' walk from my house. Then there was dinner yesterday at Magenta with Dex, Cas, Kai Lun, Mike (+ guest), Khang Wee and Danny. Initially Dexter and Kai Lun were going to drive to a deserted alley and beat me up for a bit to beat the English accent out of me :O After one dinner my accent became Malaysian enough, apparently. Or perhaps it's Kuching-enough: the accent in Peninsular Malaysia is surely a little different.

And breakfast today (kolo mee/Sarawak laksa/u jak kueh) with Yitian and the same gang except Mike, with Kai Lun, who's leaving for Singapore (again) at 12pm later. Looks like I'll see him again next year. As can be expected of any breakfast with Yitian and Kai Lun, this breakfast was infused with innuendo.. milkshakes, No Apologies, and South Park. I have yet to get nasi lemak and kaya toast, but that's lined up over the next few days. Kuching food is just unparalleled - one Su Lin has asked me 3 times whether i'm coming to KL anytime soon so that she can have kolo mee :P But to be fair, KL has plenty of good food as well, but it overwhelmingly tends to be more pricey and uppity. Hereby I shall cease to condemn KL as an agglomeration of a decadent future, though, lest Elyse Ong bash me for it :P She's made a point about attachment to the people, and they make up the city - I have good friends in KL now, especially most of my "family" in Cambridge.

It's amazing how cheap everything is when you convert to pounds. Breakfast cost me 90p today. All told, it's good to be back home, see old friends, and have the solitude of my garden again (except for the mosquitoes). Also, Yitian is moving to my neighbourhood! But his house will only be ready in 2 years' time. Kenny Hill is slowly becoming a Lodgian community, I think.

I'm still a little jetlagged, but I'm aiming to be restored to normalcy today. Part of the jetlag was because I slept 2 hours that night in London - and spent the rest of the night talking to Ruben, Greg, and Elyse about all things under the sun. It was an interesting conversation though, as it always is with the Khazanah gang. Over Ben and Jerry's Phish Food, we spent 5 hours talking about overpopulation, economics, law, the meaning of life, ambitions, job security, and countably, though numerous many other things. We also played bridge and added Ruben and Elyse to the bridging community (that is, assuming one exists)! Dinner earlier that night was in Gold Mine, and for a hefty 11 pounds we got a darn good, damn nice meal. More interesting conversation with Su Lin, Dhruva, Jia Hui, and Ruben. Greg and Elyse turned up late ~~for obvious reasons~~ due to Tube problems.

Now I have some work to wrap up during this holiday - my Director of Studies in Cambridge has asked me to do some revision every day. I am compelled to get at least a Second Class Upper for the first year, so I will heed that advice, while not forgetting to spend some personal time doing the things that matter. Maybe I should blog more, but I don't feel like doing so if I have no inspiration - writing about banal things is nearly a crime. I think I'm starting to get writer's block after a month of no reading and too much math. At least I'm third on Elyse's weirdness list!

Home!

2009-12-05T06:21:00.003+08:00

And finally, term is over (proper sentences don't start with "and", but spare me this round). Today's lunch was an end-of-term lunch cum Joel's birthday celebration at La Margherita. I forgot to take pictures of the food, but it was sure damn nice. I had an insalata di tonno e fagioli (tuna salad) and sphagetti alla Puttanesca. It was damn nice, as most Italian food usually is. Only thing is I probably won't visit this restaurant too often because it's too far from Peterhouse - I don't have much time to waste on eating in Cambridge! The food was decent and the ambience quiet - good for friends to catch up I guess. Dinner, of course, was in Peterhouse with Sing Yue. It's also my last dinner in Peterhouse Hall for Michaelmas. Thereafter we went to my room and to his room at Downing College to have a chat about politics, business, KL, Kuching, and finish up some wine with orange juice.

Now, there's packing, so my next entry will most probably be when i'm back in Kuching. I can already smell kolo mee, laksa, and nice home-cooked food - the gastronomic works.

Have a bloody good December, y'all!

The End is Near!

2009-11-23T21:17:00.004+08:00

The long break in blogging (well, not so long given that I took a half-year break once) can be attributed to a backlog of lecture notes and examples sheets. I have some catch-up to do in differential equations and Groups, but otherwise (I think) I'm doing fine.

On the 16th of November there was an interesting formal dinner with all the past and present mathematicians of Peterhouse - and it's quite "lively" when you gather 35 mathematicians together for a night of drinks and good food. Needless to say, the conversation was all very productive. We all had to toast something (or someone), during the dinner, and I toasted differential equations. After that dinner, we retreated to Johannes' room and played some chess and Go. Our supervisor Sean Lip joined us, and it turns out he's the past president of the Cambridge University Chess Club and also an expert chess player. He was also initially interested in financial mathematics/financial markets when he first came to Cambridge - so I'm actually facing the same situation as him now. Perhaps I will do a PhD in cosmology next time..
But that aside, he's still a very good chess player, even with 4 years' lack of practice.

And the good news is I have a string of Christmas halls coming up! There's one at Trinity on the 30th, New Hall on the 2nd (hosted by Yvonne), and Peterhouse's own one on the 3rd of December. Collectively that will cost about 50 pounds, but that's certainly a good investment for the end of term since there's plenty of wine, champagne, and port to go around.

Otherwise, life is doing fine, the people are great, and the end of term is coming up! A good break is what I deserve after breakneck-speed-lectures and countless daunting problems.

I must now finish off some problem sets and have some wine while I'm at it! :)

Efficiency

2009-11-10T03:15:00.004+08:00

Yesterday afternoon was a productive session with 6 other mathmos, where we discussed the recent Groups lectures in the room of one Giorgos Artavanis. It was full of humour as well as the same symbol "phi" was used to refer to many different things - a mappng, a permutation, and and image of an element under a permutation. I'm glad to say I emerged from that session less confused. Dr Zsak, our Groups supervisor, is glad we're meeting up to discuss though.

I have been stressing on efficiency and transaction costs over the last few dinners with the mathmos - in particular I refused to go to the University Library for an hour the other day because it's a 20 minute walk from Peterhouse. The walk there and back will therefore cost 40 minutes (and time = money, by the way). If I spend an hour at the library, then 60% of that time is transportation cost, which seems unreasonable in my opinion. I only accept an activity as "efficient" if the benefits gained (improvement in my mental facility, knowledge, etc) minus my transport costs and other transaction costs are positive - in general my guideline is that I expect transport cost/time to be no more than 10% of my intended activity time, with some flexibility.

Giorgos and Johannes in fact argued that the reward could be infinite, since you don't know what books or "treasures" are to be found at the library, but I think that Google is the best way to find any publication or book you're after nowadays. We shall return to that debate again soon, but you see my point. Thus, I have refused to go to badminton, since it's a 30 minute walk there and back and badminton for 2 hours means a 25% transaction cost.

But that's not the only thing mathmos talk about.

Giorgos: I can't wait to get back to Greece to eat some real food. English food is just..
Me: What's Greek food like?
Giorgos: It's.. tasty!
Me: Well, English food is tasty too, right?
Giorgos: Yes - bad taste.

Time for some Bridge and Go!

Nottingham Malaysian Games

2009-11-01T23:38:00.005+08:00

I spent yesterday playing chess for the Cambridge University Malaysian Society at the annual Nottingham Malaysian Games - and got a 4th place, which is quite decent, I guess. Then again it was lightning chess, and skills get sacrificed for intense alertness in these quick games. You might say that a quick chess game is no good indicator of real chess skills or strategies. A 4-hour game over coffee is best if you really want to know how good a player is. As they sometimes say, you don't truly know a person until you play a long game of chess with him (if he refuses a game, well - that says even more about him). However, most of the players were good at fast chess, and the organisers were impressed at the level of play.

Anyway, I also met lots of old friends at the event - e.g. Ruben, Seira, and Marianne, and made plenty of new ones as well. It was also good to have some Malaysian food for a day. I had two nasi lemaks for lunch and post-lunch, and some satays. Apparently the event made lots of profits because that's thousands of students, and everyone spends about 5 to 6 pounds on average at the event. Assuming a profit of 2 pounds for every 6 spent, that's easily close to ten thousand quid. What's more, it's a monopoly as it's an official annual Malaysian event and most Malaysians want to come down and don't mind spending the money. Then again.. money's not always a concern, eh?

Now i'm back in Cambridge and catching up on some work, in particular, a thorny differential equations problem about snowploughing. Also, it's time to revisit Mr Soros's landmark lectures!

The General Theory of Reflexivity

2009-10-28T03:15:00.007+08:00

At the Central European University (and video-conferenced life to the London School of Economics) on the 26th of October 2009, George Soros spoke about his philosophical theory, the general theory of reflexivity. I found this concept interesting when I first read about it because I already had some notion of it when I began to study economics - I suspected that something was wrong with the foundations of all orthodox economic theory.

As ~~every worthy being~~ nearly everyone knows, Soros is "the man who broke the Bank of England", and he made a couple of billion dollars in the current financial crisis. Malaysians would also know that former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir and Soros share mutual dislike for each other - Mahathir accused Soros of speculating on the ringgit and causing Malaysia economic harm in the Asian financial crisis of 1997 (in fact, Mahathir and Soros called each other "moron" and "idiot" at back-to-back speeches in Hong Kong in the late 1990s). However, Mahathir has since acknowledged that Soros is innocent. Mahathir is against currency speculation, a practice which he maintains, destroys economies; Soros defends currency speculators as market participants who operate within the rules of the financial markets. At this point, I take no sides.

Soros's famous books include and The Alchemy of Finance and A New Paradigm for Financial Markets, of which I am a proud owner. The Soros lectures transcripts and videos are also available from the FT here. Combining the philosophies of Warren Buffett and George Soros and reading Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World might be about one of the best things you can do to succeed in an uncertain financial world.

I must hail this a landmark lecture - probably to be placed on the same throne as Barack Obama's Inauguration Speech or Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

The full text of the speech is below:

In the course of my life, I have developed a conceptual framework which has helped me both to make money as a hedge fund manager and to spend money as a policy oriented philanthropist. But the framework itself is not about money, it is about the relationship between thinking and reality, a subject that has been extensively studied by philosophers from early on.

I started developing my philosophy as a student at the London School of Economics in the late 1950s. I took my final exams one year early and I had a year to fill before I was qualified to receive my degree. I could choose my tutor and I chose Karl Popper, the Viennese-born philosopher whose book The Open Society and Its Enemies had made a profound impression on me.

In his books Popper argued that the empirical truth cannot be known with absolute certainty. Even scientific laws can’t be verified beyond a shadow of a doubt: they can only be falsified by testing. One failed test is enough to falsify, but no amount of conforming instances is sufficient to verify. Scientific laws are hypothetical in character and their truth remains subject to testing. Ideologies which claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth are making a false claim; therefore, they can be imposed on society only by force. This applies to Communism, Fascism and National Socialism alike. All these ideologies lead to repression. Popper proposed a more attractive form of social organization: an open society in which people are free to hold divergent opinions and the rule of law allows people with different views and interests to live together in peace. Having lived through both Nazi and Communist occupation here in Hungary I found the idea of an open society immensely attractive.

While I was reading Popper I was also studying economic theory and I was struck by the contradiction between Popper’s emphasis on imperfect understanding and the theory of perfect competition in economics which postulated perfect knowledge. This led me to start questioning the assumptions of economic theory. These were the two major theoretical inspirations of my philosophy. It is also deeply rooted in my personal history.

The formative experience of my life was the German occupation of Hungary in 1944. I was not yet fourteen years old at the time, coming from a reasonably well-to-do middle class background, suddenly confronted with the prospect of being deported and killed just because I was Jewish.

Fortunately my father was well prepared for this far-from-equilibrium experience. He had lived through the Russian Revolution and that was the formative experience of his life. Until then he had been an ambitious young man. When the First World War broke out, he volunteered to serve in the Austro-Hungarian army. He was captured by the Russians and taken as a prisoner of war to Siberia. Being ambitious, he became the editor of a newspaper produced by the prisoners. It was handwritten and displayed on a plank and it was called The Plank. This made him so popular that he was elected the prisoners’ representative. Then some soldiers escaped from a neighboring camp, and their prisoners’ representative was shot in retaliation. My father, instead of waiting for the same thing to happen in his camp, organized a group and led a breakout. His plan was to build a raft and sail down to the ocean, but his knowledge of geography was deficient; he did not know that all the rivers in Siberia flow into the Arctic Sea. They drifted for several weeks before they realized that they were heading for the Arctic, and it took them several more months to make their way back to civilization across the taiga. In the meantime, the Russian Revolution broke out, and they became caught up in it. Only after a variety of adventures did my father manage to find his way back to Hungary; had he remained in the camp, he would have arrived home much sooner.

My father came home a changed man. His experiences during the Russian Revolution profoundly affected him. He lost his ambition and wanted nothing more from life than to enjoy it. He imparted to his children values that were very different from those of the milieu in which we lived. He had no desire to amass wealth or become socially prominent. On the contrary, he worked only as much as was necessary to make ends meet. I remember being sent to his main client to borrow some money before we went on a ski vacation; my father was grouchy for weeks afterwards because he had to work to pay it back. Although we were reasonably prosperous, we were not the typical bourgeois family, and we were proud of being different.

In 1944, when the Germans occupied Hungary, my father immediately realized that these were not normal times and the normal rules didn’t apply. He arranged false identities for his family and a number of other people. Those who could, paid; others he helped for free. Most of them survived. That was his finest hour.

* * *

Living with false identity turned out to be an exhilarating experience for me too. We were in mortal danger. People perished all around us, but we managed not only to survive but to help other people. We were on the side of the angels, and we triumphed against overwhelming odds. This made me feel very special. It was high adventure. I had a reliable guide in my father and came through unscathed. What more could a fourteen-year-old ask for?

After the euphoric experience of escaping the Nazis, life in Hungary started to lose its luster during the Soviet occupation. I was looking for new challenges and with my father’s help I found my way out of Hungary. When I was seventeen I became a student in London. In my studies, my primary interest was to gain a better understanding of the strange world into which I had been born, but I have to confess, I also harbored some fantasies of becoming an important philosopher. I believed that I had gained insights that set me apart from other people.

Living in London was a big letdown. I was without money, alone, and people were not interested in what I had to say. But I didn’t abandon my philosophical ambitions even when circumstances forced me to make a living in more mundane pursuits. After completing my studies, I had a number of false starts. Finally I ended up as an arbitrage trader in New York but in my free time I continued to work on my philosophy.

That is how I came to write my first major essay, entitled “The Burden of Consciousness.” It was an attempt to model Popper’s framework of open and closed societies. It linked organic society with a traditional mode of thinking, closed society with a dogmatic mode and open society with a critical mode. What I could not properly resolve was the nature of the relationship between the mode of thinking and the actual state of affairs. That problem continued to preoccupy me and that is how I came to develop the concept of reflexivity—a concept I shall explore in greater detail a little later.

It so happened that the concept of reflexivity provided me with a new way of looking at financial markets, a better way than the prevailing theory. This gave me an edge, first as a securities analyst and then as a hedge fund manager. I felt as if I were in possession of a major discovery that would enable me to fulfill my fantasy of becoming an important philosopher. At a certain moment when my business career ran into a roadblock I shifted gears and devoted all my energies to developing my philosophy. But I treasured my discovery so much that I could not part with it. I felt that the concept of reflexivity needed to be explored in depth. As I delved deeper and deeper into the subject I got lost in the intricacies of my own constructions. One morning I could not understand what I had written the night before. At that point I decided to abandon my philosophical explorations and to focus on making money. It was only many years later, after a successful run as a hedge fund manager, that I returned to my philosophy.

I published my first book, The Alchemy of Finance, in 1987. In that book I tried to explain the philosophical underpinnings of my approach to financial markets. The book attracted a certain amount of attention. It has been read by most people in the hedge fund industry and it is taught in business schools but the philosophical arguments did not make much of an impression. They were largely dismissed as the conceit of a man who has been successful in business and fancied himself as a philosopher.

I myself came to doubt whether I was in possession of a major new insight. After all I was dealing with a subject that has been explored by philosophers since time immemorial. What grounds did I have for thinking that I had made a new discovery, especially as nobody else seemed to think so? Undoubtedly the conceptual framework was useful to me personally but it did not seem to be considered equally valuable by others. I had to accept their judgment. I didn’t give up my philosophical interests, but I came to regard them as a personal predilection. I continued to be guided by my conceptual framework both in my business and in my philanthropic activities—which came to assume an increasingly important role in my life—and each time I wrote a book I faithfully recited my arguments. This helped me to develop my conceptual framework, but I continued to consider myself a failed philosopher. Once I even gave a lecture with the title “A Failed Philosopher Tries Again.”

All this has changed as a result of the financial crisis of 2008. My conceptual framework enabled me both to anticipate the crisis and to deal with it when it finally struck. It has also enabled me to explain and predict events better than most others. This has changed my own evaluation and that of many others. My philosophy is no longer a personal matter; it deserves to be taken seriously as a possible contribution to our understanding of reality. That is what has prompted me to give this series of lectures.

* * *

So here it goes. Today I shall explain the concepts of fallibility and reflexivity in general terms. Tomorrow I shall apply them to the financial markets and after that, to politics. That will also bring in the concept of open society. In the fourth lecture I shall explore the difference between market values and moral values, and in the fifth I shall offer some predictions and prescriptions for the present moment in history.

* * *

I can state the core idea in two relatively simple propositions. One is that in situations that have thinking participants, the participants’ view of the world is always partial and distorted. That is the principle of fallibility. The other is that these distorted views can influence the situation to which they relate because false views lead to inappropriate actions. That is the principle of reflexivity. For instance, treating drug addicts as criminals creates criminal behavior. It misconstrues the problem and interferes with the proper treatment of addicts. As another example, declaring that government is bad tends to make for bad government.

Both fallibility and reflexivity are sheer common sense. So when my critics say that I am merely stating the obvious, they are right—but only up to a point. What makes my propositions interesting is that their significance has not been generally appreciated. The concept of reflexivity, in particular, has been studiously avoided and even denied by economic theory. So my conceptual framework deserves to be taken seriously—not because it constitutes a new discovery but because something as commonsensical as reflexivity has been so studiously ignored.

Recognizing reflexivity has been sacrificed to the vain pursuit of certainty in human affairs, most notably in economics, and yet, uncertainty is the key feature of human affairs. Economic theory is built on the concept of equilibrium, and that concept is in direct contradiction with the concept of reflexivity. As I shall show in the next lecture, the two concepts yield two entirely different interpretations of financial markets.

The concept of fallibility is far less controversial. It is generally recognized that the complexity of the world in which we live exceeds our capacity to comprehend it. I have no great new insights to offer. The main source of difficulties is that participants are part of the situation they have to deal with. Confronted by a reality of extreme complexity we are obliged to resort to various methods of simplification—generalizations, dichotomies, metaphors, decision-rules, moral precepts, to mention just a few. These mental constructs take on an existence of their own, further complicating the situation.

The structure of the brain is another source of distortions. Recent advances in brain science have begun to provide some insight into how the brain functions, and they have substantiated Hume’s contention that reason is the slave of passion. The idea of a disembodied intellect or reason is a figment of our imagination.

The brain is bombarded by millions of sensory impulses but consciousness can process only seven or eight subjects concurrently. The impulses need to be condensed, ordered and interpreted under immense time pressure, and mistakes and distortions can’t be avoided. Brain science adds many new details to my original contention that our understanding of the world in which we live is inherently imperfect.

* * *

The concept of reflexivity needs a little more explication. It applies exclusively to situations that have thinking participants. The participants’ thinking serves two functions. One is to understand the world in which we live; I call this the cognitive function. The other is to change the situation to our advantage. I call this the participating or manipulative function. The two functions connect thinking and reality in opposite directions. In the cognitive function, reality is supposed to determine the participants’ views; the direction of causation is from the world to the mind. By contrast, in the manipulative function, the direction of causation is from the mind to the world, that is to say, the intentions of the participants have an effect on the world. When both functions operate at the same time they can interfere with each other.

How? By depriving each function of the independent variable that would be needed to determine the value of the dependent variable. Because, when the independent variable of one function is the dependent variable of the other, neither function has a genuinely independent variable. This means that the cognitive function can’t produce enough knowledge to serve as the basis of the participants’ decisions. Similarly, the manipulative function can have an effect on the outcome, but can’t determine it. In other words, the outcome is liable to diverge from the participants’ intentions. There is bound to be some slippage between intentions and actions and further slippage between actions and outcomes. As a result, there is an element of uncertainty both in our understanding of reality and in the actual course of events.

To understand the uncertainties associated with reflexivity, we need to probe a little further. If the cognitive function operated in isolation without any interference from the manipulative function it could produce knowledge. Knowledge is represented by true statements. A statement is true if it corresponds to the facts—that is what the correspondence theory of truth tells us. But if there is interference from the manipulative function, the facts no longer serve as an independent criterion by which the truth of a statement can be judged because the correspondence may have been brought about by the statement changing the facts.

Consider the statement, “it is raining.” That statement is true or false depending on whether it is, in fact, raining. Now consider the statement, “This is a revolutionary moment.” That statement is reflexive, and its truth value depends on the impact it makes.

Reflexive statements have some affinity with the paradox of the liar, which is a self-referential statement. But while self-reference has been extensively analyzed, reflexivity has received much less attention. This is strange, because reflexivity has an impact on the real world, while self-reference is purely a linguistic phenomenon.

In the real world, the participants’ thinking finds expression not only in statements but also, of course, in various forms of action and behavior. That makes reflexivity a very broad phenomenon that typically takes the form of feedback loops. The participants’ views influence the course of events, and the course of events influences the participants’ views. The influence is continuous and circular; that is what turns it into a feedback loop.

Reflexive feedback loops have not been rigorously analyzed and when I originally encountered them and tried to analyze them, I ran into various complications. The feedback loop is supposed to be a two-way connection between the participant’s views and the actual course of events. But what about a two-way connection between the participants’ views? And what about a solitary individual asking himself who he is and what he stands for and changing his behavior as a result of his reflections? In trying to resolve these difficulties I got so lost among the categories I created that one morning I couldn’t understand what I had written the night before. That’s when I gave up philosophy and devoted my efforts to making money.

To avoid that trap let me propose the following terminology. Let us distinguish between the objective and subjective aspects of reality. Thinking constitutes the subjective aspect, events the objective aspect. In other words, the subjective aspect covers what takes place in the minds of the participants, the objective aspect denotes what takes place in external reality. There is only one external reality but many different subjective views. Reflexivity can then connect any two or more aspects of reality, setting up two-way feedback loops between them. Exceptionally it may even occur with a single aspect of reality, as in the case of a solitary individual reflecting on his own identity. This may be described as “self-reflexivity.” We may then distinguish between two broad categories: reflexive relationships which connect the subjective aspects and reflexive events which involve the objective aspect. Marriage is a reflexive relationship; the Crash of 2008 was a reflexive event. When reality has no subjective aspect, there can be no reflexivity.

* * *

Feedback loops can be either negative or positive. Negative feedback brings the participants’ views and the actual situation closer together; positive feedback drives them further apart. In other words, a negative feedback process is self-correcting. It can go on forever and if there are no significant changes in external reality, it may eventually lead to an equilibrium where the participants’ views come to correspond to the actual state of affairs. That is what is supposed to happen in financial markets. So equilibrium, which is the central case in economics, turns out to be an extreme case of negative feedback, a limiting case in my conceptual framework.

By contrast, a positive feedback process is self-reinforcing. It cannot go on forever because eventually the participants’ views would become so far removed from objective reality that the participants would have to recognize them as unrealistic. Nor can the iterative process occur without any change in the actual state of affairs, because it is in the nature of positive feedback that it reinforces whatever tendency prevails in the real world. Instead of equilibrium, we are faced with a dynamic disequilibrium or what may be described as far-from-equilibrium conditions. Usually in far-from-equilibrium situations the divergence between perceptions and reality leads to a climax which sets in motion a positive feedback process in the opposite direction. Such initially self-reinforcing but eventually self-defeating boom-bust processes or bubbles are characteristic of financial markets, but they can also be found in other spheres. There, I call them fertile fallacies—interpretations of reality that are distorted, yet produce results which reinforce the distortion.

* * *

I realize that this is all very abstract and difficult to follow. It would make it much easier if I gave some concrete examples. But you will have to bear with me. I want to make a different point and the fact that it is difficult to follow abstract arguments helps me make it. In dealing with subjects like reality or thinking or the relationship between the two, it’s easy to get confused and formulate problems the wrong way. So misinterpretations and misconceptions can play a very important role in human affairs. The recent financial crisis can be attributed to a mistaken interpretation of how financial markets work. I shall discuss that in the next lecture. In the third lecture, I shall discuss two fertile fallacies—the Enlightenment fallacy and the post-modern fallacy. These concrete examples will demonstrate how important misconceptions have been in the course of history. But for the rest of this lecture I shall stay at the lofty heights of abstractions.

I contend that situations that have thinking participants have a different structure from natural phenomena. The difference lies in the role of thinking. In natural phenomena thinking plays no causal role and serves only a cognitive function. In human affairs thinking is part of the subject matter and serves both a cognitive and a manipulative function. The two functions can interfere with each other. The interference does not occur all the time—in everyday activities, like driving a car or painting a house, the two functions actually complement each other—but when it occurs, it introduces an element of uncertainty which is absent from natural phenomena. The uncertainty manifests itself in both functions: the participants’ act on the basis of imperfect understanding and the results of their actions will not correspond to their expectations. That is a key feature of human affairs.

By contrast, in the case of natural phenomena, events unfold irrespective of the views held by the observers. The outside observer is engaged only in the cognitive function and the phenomena provide a reliable criterion by which the truth of the observers’ theories can be judged. So the outside observer can obtain knowledge. Based on that knowledge, nature can be successfully manipulated. There is a natural separation between the cognitive and manipulative functions. Due to their separation, both functions can serve their purpose better than in the human sphere.

At this point, I need to emphasize that reflexivity is not the only source of uncertainty in human affairs. Yes, reflexivity does introduce an element of uncertainty both into the participants views and the actual course of events, but other factors may also have the same effect. For instance, the fact that participants cannot know what the other participants know, is something quite different from reflexivity, yet it is a source of uncertainty in human affairs. The fact that different participants have different interests, some of which may be in conflict with each other, is another source of uncertainty. Moreover, each individual participant may be guided by a multiplicity of values which may not be self-consistent, as Isaiah Berlin pointed out. The uncertainties created by these factors are likely to be even more extensive than those generated by reflexivity. I shall lump them all together and speak of the human uncertainty principle, which is an even broader concept than reflexivity.

The human uncertainty principle I am talking about is much more specific and stringent than the subjective skepticism that pervades Cartesian philosophy. It gives us objective reasons to believe that our perceptions and expectations are—or at least may be—wrong.

Although the primary impact of human uncertainty falls on the participants, it has far-reaching implications for the social sciences. I can explicate them best by invoking Karl Popper’s theory of scientific method. It is a beautifully simple and elegant scheme. It consists of three elements and three operations. The three elements are scientific laws and the initial and final conditions to which those laws apply. The three operations are prediction, explanation, and testing. When the scientific laws are combined with the initial conditions, they provide predictions. When they are combined with the final conditions, they provide explanations. In this sense predictions and explanations are symmetrical and reversible. That leaves testing, where predictions derived from scientific laws are compared with the actual results.

According to Popper, scientific laws are hypothetical in character; they cannot be verified, but they can be falsified by testing. The key to the success of scientific method is that it can test generalizations of universal validity with the help of singular observations. One failed test is sufficient to falsify a theory but no amount of confirming instances is sufficient to verify.

This is a brilliant solution to the otherwise intractable problem: how can science be both empirical and rational? According to Popper it is empirical because we test our theories by observing whether the predictions we derive from them are true, and it is rational because we use deductive logic in doing so. Popper dispenses with inductive logic and relies instead on testing. Generalizations that cannot be falsified, do not qualify as scientific. Popper emphasizes the central role that testing plays in scientific method and establishes a strong case for critical thinking by asserting that scientific laws are only provisionally valid and remain open to reexamination. Thus the three salient features of Popper’s scheme are the symmetry between prediction and explanation, the asymmetry between verification and falsification and the central role of testing. Testing allows science to grow, improve and innovate.

Popper’s scheme works well for the study of natural phenomena but the human uncertainty principle throws a monkey wrench into the supreme simplicity and elegance of Popper’s scheme. The symmetry between prediction and explanation is destroyed because of the element of uncertainty in predictions and the central role of testing is endangered. Should the initial and final conditions include or exclude the participant’s thinking? The question is important because testing requires replicating those conditions. If the participants’ thinking is included, it is difficult to observe what the initial and final conditions are, because the participants’ views can only be inferred from their statements or actions. If it is excluded, the initial and final conditions do not constitute singular observations because the same objective conditions may be associated with very different views held by the participants. In either case, generalizations cannot be properly tested. These difficulties do not preclude social scientists from producing worthwhile generalizations, but they are unlikely to meet the requirements of Popper’s scheme, nor can they match the predictive power of the laws of physics.

Social scientists have found this conclusion hard to accept. Economists in particular suffer from what Sigmund Freud might call “physics envy.”

There have been many attempts to eliminate the difficulties connected with the human uncertainty principle by inventing or postulating some kind of fixed relationship between the participants’ thinking and the actual state of affairs. Karl Marx asserted that the ideological superstructure was determined by the material conditions of production and Freud maintained that people’s behavior was determined by drives and complexes of which they were not even conscious. Both claimed scientific status for their theories although, as Popper pointed out, they cannot be falsified by testing.

But by far the most impressive attempt has been mounted by economic theory. It started out by assuming perfect knowledge and when that assumption turned out to be untenable it went through ever increasing contortions to maintain the fiction of rational behavior. Economics ended up with the theory of rational expectations which maintains that there is a single optimum view of the future, that which corresponds to it, and eventually all the market participants will converge around that view. This postulate is absurd but it is needed in order to allow economic theory to model itself on Newtonian physics.

Interestingly, both Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek recognized, in their famous exchange in the pages of Economica, that the social sciences cannot produce results comparable to physics. Hayek inveighed against the mechanical and uncritical application of the quantitative methods of natural science. He called it scientism. And Karl Popper wrote about “The Poverty of Historicism” where he argued that history is not determined by universally valid scientific laws.

Nevertheless, Popper proclaimed what he called the “doctrine of the unity of method” by which he meant that both natural and social sciences should be judged by the same criteria. And Hayek, of course, became the apostle of the Chicago school of economics where market fundamentalism originated. But as I see it, the implication of the human uncertainty principle is that the subject matter of the natural and social sciences is fundamentally different; therefore they need to develop different methods and they have to be held to different standards. Economic theory should not be expected to produce universally valid laws that can be used reversibly to explain and predict historic events. I contend that the slavish imitation of natural science inevitably leads to the distortion of human and social phenomena. What is attainable in social science falls short of what is attainable in physics.

I am somewhat troubled, however, about drawing too sharp a distinction between natural and social science. Such dichotomies are usually not found in reality; they are introduced by us, in our efforts to make some sense out of an otherwise confusing reality. Indeed while a sharp distinction between physics and social sciences seems justified, there are other sciences, such as biology and the study of animal societies that occupy intermediate positions.

But I had to abandon my reservations and recognize a dichotomy between the natural and social sciences because the social sciences encounter a second difficulty from which the natural sciences are exempt.

And that is that social theories are reflexive. Heisenberg’s discovery of the uncertainty principle did not alter the behavior of quantum particles one iota, but social theories, whether Marxism, market fundamentalism or the theory of reflexivity, can affect the subject matter to which it refers. Scientific method is supposed to be devoted to the pursuit of truth. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle does not interfere with that postulate but the reflexivity of social theories does. Why should social science confine itself to passively studying social phenomena when it can be used to actively change the state of affairs? As I remarked in The Alchemy of Finance, the alchemists made a mistake in trying to change the nature of base metals by incantation. Instead, they should have focused their attention on the financial markets where they could have succeeded.

How could social science be protected against this interference? I propose a simple remedy: recognize a dichotomy between the natural and social sciences. This will ensure that social theories will be judged on their merits and not by a false analogy with natural science. I propose this as a convention for the protection of scientific method, not as a demotion or devaluation of social science. The convention sets no limits on what social science may be able to accomplish. On the contrary, by liberating social science from the slavish imitation of natural science and protecting it from being judged by the wrong standards, it should open up new vistas. It is in this spirit that I shall put forward my interpretation of financial markets tomorrow.

I apologize for dwelling so long in the rarefied realm of abstractions. I promise to come down to earth in my next lecture.

Thank you.

M&A Case Study

2009-10-27T06:13:00.003+08:00

Tonight Johannes and I attended a Mergers and Acquisitions case study workshop held by the Royal Bank of Scotland. It was to do with SABMiller making a decision on acquiring a brewery group in China called Harbin Breweries. We had to consider things like strategic rationale, price to be paid for the acquisition, political roadblocks, synergies achieved, FX risks, and so on. It was really educational.. and the highlight was ~~the excellent goat cheese tarts, crayfish kebabs, Cabernet Sauvignon red wine, and chicken Caesar wraps~~ one of the executives saying "it's a brave thing to stand in front of a crowd and say you're a banker and that you're from RBS, but that's what I'm doing". As Kok Ming says, investment bankers are the scum of the earth - does what they do create much value? It seems they play around with borrowed money (of course that's fine provided there's a risk-reward balance) and dance too much when the music's turned up high.

I should also mention that economist Hyman Minsky theorized that central banks may not be able to control inflation or deflation credibly as a result of the financial sector in the economy being too large. Many people are interested in his theories again as a result of the current financial crisis. Even now, the stock market rally is suspected to be due to excess liquidity in the system due to historically low interest rates from central banks in developed economies (except, recently, Australia). Banks still refuse to make too many loans to each other and to businesses, so that money ends up being used to buy equities in the market. So if the rally is not due to a real about-turn in economic fundamentals, another bubble could burst when governments suddenly raise interest rates. Other ghastly things could also happen, e.g. a bond market breakdown. The US and UK are accumulating dangerously high levels of sovereign debt in order to get through this crisis - ironically, to get out of a crisis which was brought about due to too much spending, they have to spend more.George Soros recently said that investment banks' profits in the current quarter are "gifts from the state" - banks are taking lots of risks with state money and reaping big rewards because of reduced competition. The course of events that follow will be interesting indeed.

Time Lag

2009-10-26T01:48:00.004+08:00

Today British Summer Time ended and England reverted from the GMT +1 time zone to the GMT 0 zone. So we all rolled our clocks back by an hour and now it gets dark at 5pm. The weather's kind of dreary, but at least the sun seems to rise earlier - about 7am. The last few days also haven't been quite so cold! We need only wait for Siberian winds to blow again, though.

Johannes is bringing back a Go board to Cambridge, which means we won't have to walk to Clare College every week from now on. We could also play bridge once in a while - we had a game yesterday night when I taught 3 others how to play. Seems some people here already know how to play contract bridge, which is different from the floating bridge I'm used to playing. It turns out mathematicians really have the same interests - chess, Go, table tennis, and bridge turn out to be favourites. True mental games really tell you a lot about a person though (why is table tennis mental?), so they're all beneficial pastimes.

Lectures and supervisions for math have been somewhat engaging, although I don't always understand everything that goes on in one lecture during the lecture itself. Often I have to go back and read the notes, and maybe organize my lecture notes a little and annotate here and there. But otherwise the examples sheets for the supervisions are really good stuff. For differential equations, my Malaysian supervisor (Sean Lip) actually gave me Exercises for Enthusiasts and some chemistry/physics problems involving entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. All other courses (those being Numbers and Sets, Groups, and Vectors & Matrices) have all dished out the second set of example sheets as well, so I have some 50 math problems (and they're not easy) to occupy me over the next two weeks. Have to appreciate the fact that I only have 2 hours of lectures starting at 10am everyday, I guess.

At the same time i've been stocking up on Lindt and Sprüngli dark chocolates and lots of fruits in order to reduce trips outside to buy snacks in view of the increasingly cold weather. My winter jacket is going to be standard wear from now on!

Go

2009-10-21T00:15:00.005+08:00

Yesterday night I went to Clare College for a social night of Go. In Chinese it's known as weiqi, in Korean, baduk, and in Japanese, igo. It turns out that this game has far simpler rules than chess but far more complicated game trees, which is why the best computer programmes in Go can't beat the best humans (yet). This might just be my new favorite game ahead of chess and bridge although I played for the fifth time in my life last night. The goal in this game is to capture territory and enemy stones - and whoever ends up with more territory and stones wins. That's the gist of it. Sebastian and Qian (both of Peterhouse) also joined me at Clare. Two others from Peterhouse didn't feel well and so didn't come.

This afternoon was spent finishing my Differential Equations Examples Sheet 1 - the last 3 were thorny problems. I will get to meet one Sean Lip Zhao Wen on Thursday and have a chance to pick the brain of this Malaysian, PhD in Cosmology student. And if there's free time, maybe we'll talk about dark matter, the general theory of relativity, and the Hubble constant. I just thought that studying the universe is one of the most profound things you can do! Hat off to the guy.

The highlight of today's math lecture was when the Vectors and Matrices lecturer, Dr Cowley, told us about vectors in complex space and spoke of the real axis and the imaginary axis. Then he said "Here's an example of an Imaginary Axis."

Comic relief during the lecture, but you get the point.

The Cold

2009-10-19T04:30:00.003+08:00

It's biting. It was 7 degrees this morning, and the maximum temperature in Cambridge over the next few days is forecast by BBC to be 13/14 degrees. This morning I didn't wear enough layers because I could feel tinges of Parkinson's as I left the church. It may be time to invest in some gloves and a windbreaker, or use that winter jacket of mine soon. My sister reminded me that there's no obstruction between Cambridge and Siberia, so when the cold winds from Russia blow, this is the coldest part of England. My college father warned that there might be a cold snap near the end of this month - in which case it will be near freezing when we wake up in the morning. And we're not even near winter.. so much for global warming. At least there'll be snow sometime and we can go to Parker's Piece in January for a snowball fight.

Anyway, I had lunch with Nicholas (who's from Kuching) and 3 other Singaporeans who also go to Fisher House for Mass on Sunday mornings. We went to this Chinese restaurant and met none other than Kenrick and Shermayne Ng, who are a Malaysian brother-sister pair doing medicine in Cambridge. No wonder they say medicine at Cambridge is popular among Malaysians. Let's throw Sing Yue and Tony into the list!

Lunch conversation with 5 medics went as such:

Shermayne: Why is the US dollar going to go lower?
Me: Now that there's a perception that the global economy is improving, people are going to move out of the US dollar and USD-based assets and take more risks. Previously there was a flight to safety and liquidity as people all rushed for US Treasuries and pushed the USD up.
Kenrick: Nice weather today!

-_-"

Also, I'm on the Peterhouse Division 1 team for the Cambridge University Chess League, and we're supposed to be playing against Darwin College sometime this week. I would've preferred to go to Division 2 where I would have an easier time ;) but we all have to make mistakes and learn from them since life isn't a lark. In the meantime, work has increased fourfold over the past week, but I've finished about half of that work. I still think math is one of the best courses you can take at Cambridge because there are no practicals (think Physics or Chemistry), hardly any reading (think Law, History, and Medicine), no communications lectures (think Engineering - you'd think they all come in with speech impediment) and no essays (think English, Medicine, History, and basically all arts subjects). You just need to be tenacious and think hard. We solve problems for a living - and get consulted by engineers and physicists sometimes, as I was tonight! The drawback is I can only look for other Mathmos for help when I'm stuck, of course. For no one else studies the meaning of the number zero - but mathematics is the language of nature.

Mathematical Conversations

2009-10-16T06:24:00.002+08:00

Mathematicians at Peterhouse are fairly international. In my batch we come from Lithuania, Greece, Germany, Malaysia (me), mainland China, and the UK. I think there's another from Hong Kong who hasn't arrived yet due to visa problems. Today, Johannes, Petras, Qian, and I went for this Future of Finance talk by UBS, RBS, and Deutsche Bank, held at Gonville & Caius College. Qian is a medical student while the rest of us are mathmos.

We met outside the Porter's Lodge at 6.35pm.

Johannes: So the repeat natural number must have the form (10^n + 1)/(p^2)?
Petras: In fact maybe 10^(2n) + 1 divided by p^2.
Johannes: Then my proof must be wrong.
Me: Actually I read somewhere that such numbers might exist if leading zeros are allowed.
Johannes: I didn't actually prove it, because I talked to Simon and he said he had a proof.

Qian: I regret coming.

Lectures in Earnest

2009-10-14T15:46:00.004+08:00

Lectures have now started in full force and there's plenty of problem sheets to do for my supervisions (which are 2-to-1 sessions with the professors or PhD students to discuss problems you have done). Yesterday there was a Mathmos' (Mathematicians') drinks session with champagne, white wine, and finger food. Of course the matriculation dinner had better gastronomic delights and booze, but I got to meet all the mathmos at Peterhouse yesterday.

I also met my Differential Equations supervisor, who is a Malaysian (Sean Lip) doing a PhD in cosmology at Trinity. Some years back I think he also got 2 perfect scores in the AMC. Nice to have a few Malaysians out here. Coincidentally he also did his 'A' Levels in Singapore. We talked about the big O notation and the truth table for logical implications yesterday. Otherwise, conversations were mostly not so technical!

Basically I have 2 hours of lectures a day (excluding Sundays), and an hour and a half of supervisions on some days. I also joined the Cambridge University Go Society (known as weiqi in Chinese) and the Peterhouse Chess Club (dominated by mathematicians - and they're all bloody good players). I was planning to attend the meetings of the Marshall Society (Cambridge Economics Society) and the Cambridge University Investment Club, but there were clashes in the past 2 days. Naturally I chose the activities with a closer venue to Peterhouse as I don't (yet) have a bike. I would also like to join the Bridge Club if I can.

Otherwise, everything's fine and I'm off to lectures soon!

Settled in Cambridge

2009-10-05T03:08:00.003+08:00

It's my third day in Cambridge, and I must say things are proceeding fine except for the fact that I suffered on my first night because there was no central heating, no duvet, no blanket, and no pillow (I used my winter jacket as a pillow, wore socks, and used a table lamp to warm up my feet, which didn't help too much..). But days have changed since then. I've gone on a tour of Cambridge, though I haven't seen all the places yet, and bought some essentials. Photos are up on Facebook as I type.

In the next few days Freshers' Week for Peterhouse begins in earnest, so I will learn more about how my college operates as well as meet more people. Already the people here are very friendly and this town gives you a cosy feeling (except perhaps for its temperature and winds).

Today was educational; I visited the Fitzwilliam and perused the exhibits for the Darwin exhibition. There were sculptures, taxidermist mounts, paintings (watercolour and oils) which captured the scientific scene associated with Charles Darwin's publication of On The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection. The Impressionist art as well as the explanations/interpretations to the paintings were really interesting.

London at first sight

2009-10-01T16:41:00.002+08:00

I arrived in Heathrow at 5.50am yesterday after a 13-hour MAS flight. The food on the flight was pretty good and I watched 2 movies, so it wasn't too bad. After collecting my luggage and getting some change for 50 pounds, I topped up my Vodafone SIM card and proceeded to take the Underground to meet Kok Ming at the Russell Square station.

We retired to Kok Ming's house to rest awhile before taking a tour of London which culminated in lunch at Four Seasons Chinese Restaurant at Chinatown. Thereafter we resumed our tour. Photos are on Facebook, since it's harder to upload so many photos here. All I can say is that London's architecture is charming. Most of the buildings are either Gothic or neo-Gothic, and are generally 3 to 7 stories high. The skyscrapers that you would find in any American city are all in Canary Wharf (Docklands), which is the new Central Business District. I got to see the Gherkin tower from the Westminster Bridge yesterday, though.

Leaving for Cambridge this evening!

Packing

2009-09-27T10:52:00.003+08:00

I've started some room-tidying-up and packing for my stint in Cambridge. A load of thanks, really, too Kok Ming, Sing Yue, and helpful seniors such as my college dad. There's also a helpful guide from the Cambridge University Malaysia Society. I intend to plan and settle everything right up to the end of my Freshers' Week so I can have a smooth transition. The most important thing is probably to adjust my watch to UK British Summer Time and sleep according to that time on my flight there!

Let's see if I can finish packing everything by today, minus my clothes currently being dry-cleaned, of course.

College Family

2009-09-22T08:40:00.004+08:00

My "college dad", David (from Hong Kong) wrote me a letter a few days back, with useful information about life at Cambridge in particular. Everyone going to Peterhouse is put into a college family to help them settle in better. My "brother" is another math fresher called Sebastian, and my "mother" is a second-year historian.

I was informed, in particular, to bring, or buy when I get to Cambridge, bed linen, a duvet, pillowcases, and cutlery. Peterhouse doesn't want its students to cook, so I think i'll skip the rice cooker then. Guess I can survive 9 months on bread and potatoes as my staple food! They're really made of the same molecules anyway huh.

Also, he told me that my director of studies at Peterhouse, Dr Zsak, will be very happy to discuss additional math problems from competitions such as the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition during our tutorials. Way to go.

Then I got a link to National Express, where I booked my London-Cambridge ticket. It was only 3 pounds. There's also a train, which costs 19 pounds but is much faster than the bus which takes 2 and a half hours. But I don't mind the longer travelling time because I'll have a book with me on the bus.

Finally, he provided a helpful link to the Freshers' Week events. There's a Freshers' Fair with booths showcasing all the activities and hopefully, there'll be a strategic games club where I can play bridge, chess, or Go (known in Chinese as weiqi). Gotta keep the different parts of my brain moving since math is only one type of thinking/problem solving.

Last night was another hangout at 101 Premier near my house. Dinner at the alfresco cafe followed by supper at bing!. The pork burgers and pork satays at the alfresco cafe are beyond damn nice. Don't think you can find this anywhere else in Malaysia, for the record. I'm definitely taking my family here again to eat and to tapao burgers before I leave. There's also a Chinese karaoke and plenty of patrons, so you get a generally noisy/chatty environment. Which is something authentically Kuching, of course. bing! offers great smoothies and this brownie topped with hot chocolate and cold icing. So when you take a slice of the brownie, dip it in the cold icing, and place it in your mouth, the contrast in temperatures create a literal explosion in your mouth. Now, that is to be savored. Just like yin and yang (but Yii Fang refused to eat the brownie despite all my promotion. sigh girls are always scared of getting fat). Thus I'm going to miss this place when I get to the UK.. It's just a 3 minute drive from my house.

It's my last week in Kuching. For 9 months, at least. I'd better think about how best to enjoy it.

Aidilfitri

2009-09-20T10:36:00.002+08:00

I wish all celebrating Malaysians a Selamat Hari Raya. Certainly the celebrations in Kuching are the best! Last night the distinct boom of (private) fireworks could be heard. Obviously, the police can't do anything and most of them are celebrating Raya anyway. Akmal borrowed my 3-inch launcher to set off his own show. The good thing is I will be in Malaysia for the next 3 Hari Rayas as they all conveniently fall on my summer holidays! Here's to rendang, lemang, kuih lapis, and a dozen other dishes.

The Visa Has Arrived! The UK is coming

2009-09-12T08:55:00.005+08:00

At long last, I got my UK visa 2 days ago. That means, minus packing and getting my new IC from the immigration office (which is thankfully a 2 minute drive from my house), I'm all set to go to the UK. There are bus and train tickets to be booked, of course. One important thing when I go to the UK is to remember the primary reason I'm there - to learn as much as I can in that tertiary educational environment. In the end, I'm under a scholarship from a government investment arm - and I should provide compound annual returns of 15% or more for their "investment" in me. Hence the need to be good in one technical field (mathematics) and also to be adept and knowledgeable in a wide range of disciplines. A multidisciplinary approach is the only way to succeed in this age of consilience. Also, as I learnt from last night's conversation with Kok Ming, in the end it boils down to substance. Like it or not, people are, most of the time, asking "if I give you one dollar today, how much can I get back from you tomorrow?".

Last night's hangout with Akmal and Kok Ming at bing! was about smoothies and business and politics in Malaysia. Here I concur with Kok Ming - such hangouts are much more productive than clubbing. Clubbing, for one, is much more expensive and offers much less intellectual stimulation. Auditory damage is also suffered at the clubs anyway and you get people trying to ply you with booze. Simple hangout joints that offer a chance to discuss matters of national and international importance are the way to a productive life. I find that most of the time, people are thinking of unproductive (in my view) things (e.g. does that girl like me?). Clubs are just socializing places. In my New Years' Resolutions I will probably make it a point not to go to clubs (unless it's a special occasion like someone's birthday). To every rule, there are exceptions.

Last night, outside bing!, over satays and fried chicken wings, we also met our Primary 4 teacher, Mrs Yee, who is now teaching in Singapore, and her husband too. Just look at the wonderful people you meet outside of clubbing! She commented on how much we'd grown and asked where we were going to study, what careers we were looking into, and so on. Ah, the usual questions.

Every man should always make some personal time for reflection and diary writing, so I will try to start such a habit to chart my personal growth over the next few years.

Also, I went for an ultrasound, gastroscopy, and colonoscopy yesterday. Interesting experience, and luckily they found no physical problems with my gut. So the indigestion problem I've been having has been categorized as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). There's no cure for that, so I just have to watch my diet from now on and see what food suits me and what doesn't. Perhaps I've been punished for my gastronomic excesses then!

Since I can no longer enjoy so much good food... there's no reason for me to like KL (except that I have to be there on business). Kuching is definitely a much better place to live, and opportunities are more abound here. In bigger cities, materialism starts to manifest itself - there are numerous shopping malls all over Klang Valley and people are more spendthrift compared to the local Kuching folks. In KL, houses are small and expensive, and streets in neighbourhoods are messy because people park their cars outside houses. Living spaces there are small, which is probably why people spend lots of time outdoors. You don't really see that in Kuching, where houses are bigger and more affordable. Average income might be lower, of course, but so are prices of most foodstuffs here. I'm also uncomfortable with the dirty air, clogged streets, and rampant crimes in KL. Small cities are probably better places to raise your children if you also have the time - they have a lower probability of being caught up in materialism and other bad values. That said, of course some KL folks who are my friends have turned out fine (otherwise they wouldn't be my friends). Just my two cents' opinion. Singapore is probably as materialistic and dog-eat-dog as KL - it's just a better-organized version.

Anyway, I should get some UK documents for Peterhouse settled. In particular, I have to order and purchase my academic gown!

National Day Reflection

2009-08-28T22:58:00.009+08:00

This is an excerpt of Tunku Abdul Rahman's speech on the 31st of August, 1957.

"I am indeed proud that on this, the greatest day in Malaya's history it falls to my lot to proclaim the formal independence of this country. Today as new page is turned, and Malaya steps forward to take her rightful place as a free and independent partner in the great community of Nations - a new nation is born and though we fully realise that difficulties and problems lie ahead, we are confident that, with the blessing of God, these difficulties will be overcome and that today's events, down the avenues of history, will be our inspiration and our guide...

But while we think of the past, we look forward in faith and hope to the future; from henceforth we are masters of our destiny, and the welfare of this beloved land is our own responsibility: Let no one think we have reached the end of the road: Independence is indeed a milestone, but it is only the threshold to high endeavour-the creation of a new and sovereign State. At this solemn moment therefore I call upon you all to dedicate yourselves to the service of the new Malaya: to work and strive with hand and brain to create a new nation, inspired by the ideals of justice and liberty - a beacon of light in a disturbed and distracted world.

High confidence has been reposed in us; let us unitedly face the challenge of the years. And so with remembrance for the past, and with confidence in the future, under the providence of God, we shall succeed."

Later, when he recited the Merdeka Proclamation, he said, among others:

"I, TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN PUTRA IBNI AL-MARHUM SULTAN ABDUL HAMID HALIMSHAH, PRIME MINISTER OF THE PERSEKUTUAN T ANAH MELAYU, with the concurrence and approval of Their Highnesses the Rulers of the Malay States do hereby proclaim and declare on behalf of the people of the Persekutuan Tanah Melayu that as from the thirty first day of August, nineteen hundred and fifty seven, the Persekutuan Tanah Melayu comprising the States of lohore, Pahang, Negri Sembilan, Selangor, Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, Trengganu, Perak, Malacca and Penang is and with God's blessing shall be for ever a sovereign democratic and independent State founded upon the principles of liberty and justice and ever seeking the welfare and happiness of its people and the maintenance of a just peace among all nations."

Sarawak and Sabah, of course, joined to form Malaysia on the 16th of September, 1963, but we continue to celebrate Merdeka on the 31st of August. On Malaysia's 52nd National Day, it would do us good to reflect upon the state of the nation Malaysia. Today there are many negatives in our nation. There is endless politicking amongst our leaders and mob politics/demonstrations proliferate on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. There are attempts by many political factions to play the race card instead of fostering unity, perhaps in order that these factions may protect vested interests and wealth. Racial tensions have risen in recent years amid complaints by the minorities that their rights are being eroded along with the rising influence of Islamic hard-liners. This is however the fault of politicians more than anything. On the ground level I'm sure everyone wants mutual acceptance.

But those who feel sidelined mostly decide to leave Malaysia for good, if they can do so. They are disillusioned by the stagnating economy and the rising costs of living in Malaysia, relative to wages. Most of the Malaysian diaspora heads to the US, UK, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. Public transport in Malaysia's major cities are largely in a shambles and most residents take to driving; they are left without a choice. Kuala Lumpur is perhaps a case in point - Bukit Bintang's roads are jammed even at 11.30pm. Last year, Malaysia's taxis were dubbed "the worst in the world" for their rigged meters, cheating, and poor service (roundabout routes).

There is also a sort of grassroots belief in Malaysia that everything done in our country is wrong and inferior to things done in other countries like Singapore or Australia. Those countries may be way ahead of Malaysia economically, but not everything is sweet there. Singaporeans in particular have had to give up a lot of civil liberties and political rights in order to get their country to where it is now. That is admittedly harder to achieve in Malaysia because it is a sprawling nation.

However, as always, there is hope. We are able to discuss many things without bloodshed, we are free of natural disasters (except perhaps floods) and we still have the ingredients to improve our standards of living and propel Malaysia towards high-income status, although we haven't made the best use of these ingredients so far.

That our nation has come this far and not farther is as much the fault of politicians and kleptocrats as it is the fault of the bickering amongst ourselves. We should turn towards problem-solving and innovation, not finger-pointing and the blame game. The concept of 1Malaysia actually has a good message, intrinsically. The government's bad track record has, however, caused the rakyat to dismiss it as another rhetorical catchphrase. But the idea of mutual acceptance amongst different races, religions, and creeds is a noble one. Whether or not the government means what it promotes (People First, Performance Now) is another matter. What matters more is that the rakyat appreciates this idea and lives it out. Because, as I quote Kok Ming here, the best people to be running the country are either driving taxis, running coffee shops, or cutting hair.

I wish all Malaysians a Happy Merdeka!

Misunderstandings

2009-08-28T10:50:00.003+08:00

Conversations are often fraught with misunderstandings. Just yesterday, my student asked what I thought of the Malaysian model.

Me: You mean the economic model?
Student: No.. the model who got punished with caning for drinking beer.
Me: OH.

Brings be back to another conversation I had last year.

Me: The air smells.. the haze is back!
Sara: Are you racist?!
Me: What?! Why is that racist? I was just talking about the haze!
Sara: OH, h.a.z.e. I thought you said "Your face is black".

-_-"

Travel Procedures

2009-08-27T11:41:00.004+08:00

Today I just went to renew my passport and I got a 50% discount for it when I showed them my university offer letter to England. So please remember to claim this 50% discount (which is RM150 = two Hilton buffets) with your offer letter if you're going overseas to study and need to renew your passport. Surprisingly the efficiency of the office has improved many-fold in the past few years. Apparently I can collect my new passport tomorrow. As for my IC which I renewed yesterday, that will take 2 to 3 weeks since it needs to be sent to KL. Whenever Sarawak has to deal with the Malaysian Feds.. things will be slowed down.

I also booked 2 return tickets and 1 one-way ticket to KL yesterday. I have to be in KL on the 1st of Sept for a Khazanah pre-departure briefing, the 4th of Sept for a Cambridge banquet (JW Marriott, Bukit Bintang) and UK visa appointment (Wisma MCA, Ampang Park), and the 29th of Sept in order to take my connecting flight to Heathrow. Thus the worst of my travel arrangement headaches are over. I hear it's all downhill from here.

My senior tutor at Peterhouse, Dr S Jackson, also sent me a letter of congratulations for my STEP results, and expressed her hope that I'd started on the reading list that Cambridge sent to me. No such luck, however - most of the books on that list are dry and Lynn Kwo says no one bothers to read them anyway.

I also had the pleasure of buying a new book during my last trip to KL, which is titled Outliers. I was sitting on the stairs in Kinokuniya and reading it for over an hour when I looked up and saw this sign:

Oh well.

However, I find Outliers pretty good. The author Malcolm Gladwell claims that geniuses, billionaires, entrepreneurs, and other stars never make it alone. They have social factors that help them, in addition to their own personal drive and passion for whatever it is they're good in. In fact it shows that being born just a month later may make all the difference in your life. For me it probably would have - I'd have a different set of friends, different experiences, and a different path through life. For some, that's the butterfly effect. However, this is the feel-good sort of book as it makes you feel geniuses and other stars ain't so special.

The other point made in this book is cultural legacies - which explains why Asians are generally good at math. In some cultures there is also more deference to social superiors, especially in South Korea and Colombia. For me, if we can't drink, eat, or talk well together, we certainly shouldn't be friends! But the book certainly added some perspectives to my thoughts on how different cultures operate.

As a side note, I find that I like to read some intellectually challenging non-fiction; I'll be appalled at the waste of my time if I read a book that isn't good or doesn't have a profound new idea to challenge me. While I'm open to fiction.. it doesn't usually provide that challenge. Fiction may be full of wit, but it may not be practical, realistic wit. So my readings from now on would be skewed towards non-fiction, unless I get good fiction recommendations from some trusted friends.

And the search continues for my next non-fiction book!

Khazanah Annual Dinner

2009-08-25T20:56:00.004+08:00

I just arrived back in Kuching this evening to some stormy weather. The highlight of the past 3 days I spent in KL was Khazanah Nasional's annual dinner with the Board of Trustees and the entire gamut of Khazanah scholars at Sheraton Imperial.

Managing Director of Khazanah Nasional, Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar, gave a keynote address and proceeded to meet all the scholars. I also got the chance to shake his hand and hear stories of him about life in Cambridge. He studied in Darwin College, Cambridge, many years ago. As many people know, Peterhouse is famous for being gay and Tory, and Tan Sri Azman told me "You have to be careful in Peterhouse because there are a lot of funny men there" and then he told my dad "make sure he gets a girlfriend fast".

The chairman of Khazanah Nasional, Datuk Mustapa bin Mohamad (who is also Malaysia's Minister for International Trade and Industry), also gave an address. He spoke of the need to develop a pool of Malaysian talent to bring the country forward, and that was the primary reason for the inception of Khazanah's scholarships programmes.

Above are Datuk Mustapa bin Mohamad (standing) and Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar (sitting). They even had a Question and Answer session at the end of session. One of the students asked what qualities Khazanah expected its scholars to have, and both of them put forward some interesting perspectives.

They were primarily looking for talented individuals who were good not only in a certain technical field such as engineering or law, but broad-based individuals who read widely, were able to think critically, speak eloquently and convincingly, and be proficient in a few important languages (yes, I think Tan Sri Azman said "a few"). Datuk Mustapa said that in particular, the lines between disciplines were blurring and he gave the example that today, medical students have to study social science as well. Cross-disciplinary thinking is therefore the way to succeed in today's world. He was speaking, of course, about the concept of consilience, a term I picked up from a book Kok Ming gave to me: More Than You Know - Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places. We can no longer specialize in just one subject in this age of information if we want to succeed in the corporate world.

Khazanah Nasional currently has 98 scholars on its books and it hopes to double the number within the next few years to create a formidable pool of talent to help Corporate Malaysia. Its scholars come from such prestigious universities as Stanford University, Harvard University, MIT, Cambridge University, Oxford University, UC Berkeley, London School of Economics, Imperial College London, and Williams College. As Datuk Mustapa said, Khazanah is committed to the active development of Malaysia's human capital to ensure that Malaysia continues to improve its competitiveness on the global stage.

As a scholar I will do my part and maintain that CGPA (Tan Sri Azman said he has the results of the scholars at his fingertips), read widely, and learn a new language (perhaps Spanish). And soon, a new chapter of my life begins!

STEP!

2009-08-20T07:16:00.002+08:00

I just saw my STEP results: 1, 1. Therefore I'm in Cambridge for good! Looking forward to this October ;-)

My parents nearly jumped out of their chairs when I turned up for breakfast at 6.40am. Both of them asked me why I was up so early. My reply was initially "i'm a habitual early riser", but that's obviously not true for any teenager nowadays. Thus I said I was up to check exam results.

I shall take a break from work today and cancel tonight's tuition class. Good morning everyone!

1 step to STEP

2009-08-19T09:41:00.003+08:00

I woke today to a stomachache and a bad rainstorm - such that my garden is flooding although my house is on Kenny Hill. Looks like the weather is going amok again, but it's a relief from the unbearable heat-inducing hazy weather of yester-week. Anyway, this could be a sign of trepidation for my STEP results coming out in approximately 22 hours - though I intend not to worry about it and go about life as usual. Nothing I do or don't do now can change anything, after all!

In the meantime, I have to RSVP for Khazanah's annual dinner in Kuala Lumpur this Monday and also arrange some outings with KL friends + Yvonne. Guess it's going to be another food trail with lots of good chatter and company!

And I finally got 2 credit cards made, but I don't know what the difference between Visa and Mastercard is. Both can be used for online purchases anyway. The next problem is to schedule a visa appointment and I think I'll enlist the help of Mdm Valerie Mashman, the honorary consul of the British High Commission in Kuching. Otherwise, there'll be lots of bureaucratic processes such as filling out an online form, Appendix 8, and some checklist. Then I'd have to book an appointment. Apparently it's possible to have a walk-in appointment, but they want us to book online if possible. I should perhaps email Peterhouse to mail over the visa letter asap. In fact, they've already received my STEP results since they know 24 hours before I'm entitled to know.

Good luck to me!

With Compliments from the Tutorial Office

2009-08-09T17:32:00.003+08:00

I received a letter from Peterhouse again, and it was a mathematics workbook. And here I thought I was supposed to be having a good holiday (minus 2 hours of giving tuition a day).

Apparently, the purpose of this workbook is to present a set of material which it would be useful to know before starting the Tripos.

I've flipped through the material and it seems to be easier than STEP, so I'll leave this in the drawer for now. Besides, there's nothing that my 5.85GB of math books won't cover in the undergraduate syllabus, unless Cambridge has got new mathematical research going on. Perhaps it's a good idea to read through some of my first term topics, though, so I can go there and transition smoothly into university math.

In the meantime, it's still an oven in Kuching. Today the Air Pollution Index in Kuching hit 95. An API of 100 would indicate moderate pollution, but already I can't see my neighbor's house clearly. The only comfort is that other areas of Sarawak are doing worse, with places like Samarahan having an index of over 200. Indonesia had best revise its agricultural policy, or make burning down the forests a crime deserving of capital punishment! Lives will be lost to lung cancer anyway, at this rate.

The only thing I can do is stay indoors in my air-conditioned room and take cold showers.

I have to make a new Malaysian identification card and passport in the next few days. My passport expires next year so its a good time to do it now. I'd like my university years to be as free of administrative hassles if possible. Also, I need to go for a health checkup.

Then, STEP results permitting (on the 20th of August), I can have a relaxing (or stress-filled, as the case may be) 3 years in Cambridge!

The Fame

2009-08-06T12:15:00.004+08:00

I got Lady Gaga's album, The Fame. Of course, I'm about one year (or more) late in doing that, seeing as her three most famous singles have been out in the radio for some time. All I can say is that the album is awesome and it's great party music. Which means they're to be appreciated for beat and rhythm rather than lyrics (the lyrics do make sense but they're mostly racy). Good music if you need to wind down after a long day or if you're stuck in a KL traffic jam, like some of my friends out there.

Lady Gaga also has a unique sense of fashion, as can be seen from her pictures in the album lyrics book. What's more, she's only three year older than me. That's some musical talent there.

In my opinion, the best tracks are:

1. Just Dance (released single)
2. Lovegame (released single)
3. Paparazzi
4. Poker Face (released single)
5. Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)
7. The Fame
8. Money Honey
9. Starstruck (featuring Space Cowboy and Flo Rida)
13. I Like It Rough
14. Summerboy

Haze

2009-08-05T23:20:00.003+08:00

The hazy weather, reminiscent of 1997, is back. However, in those days I couldn't see the neighbor's house from my sitting room window, and luckily, this time I can. I get the impression that those in KL and Penang are having it worse than us in Kuching, so I haven't got much to complain. I naturally spent most of my time indoors in the past few days and notched up the air conditioning. There are few things better than a hot mug of Harrod's Ceylon and a newspaper in an air-conditioned room during such climates. Kuching's ambient temperature is purported to be 36 degrees Celsius (97 F), according to my student. It didn't feel that hot, but it was certainly stuffy and smoky outside.

Nevertheless, I am meeting up with friends tomorrow night and the night after tomorrow night. Hopefully it's much below 36 Celsius at night.

Meanwhile I'll just watch Criminal Minds to pass my free time!

Laptop and Mobile

2009-08-03T21:59:00.003+08:00

I may have to get a new laptop as the one I currently have is nearly 4 years old. It may decide to give up the ghost anytime. One of my students suggests a Dell laptop going for RM2800, which actually has high-definition and Blu-Ray capabilities. That's a very good price if the laptop can actually do both Blu Ray and high definition. Most of my movies are starting to go high-definition so such a laptop might come in handy. I'd also need some pretty good computing power as I can foresee doing some mathematical programming with Maple or Mathlab in Cambridge.

I still have research to do about laptops though, and a few opinions to ask about laptops. Many tell me not to buy an Acer as it frequently overheats, and yet my Acer laptop has lasted 4 years (must be one of the hardy models then). Some suggest Fujitsu, HP and Compaq, among others. I should really start a poll soon. In making my choice, I would also like a 5-year warranty as I need minimum hassle in university life. I can't be making trips to the repair shop every other month (and that shop might be in London, rather than Cambridge). I'd get holes in my wallet fast. Also, I will necessarily stick to a Windows operating system, no matter how many Apple enthusiasts try to convince me otherwise. The market majority (that is, Windows) is correct in this case!

I also have to get a new mobile soon as my current one is nearly 2 years old and the USB cable port is spoilt. The only way I can sync my phone with the computer is with Bluetooth or Infrared. I'd like a business model or at least something that can let me check my emails/read Microsoft Word/Excel/PDF files. Between the Nokia N97 and Blackberry, though, the Blackberry gives a more corporate image. N97 is about entertainment anyway, since it's in a media series. And since I always mean business, I should get a Blackberry, or at least one of the Nokia E-series. E71 and E66 both look pretty good and the price range is alright. Of course, I won't be considering anything exotic like Bang & Olufsen. Let's leave that to Yitian and co.

On the other hand, maybe I should wait till both of my devices spoil before I consider a purchase. After all, I have a backup mobile. I'll probably get it in the UK, where they offer plans for the Blackberry. Have to get back to Kok Ming on this one.

In the meantime, my job is teaching me new things. My mom has cut down on my pocket money since I'm earning my own now, and you really think through purchases properly if you're spending your own hard-earned money, e.g. "I just spent 3 hours worth of money". Earning money is sure hard, but that might be because I don't have access to forex and investment markets yet, so I can't wait!

Tight Schedule

2009-08-02T23:34:00.003+08:00

My schedule nowadays is pretty tight as I try to blend entertainment with work. I started teaching my first tuition class at 1.30pm today and finished at 4pm. Second class started at 4.15pm and ended at 6.15pm. I had a wedding to attend at 6.30pm so I took a 5-minute shower, rushed down and drove myself and my mom there, arriving a few minutes late. Then I left the wedding a little early to attend a friend's birthday party at Senso in Hilton Hotel.

The wedding is worth mentioning (other than the 10-course meal). My third cousin was getting married to an Englishman, and he spoke some words in Mandarin on stage. The bridegroom also performed halfway through the dinner, saying that as it was a Chinese tradition to have karaokes during wedding dinners, there was also an English tradition of having rock bands (don't know how true this is though). And then they brought out an XBox and got Guitar Hero started. He even called his band Kuching Rockers, although one member was from Sweden and the others from England. Then they sang Michael Jackson's Beat It and a few other numbers.

The food was also par excellence - starters had sushi and spring rolls. Then came the usual fare at Chinese weddings - shark fin soup, roast duck, pork cooked with herbs, yam basket, mantou with prawns, and so on. A man at my table also challenged me to a mug of beer.

Then at 9pm or so I left to go to Senso and there were ten times as many alcoholic drinks going around, such as Illusion, White Russian, and vodka coke. There were several beer bottles going around as well, and I had my fair share. As a matter of fact I have a headache now! Glad to say I still haven't broken my record of not getting drunk yet though.

The only snag is that I was sending Yii Fang back as well, and one car in front of me was moving really slow. I asked "Why isn't he moving faster?" and then realized we were at a red light. That's when she started to get scared, but we're all home in one piece! ^^

Accomodation/Food at Peterhouse

2009-07-31T10:09:00.004+08:00

My liaison officer just emailed me to indicate my preference for accomodation at Peterhouse, Cambridge, so I asked how we would know which rooms had en-suite bathrooms. Apparently, all first-years at Peterhouse stay at St. Peter's Terrace and William Stone Building, and it's a close-knit community where everyone will get to know each other really quickly.

At Peterhouse every student is guaranteed reasonably-priced accommodation in the centre of Cambridge, a short walk from the vast majority of the faculties.

So I'll be somewhere at the centre of the group of colleges and faculties. A far cry from the fates of those at Homerton and Girton. Elyse will have to up her cycling!

There's a broadband connection in every room and it's really fast; that's a plus.

On the bright(er) side, there's good and cheap food at Peterhouse! The liaison officer directed me to the Peterhouse's alternative website, where I saw the sentence "Food and drink is taken seriously at Peterhouse" under Food and Drink. Here are a few quotes out of that website.

Peterhouse is fully catered, so all meals except for Sunday breakfast and lunch can be provided by the college kitchens and eaten in the hall (the oldest university building in Cambridge, we’re told). Meals are served via a canteen-style arrangement and paid for using your swipe-card which puts the cost of what you eat onto your college bill at the end of term.

So it's not too bad; in fact they charge about £3 per meal. They do lasagna and hamburgers, but probably no Asian food. I'll have to wait till I get down to London before I can get good Chinese food.

Formal hall is a second sitting for dinner at 7.30pm again in the hall, every night of the week. It’s a 3 course waited dinner and costs just £4.50 at the moment. Gowns must be worn and wine must be bought from the college bar, but it really is enjoyable. We’re lucky at Peterhouse because it’s available every night whereas at other colleges it’s as infrequent as once a week. You’re also allowed to bring guests.

Even better is the fact that I can have a waited dinner for just £4.50, although I have to wear one of those traditional gowns. And given that I'm eating in a 700-year-old dining hall, it'll really feel like Hogwarts.

A few times a term, ‘super halls’ are organised which are a better version of formal hall. They’re more expensive but the food it more interesting (often themed, for example Burns night etc.) and better quality. Black tie is encouraged. These are very popular and always fully booked.

These cost about £14 I'm told, but themed food and a good gastronomic experience makes that alright.

The college bar is relatively cheap when compared to pubs in Cambridge. A bitter costs £1.80 and lager costs £2 a pint. There’s a fair range of wines for formal hall (or just to drink in the bar) starting at £4 a bottle.

Guess I can even get reasonably cheap booze. £4 for a bottle is actually very cheap, but I don't know what quality i'll get, if it's red wine, for example. Hopefully, good Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. I wonder if they do champagne. Champagne going for below £20 a bottle would be appealing (sadly, not Dom Perignon).

The college bar is not the biggest in Cambridge but has a good atmosphere and is very friendly. It’s certainly a good starting point for getting to know everybody. Drinks in the bar can also be charged to the college bill with your swipe-card if you wish, which is useful if you’re out of cash. The bar opens at 6pm and last orders are normally at 11pm unless on a Sunday when it’s 10.30pm. Late night opening does not look like it will find its way to Peterhouse and unfortunately the bar is closed on a Monday night at the moment. This could soon change, however. All in all, Peterhouse is a great place to eat and drink in! In all seriousness though, we are the envy of many other colleges and a formal at Peterhouse is something which is highly sought-after.

Looks like I won't have a problem with food at all in Peterhouse. I only hope I can get accomodation with en-suite bathrooms (but I don't mind so much in reality). My rent will cost between £700 - £1200 a term, depending on what quality of room I get, and whether or not it has an en-suite bathroom. But food has certainly got to be the best part at Peterhouse, and I look forward to it!

RIP Yasmin Ahmad

2009-07-29T12:24:00.002+08:00

A few days ago, on 25th July 2009, Yasmin Ahmad passed away. She was Malaysia's critically-acclaimed multi-award winning film director, scriptwriter and writer, responsible for most of Petronas's TV advertisements during Chinese New Year, Deepavali, Hari Raya, and Merdeka Day. Her works featured touching messages and they were able to transcend cross-cultural boundaries. May she rest in peace.

A few of her Petronas comercials are:

All Is Not Lost?

2009-07-20T16:45:00.003+08:00

A recent article by The Edge columnist Azam Aris summarized that the reversal of the government's policy from teaching science and math in English to teaching it in Bahasa Malaysia again (and in Mandarin or Tamil in Chinese and Indian vernacular schools) is not necessarily the death knell for this nation.

The key reasons for this change in policy starting 2012 is that Malay language activists were worried about disadvantaged Malay students in rural areas, where there is a dearth of good English teachers (naturally, they flock to the cities where salary and amenities are abundant). Chinese and Tamil educationists were also eager to uphold the teaching of science and math in mother tongues.

Going back to this system may be bad for the country, but other solutions exist. The main worry is that our graduates will lack the facility to accumulate knowledge, as most reference books at the tertiary level of education are in English. However, Bahasa Malaysia has been used since the 1970s as the medium in secondary schools, and our undergraduates of that era had no major problems making the adjustment whatsoever, as Azam Aris points out. In fact, with the advent of Internet, many sources of news come in English and students could read them online to improve their English. This is of course also dependent on internet penetration rate among households, and also dependent upon how well our nation's youth spend their time (anecdotal experience tells me not very well - they'd rather be playing computer games or facebooking if they have internet access). Also, only the urban residents are able to do this - Internet is not available, or at the very least patchy in the far flung areas of the country.

Redesigning the country's education system further may be a good solution. Not only do graduates require good English, they need to think critically, engage in problem-solving, and work hard. Without a work ethic and intellectual culture, having a good command of English is useless (bimbos generally have a good command of English, but their marginal benefit to the economy is almost zero). The whole mindset of the nation must change, and particularly among our students - we need a culture of intellectual curiosity. How best to build that culture, then?

Competition is probably the key. Our students must have the spirit of competition, although perhaps not to such extreme levels as in Singapore (or perhaps yes!). Our current education system, says Azam Aris, is based too much on examinations, which is true. It's the learning process before the examinations and the reviewing process after examinations that convey the most value, and not the exam itself; our students do not understand that. We need to encourage creativity and remove a system of didactic, pedagogue, rote learning and memorization. In fact, the culture of intellectual curiosity could also serve as the nation's binding factor.

More competitions with meaningful problem-solving, prize money and national recognition should be implemented. The development of human capital in China is to be noted. China tops the world in the International Mathematics Olympiad. This not just because of their huge population, but their culture of intellectual curiosity and the competitive nature of their schools. China's IMO representatives spend 15 hours a day doing nothing but math. They have the focus and passion for their subject. Unfortunately, wealth tends to serve as a disincentive for many - children of rich families have not much of an incentive to try hard at school. On the other hand, the children of poor families may be caught up trying to generate additional income for the family that they have no time for academic pursuits. Incentives should be designed by the government to overcome these barriers, however invisible they may be. With the playing field levelled, intellectual and human capital in this country can be maximized, and this is more important than teaching science and mathematics in English.

Home Alone

2009-07-20T10:31:00.002+08:00

I just sent my mom and sis to the airport before before breakfast with Chin Ann and Kai Lun, and my dad's still in Indonesia. Therefore I'm home alone for a while. My dad's travelling somewhere every other day, these few days, anyway. Which is kind of good because I get to use his study, which has a swivel chair, printer, and fax.

My absence from blogging is because Streamyx has been having problems over the past 4 days. I had to go to Bing! or Starbucks to get a wireless connection instead. I hope TM is doing it's best to upgrade the Streamyx network. Certainly can't wait for high-speed broadband to hit Malaysia (in particular Sarawak) soon.

Yitian's headed back to Melbourne at the time of writing, so i'll see him next year. So much for Kuching's hardcore BMW fan!

At the same time, my Chinese teacher sent me a book about stories of great people from Cambridge (The Story of Cambridge University). Says he hopes it'll help me and provide the inspiration for me to do well there. I'll visit him when I have the time, I guess. Juggling tuition and going out with friends for the moment. And life pretty much goes on as normal for me, till my next trip down to KL in August!

Lodgians!

2009-07-11T22:32:00.003+08:00

Lodgians seem to be all over the place in Kuching, especially on a Saturday night. I went to the money changers' at Sarawak Plaza and met Gregory Goh, Viki Goh, and another of my ex-Form Four students. Then I went for dinner at Hong Kong Noodle House and there I met Alyssa Tan (and Liz-Nataska Foo a while ago). Then I walked back to the carpark and saw Charmaine Bong. Guess it's just a small city! But it's the cosiness of the city and the absence of KL-like traffic jams that give it the uniqueness. We should start imposing Singapore-like congestion charges soon to keep the streets clean. Of course, another unique thing is the 53 sen overparking fine...

There's the Rainforest Music Festival right now but my sis and I decided to skip it. Have tuition classes to handle anyway. There's always the next three summer holidays coming up, when I'll probably be bringing friends from faraway parts around!

I plan to visit Lodge School in a few days anyway to catch up with the teachers and some juniors. To see how my ex-classes are doing!

Great Singapore Sale

2009-07-09T17:50:00.008+08:00

I was recently in Singapore to shop for 3 days, after my GLC role awareness and Constitution programme with Khazanah in Bangi. Did my winter shopping and bought some extras because things there were going for "firesale" prices. It was also my last chance to try some Singaporean/Asian food only available there! Hence, Din Tai Fung (with my uncle and aunt), (with Ivy, William, Elyse), and Akashi Japanese Restaurant (minus the otoro, which was going at S$80 for 5 pieces), and a couple of other dessert indulgences at and Island Cremery and Coffee Club, for example. I also took the chance to buy some champagne/rum chocolates from the Chocolate Research Facility. It's a Singaporean chocolatier on the second floor of Wheelock Place. I also bought a huge block of Lindt's dark chocolate since Changi Airport was so kind to give me a S$4 voucher to spend at airport shops.

During the first day I watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with my Thai classmate, Usarin. We caught up over lunch and tiramisu from Gloria Jeans Coffees. As she's going to Australia, I probably won't see her for a while! Such is life.

My second day in Singapore saw most of the shopping done, with Elyse's help. Many thanks to her, but she had to tolerate a series of "damn nice" comments from me (oops, but sworn it off since). Then I met Zhang Kang and Fengping for brunch yesterday and caught up a little on what's ahead. Zhang Kang is NJC's own resident genius who was offered places at MIT, Princeton, and Yale (and he made right choice of accepting MIT's offer!). Fengping's headed for Chicago University. Hopefully I'll get to visit the States and see them there! As well as a host of other friends, of course.

And to top it off at the airport, Xiao Ying and Wee Teng saw me off. So we sat at Coffee Bean to catch up while I enjoyed my salmon bagel and Belgian chocolate latte. Xiao Ying handed over my certificates and CCA medal, which looks really pretty. There was also S$40 of Kinokuniya vouchers which I have yet to use. Perhaps my sister can help me to grab the books I want when she gets to Singapore.

I also got my School Graduation Certificate thanks to Ivy. With only 3 days, I couldn't go back to NJC to visit teachers and juniors, so I'll try to do that the next time I'm there (which could be a year from now). Better late than never!

In the meantime, Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has announced that Science and Mathematics in Malaysian secondary schools will be taught in Malay beginning 2012. So we're going from English back to Malay. Vernacular schools will teach science and mathematics in mother tongues (Mandarin and Tamil). These people must be out of their mind, because it will set the country back by years and our students will be poorly equipped in scientific literacy, as most scientific journals and publications predominantly use English. And it will continue to be English for at least the next three decades. With plenty of effort, students by themselves could of course build the necessary skills using the Internet, but the government should help them as much as it can. Even Tun Mahathir was disappointed in this decision. Singapore has been farsighted enough to keep everything to English, while dictating that every student should learn his mother tongue, and Malaysia should do the same. What I can tell Malaysian students to do in the face of this policy is to continue reading publications like Scientific American and The Economist online for free. That will keep their English up to scratch and ensconce them in scientific/economic terminology.

Now I have an assignment about constitutionalism, as a Khazanah assignment. Let me get around to that soon!

Angeline's Trip

2009-06-28T19:43:00.008+08:00

I spent the last 3 days taking Angeline around Kuching! She was visiting from Johor Bahru for a few days, with her grandparents, and she needed a local tour guide. So I looped Kai Lun (who looped Amy in) in to help me take Angeline and family around when I was tutoring.

It wasn't too hard though - I brought them to the souvenir shops along the Waterfront where you can get Sarawakian stuff like our famous black pepper, blowpipes for them to sumpit people, and so on. Girls will be girls, because Angeline was immediately taken in by the cute bags in various shops there.

Took her to visit my house as well. She was fascinated by the Chinese garden. Unfortunately, I never bother to drink tea there.

The rest of the time Kai Lun and I were taking them to places like Kenyalang, and Jalan Song to try local fare. Angeline's grandfather liked our local kong piah very much, and he ordered a whole stack to bring back to JB. Kuching certainly has some of the best food in Malaysia. We tried Sarawak laksa, kolo mee, gu bak mee, and so on.

Breakfast this morning was at Imperial Duck. It's a nice dim sum/breakfast place near Lok Thian restaurant. They serve about the best dim sums in Kuching. The specialty is mango duck (but i didn't snap a photo!), which is amazingly good. Thumbs up for Imperial Duck.

And we sent Angeline off this afternoon, after I played chess with Kai Lun at the Starbucks of Kuching Airport!

New Divide

2009-06-26T13:54:00.001+08:00

Here's Linkin Park's newest single for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen! Awesome song.

I remembered black skies, the lightning all around me
I remembered each flash as time began to blur
Like a startling sign that fate had finally found me
And your voice was all I heard that I get what I deserve

So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes
Give me reason to fill this hole, connect the space between
Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies across this new divide

There was nothing in sight but memories left abandoned
There was nowhere to hide, the ashes fell like snow
And the ground caved in between where we were standing
And your voice was all I heard that I get what I deserve

So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes across this new divide

In every loss, in every lie, in every truth that you'd deny
And each regret and each goodbye was a mistake too great to hide
And your voice was all I heard that I get what I deserve

So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes
Give me reason to fill this hole, connect the space between
Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies across this new divide
Across this new divide, across this new divide

STEP Down

2009-06-24T15:00:00.003+08:00

STEP's over! STEP II was much easier than STEP III. I had plenty of free time to look around in between problems.

I actually arrived at 9am and the paper was to start at 9.30am, so I brought a copy of The Edge in to pass the time.

While the exam went well.. I got a parking ticket from the traffic police for parking in the alley leading up to Parkson. That's annoying. It'll take me hours to queue up at the police station to pay the fine and set me back RM80. But since I have 7 days.. no need to worry about it yet.

Also, I met Sing Yue and Kai Lun for lunch at Heritage. The food (pork ribs, butter prawns, and assorted veggies) wasn't bad. We'll probably do a few more eateries outside soon.

After that, I got my second ticket from Kuching's City Council for overparking.

What a nice day.. But since STEP's just over, I should be happy! No complaints. Cheers people!

STEP Up

2009-06-22T17:09:00.002+08:00

My STEP III exam is over! That leaves STEP II in 2 days. As usual, my before-exam period didn't go well. I bought my stationery this morning at 11.30am, and the exam was supposed to be at 2pm. Haven't changed in the past few years, you see. Luckily, this math exam didn't need a calculator because the only working calculator I currently possess is a financial one. I still think that real math doesn't need calculators anyway.

All was well (in my opinion) until I received a phone call while showering at 12.40pm. I rushed in a towel, dripping wet, to answer it. It was none other than British Council calling to tell me that the exam had been moved forward to 1pm. So, could I be there in 15 minutes?

I said I couldn't guarantee that, so they extended the starting time to 1.15pm for me. Whew. As I expected, there was a traffic jam near Borneo Hotel because there's a Chinese school there and parents were picking their students up. I drove like a pro and got myself a ~~illegal~~ parking spot near Parkson's.

I was the only STEP candidate in Sarawak, or probably Malaysia, for 2009, so I had all the attention I could get from the examiner. Some undergraduate topics like the Laplace transform and other statistics problems appeared, but I didn't attempt those although I'd covered some of them on my own. Better to stick to your circle of competence (or control?).

I did 6 problems, but 3 were incomplete. They were many-part questions and I couldn't do the last part for 3 of them. Disappointing because I was hoping to get an S grade or full marks if I could.. But I shan't ask for too much, eh. I think I qualified for a grade of 1, though. That leaves STEP II for me to nail.

Also, I'm just back from a Khazanah Nasional programme in the woods of Pahang, but I'll blog about that some other time. Suffice it to say, it was a good programme. Have some tuition classes to prepare for now!

KL Indulgence cum Khazanah's 4th Interview, Part 2

2009-06-16T11:16:00.003+08:00

Here's the post on the second part of my recent KL trip, but it'll be rather short. I woke up about 9am in Seira's house and discovered no one around. Called her mobile and there was no answer too. I wasn't that hungry, luckily, so I headed back to lie down for a bit. She later knocked on my door thinking I was still asleep. Her dad took us all out for breakfast about 10.30am. Local fare at the coffee shops here are not bad (rather similar to Kuching); I had char kuey teow.

Listened to Seira's dad talk about the state of the world economy and China's rising power. I agree with pretty much everything he said except the speed of China's rise - it'll need more than 20 years to be on par with America and its aging society problems are more serious than everyone thinks them to be. Went back to her house to chill for a while, then we left for MidValley to meet Bobby, Greg, Elyse, Jia Hui, and Ruben. Only Bobby was there initially, and Seira discovered her mom was in MidValley too (what a coincidence), so she went to join her mom. I spent the next one hour in Borders checking out books with Bobby. Greg arrived shortly after, and Elyse after that, so we settled down at Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao to have some great dim sums. This is one of the best eateries to get good dim sums in Singapore or KL. The other great place is probably Dragon-i, owned by Berjaya Group. It's available only in KL though. If you're in Singapore or Taiwan, Din Tai Fung is the best place for dumplings and dim sums.

Bobby left before Jia Hui and Ruben arrived. The next 2 hours consisted of lively conversations about life in UK, assuming we all went for our tertiary education there. There was talk of Spanish nude beaches and renting BMW M5's and Maybachs during the holidays (for 200 pounds a day, not including fuel). Whether I will be a part of such ventures remains to be seen. I only intend to travel around Europe (but probably not in a BMW). Luxury food offers me more utility than luxury cars so I think I'll take that 4-course meal at The Foliage, Mandarin Oriental or Benares (Atul Kochar's signature Michelin-starred London restaurant) before I start renting M5s.

Sadly I had to leave soon after, but it was a pretty good short trip to KL. Food and company were highlights. Unfortunately the next time I'm in KL, I probably won't get to meet any of them!

Meanwhile in Kuching, Yitian's back from Melbourne and Sing Yue's back from Cambridge. Looks like it's time to have a badminton match and catch up over coffee!

KL Indulgence cum Khazanah's 4th Interview, Part 1

2009-06-13T21:25:00.010+08:00

I just returned from KL after my 2-day "business trip" there for the 4th round of interviews with Khazanah Nasional's Board of Trustees. Here's what happened on the 12th of June, 2009.

Shortly after I emerged from LCCT after clearing immigration, I received a call from Puan Suhayati saying that our interview venue had changed to Mercu UEM (near KL Sentral), and was no longer at Petronas Twin Towers. Apparently Khazanah Nasional has several offices in KL.

At this point I still had ample time, so things proceeded pretty much as planned. I met Seira at 12.15pm at KL Sentral; from there we headed to Suria KLCC to try out the Japanese restaurant Nippon Tei. It was right next to Sakae Sushi on the 3rd floor of Ampang Mall (a wing of Suria KLCC). For the price I paid (RM28 for a salmon teriyaki set), the service is a little slow and being a stickler for fillet, I found bones in my piece of grilled salmon. Not something i'd expect from a good Jap restaurant! But the Rainbow Roll sushi set was pretty good (RM26 for 6 pieces), so that set things a little on an even keel. The final price including drinks was RM116 for the two of us.

Afterwards I made my way back to KL Sentral, and Seira continued on the LRT to finish some business elsewhere. I found the Mercu UEM building with little difficulty as it was opposite our previous interview venue. There were two levels of security clearance I had to pass, but all they did was scan my IC. There were turnstiles to get to the elevator access area that required us to tap our visitors' passes. Khazanah likes its security, alright.

The other undergraduate interviewees were also there (Kimberley Ho, Yvonne Lim, Bobby Ong), except Low Pui Yee, who was still dealing with an 'A' Level paper. We also met about ten other postgraduate interviewees, most of whom were in the waiting to do PhDs and Masters at Cambridge, Melbourne, Stanford, and the likes. They were all professionally dressed, in suits and ties (for the guys) and power suits (for the girls).

We had great time mingling around with them and having our coffees while waiting for our turns to be interviewed.

The interview itself was a little easygoing - it was no longer than 10 minutes for me, and as short as 5 minutes for the other candidates. Tan Sri Tajuddin, the director of UEM, even said I should have booked my ticket with MAS instead of AirAsia as the price differential at the time I made the booking wasn't all that much and I would've gotten a full-fledged airline. Formal, the interview wasn't. Dr Ikmal, my interviewer at the 3rd interview, was also present.

After our interviews, the undergraduate candidates headed out to KL Sentral to await the arrival of Greg, Elyse, and Ruben. Elyse arrived first, as she'd been conveniently waiting in her friend's condo nearby. Meanwhile, Kim solved one of my cast puzzles (and was very bubbly after that), and Greg arrived. Then Bobby communicated with Ruben and ended up in his car some time later when it was drizzling, and we all piled into Ruben's car and squeezed a little on a little journey to pick up Bobby's car in a nearby parking lot.

From there we split into the two cars and made our way towards Pavilion in Bukit Bintang. The traffic jam is KL's most iconic "landmark", arguably. It took us an hour to make it to Pavilion from KL Sentral. I was in Ruben's car, and he had the luxury of a GPS navigation system, so he had to give Bobby directions when Bobby got lost later.

In the car, Ruben was telling me about the levels of dining at Pavilion. 1st floor was the food court. 2nd and 3rd floors was alfresco dining, 4th floor and 5th was for mid-range restaurants, and the 6th floor was for premium dining. So, to celebrate our fellowship, we made our way to the 6th floor after agreeing on Japanese cuisine. Seems that one thing the 7 of us shared in common was a liking/accomodation for raw fish!

Hence, it was Kampachi Japanese Restaurant for us. This is by far one of the best Japanese restaurants in KL. I had a Chirashi Don - assorted raw fish over vinegared rice.

And it was worth every ringgit out of RM70 or so I paid for it. There were two slices each of salmon, hamachi (yellowtail), ebi (prawns), saba (mackerel), gindara (cod) and octopus. All raw! Naturally I savored every minute of the gastronomic experience. I intend to do a buffet at Kampachi's other outlet at Equatorial Hotel the next time round.

We all then took a group photo when we were done with dinner. Elyse lost her voice and had to go out and buy Strepsils halfway though - hopefully she gets her voice back soon! Then, at Ruben's suggestion, we were headed for Subang Jaya to get the best Ramly burgers in KL. Ruben is this guy, one of whose hobbies is to go to different Ramly burger stalls in the suburbs and environs of KL and try out different burgers. He even knows of a blog which ranks Ramly burger stalls in KL. It's rare to meet a food buff who goes to such extremes! I like exotic food, but I won't go too much out of my way to secure supplies!

However, it took us some time to leave Pavilion's vicinity because of a bad traffic jam at 10.30pm. At 10.30pm in Kuching, you might be able to claim your grandfather owns the road and treat it nearly like the Autobahn. Again, KL's most iconic "landmark". But needless to say, Kampachi Japanese Restaurant has changed my views of KL. With such great eateries, it deserves to be hated less by me. But I'd like it a lot better if they instituted some policies to clear up the traffic jams, green the city, and improve public transport. KTM Komuter just offers one of the worst train services in the world.

By the time we got to Subang Jaya, it was 11.30pm. There was actually a queue at the Ramly burger stall, which is opposite Asia Cafe, near Taylors College Subang. Ruben ordered the chicken burgers and we stood around chatting. Elyse opted out (and missed out on something great) because of her throat, but we retired to her house anyway to have the burgers. Her parents were still up. Apparently, staying up late on a Friday night is a KL thing. And Ruben revealed that he normally leaves his house in ~~Puchong~~ Bangsar at 12am for supper at Subang Jaya, plays in the cyber cafe or pool cafe till 2am, then heads back to sleep, gets up at 11am, and naps again from 1pm to 5pm. That's pretty much the KL holiday schedule (for this select group of friends I made o.0).

We made plans for this morning's MidValley trip and I gave Elyse.. Warren Buffett's biography. And I returned The Giver. I'm not going to guess how long she takes to finish the biography! At this point, Ruben sent me back to Seira's house, aided by the GPS. It was 1am when I reached Seira's house, so it was a good thing she was still awake (and not pissed). But apparently her family sleeps late. I spoke to her brother at 2.30am.

I'll blog about today's (13/06/09) experience.. soon!

Before My Flight Leaves

2009-06-12T08:14:00.001+08:00

I decided to chill out at Starbucks (Kuching INTERNATIONAL Airport) before my flight leaves at 9.20am, and it's a good thing they have (pretty good) WiFi. So you can sip your Dark Berry Mocha Frappuccino and surf the internet. So here i am trying mobile blogging.

Most websites have a mobile version nowadays, such as "m.economist.com", which is the Economist for handhelds and smartphones. The sales of smartphones and the proliferation of networks (WiFi, WiMax, 3G, 3.5G) are going to increase, so the future is all about mobile computing and surfing.

And Kuching makes it hard to find any of my favorite regular publications such as Financial Times or Malaysian Business Times, so good internet connections do compensate. Only the 3G network in Kuching is a little slow. But i'm already used to the Streamyx internet speeds in Malaysia. Buck up Malaysia! Achieving high-income status requires a good infrastructure for doing business = good telecommunications systems. Something to suggest at my interview this afternoon.

Packing

2009-06-11T22:55:00.004+08:00

I'm doing some packing for my 2-day KL trip now. But since i'm travelling light, there's not much to pack. Maybe just two days' change of clothes and a book or two to pass the time on the plane. Not to forget the cast puzzles I'm bringing for some of Khazanah's peeps.

The purpose of this trip is primarily business (the Khazanah interview with the Tan Sri) but i'll throw in leisure by dining at some good restaurants and hanging out with friends to boot. Let's consider it a two-day break from the daily work schedule in Kuching!

There are two books i might want to pick up in KL:

Fool's Gold by Gillian Tett, which explains the origins of mortgage-backed derivatives and how JP Morgan bankers pioneered them, leading up to the financial crisis, and The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson (Harvard historian) who explains the origins of money, going all the way back to ancient civilizations and the Rothschild banking dynasty. Maybe i'll postpone their purchases till I'm in Singapore though.

Cambridge Reading List

2009-06-09T23:05:00.003+08:00

It's interesting to note that Peterhouse just sent me my reading list and a note to those intending to read mathematics.

"You have acquired a certain conception of mathematics in school, which may be a help or a hindrance to you in Cambridge. University mathematics comes as a shock to many freshmen, and you may be unnerved by having to change your ideas about mathematics. Comfort yourself with the reflection that however irrelevant your present mathematical knowledge may seem to contents of the lecture courses, the mathematical facility you have acquired will still be useful.

Learning mathematics is like driving through a fog. At any moment some things are perfectly clear, some are unclear but discernible, and some are wholly obscure. As you move along the road, objects become clearer, until when they are very near to you, you cannot understand how they were once obscure. It is the same with mathematical ideas: at any stage of your career there are some which are very clear, some which you know something about, and some are wholly obscure. What brings objects through the fog into clarity is, in the case of motoring, petrol, and in the case of mathematics, work."

I'm recommended to read books by, in particular, Cambridge mathematicians G.H. Hardy and J.E. Littlewood. And I've been recommended about 30 additional books if I have the time. Some of these books are:

Growth and Form
Mathematics and the Imagination
Theory of Numbers (G.H. Hardy)
Frontiers of Astronomy
The Unity of the Universe
The Strange Story of the Quantum
Relativity, the Special and the General Theory (Albert Einstein)
Proofs and Refutations (Imre Lakatos)
Mathematics in Western Culture

These books are rather old, actually. And they concern astronomy and physics, as well as mathematics. I'm more interested in the books Mr Linus Lee just passed to me in a CD when I was teaching in Lodge. I have a whopping 5.6 GB of math ebooks in total. I probably won't have the luxury (or suffering, depending on how you see it) of reading every one, but I have plenty of good references at hand on nearly every topic in math right now.

I'm more interested in applied math and financial math at the moment - that means probability, differential equations, linear algebra, Markov chains, and numerical analysis. That's already a lot of content covered, so maybe a little premature reading is good.

On the other hand, I have STEP coming up, so I have to nail that one first. My letter from Peterhouse also said:

"Dear Mr Chan,

I should like to offer my congratulations to you on gaining a conditional offer of a place at Peterhouse and hope that you will achieve your conditions and that we may look forward to seeing you in October."

So without passing STEP II and STEP III with grades of 1, I shouldn't start reading anything! Or maybe i'll request a reading list from NUS.

And I'll have tutoring to keep my busy on many nights in the meantime, which means I'd better start making better use of my time. I've recently finished watching the whole Prison Break series. Kudos to a great series! Season 4 was as heart-pounding as all the other seasons. Though I'm sad to see it end, I guess something better will come up soon. Heroes hasn't ended!

Tenichi

2009-06-04T22:26:00.004+08:00

Lunch yesterday was a meeting with Kai Lun and Amy at Tenichi Japanese Restaurant, Kuching, which is on the ground floor near Lok Thian Restaurant. It was the second day of Gawai, so there was this lunch promotion, and I got a meal for just RM17. And it had salmon, eel (unagi), and baby octopus. Kai Lun was trying to make me feel bad for eating babies.

And we ordered this sushi plate for RM12. It's a pretty good deal. I wanted to get a sashimi plate with 10 pieces of salmon sashimi.. but as usual, Kai Lun, sickened by his previous experience with me in Singapore, didn't approve of it. However, I was a satisfied man. I will probably return to eat here sometime, but not until I've visited other Japanese restaurants in Kuching.

After that I had to send Amy back to her house (and I picked her up too), and she had to listen to Coldplay music I blasted in my car.

"Tonight, maybe we're gonna run, dreaming of the Osaka sun."

But I'd rather dream of salmon sashimi.

Death and All His Friends

2009-06-01T15:13:00.003+08:00

"No, I don't want to battle from beginning to end,
I don't want to cycle or recycle revenge,
I don't want to follow death and all of his friends."

Hari Gawai

2009-06-01T15:04:00.004+08:00

Today, Sarawak celebrates Hari Gawai. It's a New Year for Sarawak's indigenous people! So my family visited some friends, and I ate some venison from a deer the host hunted down himself, roasted wild boar, lemang, and some Stella Artois to wash it down (but I must say I prefer Guinness, i think). This is what a developed nation should be like.. different races visiting each other to honor each others' customs and traditions. Hmm.

Anyway, Khazanah's fourth round of interviews with the Board of Trustees is on the 12th of June, 2009 at 3pm, and I've booked my ticket. So i'll be headed there on the morning of the 12th. I'll return to Kuching in the evening of the 13th, because I've decided to stay for a day or so and go down to Lake Gardens, at Elyse's suggestion! So that I can have a more "balanced" view of KL. Otherwise I'll be dissing it for being unsafe, congested, full of pickpockets and other crooks, having inefficient public transport, and so on. However, it's got good eating places, especially at Starhill Gallery, so I'll have to give it credit there. But Singapore still does better in every aspect, so not much consolation for KL. Let's start making Malaysian cities better places to live in!

That means more transparent bidding for public infrastructure projects, not handouts of projects to cronies who try to cut costs by getting cheap materials and doing substandard construction. They should just behead all these leeches.

Happy Gawai!

2-week Drought

2009-05-28T13:56:00.007+08:00

This happens to be the longest hiatus in blogging since I was in New Zealand. The last few days have been pretty routine, especially after Le Tour de Malaysia ended. In short, I've been reading the news and keeping up with world events, and juggling that with my jobs. Tutoring, as you can guess. Don't feel like blogging without anything inspirational, but here goes.

I must say I've been indulging in Coldplay's album, Viva la Vida! It was the best rock album of 2008 and it won this year's Grammy Award too. The nicest tracks, in my opinion, are:

1. Life in Technicolor
2. Life in Technicolor II
3. Cemeteries of London
4. Lost
5. Lovers in Japan
6. Viva la Vida
7. Strawberry Swing

The remaining tracks are not too bad. It seems to be something like a mellow rock album. The most chilling song is Cemeteries of London.

Cemeteries of London
"There are ghost towns in the ocean.. the ocean.
Singing la, la la la la la la, eh,
And the night over London, hey."

Lovers in Japan
"Lovers, keep on the road you're on,
Runners, until the race is run,
Soldiers, you've got to soldier on,
Sometimes even right is wrong."

Lost
"You might be a big fish in a little pond,
Doesn't mean you've won,
Because along may come a bigger one."

Life in Technicolor II
"Oh love, don't let me go,
Won't you take me where the street lights glow?
I can hear rain coming, like a serenade of sound,
Now my feet won't touch the ground."

Viva la Vida
"I used to rule the world,
Seas would rise when I gave the word,
Now in the morning I sleep alone,
Sweep the streets that I used to own."

After you listen to the songs a few times, you'll probably appreciate them better! It's the best album i've heard in a while. All the songs have great themes, lyrics, and melody. Unfortunately, I'll have to give Coldplay's London concert on September 16th a pass. What a shame. I already missed them when they came to Singapore in March this year.

In other developments, I've accepted the ASEAN scholarship and my NUS admission in the meantime. My penalty can't be more than RM10000, so my dad said to go ahead with it. After all, the risk of not accepting is too great - i'll have no university to go to. So, I might be back in Singapore real soon!

LTdM Commences

2009-05-13T14:10:00.001+08:00

I will be taking a hiatus from online activities and blogging for about a week due to Le Tour de Malaysia 2 hosting. May all your lives be fun too!

Khazanah: The Third Round

2009-05-09T11:16:00.005+08:00

I've been invited through email to attend Khazanah's third round of interviews with senior management at:

Date  :  14 May 2009 (Thursday)
Time  :  10 am
Venue :  Block 2A, Level 25, Suite 25-1
       Plaza Sentral, Jalan Stesen Sentral 5
       50470 Kuala Lumpur

So I had no choice but to book my ticket on the 13th of May, flying there at 7.10pm. The irony is that I'm flying back on the 14th of May, at 6.40pm, and I'll be meeting my parents at the airport. They're flying back from Sydney and will arrive at KLIA around 5pm or so. Nice to have a reunion outside Kuching.

Also, I get to meet up with (potential) Cambridge mates and other recent acquaintances. There's Elyse, Yvonne, Terence, Kimberley (non-Cambridge). Time to network and grab coffee.

However, this interferes with Le Tour de Malaysia plans. Here's our logo which I designed:
Hence my little breakfast meeting with Kai Lun at Loong Siang Yen cafe, followed by a speed meeting at my house. Kai Lun will have the keys and controllers to my house gates while I'm away for the one day or so (and he'd better not lose it!). He will also run the show single-handedly. Transport might be an issue, which is a reason we've moved eating places near to my house for the one day I'm absent. After I'm back with my parents, things will fit in seamlessly.

Le Tour de Malaysia is not unlike the Davos retreat for world leaders and captains of industry! Most of the plans for the program are finalized, including fireworks, wine, and places of interest. The best sights of Kuching in 5 days.

After altering our LTdM plans this morning, we crashed Amy's house. She just got back from America (flew from Detroit to Tokyo, Tokyo to KL, then KL to Kuching) on Thursday. Needless to say, the jetlag has messed things up. She slept from 7pm to 2am and ate breakfast at 4am this morning. So the three schoolmates from National Junior College caught up a little on life, over some Kentucky Truffles. Really good liqueur dark chocolate.

I received another scholarship offer last night from NUS. NUS emailed me to say that they are offering me the ASEAN Undergraduate Scholarship, and that I must indicate acceptance or rejection by 21st May. Puts me in a quandary, as I need to pay a penalty if I terminate the scholarship and leave for Cambridge. However, if I reject the scholarship and don't get into Cambridge, then I'll have to pay all the NUS fees myself when I could've gotten a free ride. That's a tough decision coming. Insurance has its drawbacks!

Conditions:

1. The scholarship covers tuition fees and provides an annual living allowance of S$5,800. The scholarship is tenable for the minimum period of candidature for the respective undergraduate courses at NUS.

2. The University does not provide any assistance towards travel or other costs nor does it guarantee employment for the scholar upon graduation.

3. If the scholar decides to terminate the scholarship prematurely, the university reserves the right to impose a repayment on a case-by-case basis.

I'd appreciate some advice!

The Laplace Transform

2009-05-07T17:46:00.004+08:00

A few days back I did a summary of the Laplace Transform. It's used to turn differential or integral equations into algebraic equations. First or second-year engineering students would find this summary sheet useful.

Also, this is a testimony of my minute handwriting. I managed to summarize everything into one page.

Years ago we used to have a contest in class to see who could write the smallest, and I was one of the serious contenders. It's strange how the size of my handwriting shrinks as I get older. My GP teacher has complained "it's so painful to decipher your microscopic handwriting". Yes, she actually wrote that on my GP essay script!

But our handwriting really reflects our personality. Or as they say at MIT, the way you write the integral sign reflects your personality!

Now I want a pencil whose tip width is only one carbon atom wide.

The Future of Reserve Currencies

2009-05-07T12:53:00.004+08:00

Last night, I gave my first session of economics tutoring. That adds to my tally of tutoring in additional mathematics, mathematics (A Levels/AS/A2), physics, and Bahasa Malaysia. I taught geography at one session and history while I was at Lodge, and I've since given up chemistry and biology, but that's 8 lessons anyway.

I first gave an overview of economics: the study of how we as human beings manage scarce resources and unlimited wants. Then we went on to the central problems of economics: what goods to produce, who to produce them for, how much of each good to produce, and how to produce them. The central assumption, of course, is that man is rational and self-interested. Finally, the four economic systems (free-market or laissez-faire, centrally planned, mixed, and Islamic). So that went pretty well. I stressed that economics is basically about decisions in everyday life and took lots of everyday examples to cement that.

Today, I read about reserve currencies in the Financial Times. There has been some controversy recently over why the US dollar is holding so steadily despite huge accumulated budget deficits (around US$10 trillion) and the fact that the US is the source of the financial crisis. One reason would be because after the Asian Financial Crisis, Asian nations piled up heavily on reserve currencies, a large part of which is held in US dollars. Recently, China has questioned the US's commmitment to fight inflation, as they see the Fed rapidly expanding its balance sheet by printing money and buying up US Treasuries. As we all know, printing money causes inflation. It just happens slower when US dollars are printed because the US dollar is a reserve currency and its status will stay for some time.

The second reason for the US dollar's strength is political. America maintains more than 50,000 troops overseas and acts as a global peacekeeper. In the Gulf region, oil monarchies depends on US troops to safeguard their security against Iran, for example. Hence, transactions and oil business must be done with US dollars as the invoice currency, or America could threaten to withdraw troops. Even in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific regions, America's role is still large, albeit diminished. The US dollar's status as a reserve currency and its military might may have been the source of American hubris. And we don't see any potential successors to America's military and economic might. No country has any financial market as liquid and deep as America's, and no blue-water military is as strong as America's yet. So US dollars will continue to play a dominant, albeit diminished role as the world's reserve currency even as China and other emerging economies gain clout. China has suggested the use of the IMF's Special Drawing Rights, whose value is based on US dollars, British pounds, Japanese yen, and Euro, as a reserve currency. However, SDRs do not contain major "secondary" reserve currencies such as the Chinese renminbi, Australian dollar, Indian rupee, and Canadian dollar, and therefore is not very viable.

In any case, the US dollar's recent strength is also partly because of vulnerabilities in other major currencies of developed economies. The UK's economic health hinges even more than the US's on global finance, and it suffered a housing bust more spectacular than America's. Household debt-to-income ratios are even higher in the UK than the US. Switzerland has a large banking sector as well, whose main income comes from private banking and asset management. Due to the recent clampdown on tax havens and offshore finance, however, it does not bode well for the Swiss banking sector and the economy. As for Japan, it's economy is over-reliant on exports. That's a mercantilist bent there. Costs are now so high than Japan that it cannot keep the export-oriented model for long, regardless of how much it continues to innovate. Finally, the Eurozone is fragment because it's a monetary union, but not a fiscal union. When individual governments within the EU make fiscal decisions independently, it affects the currency as a whole. These decisions have to be concerted. Thus the US dollar is not an awesome currency, it just has to remain as a depository for global capital because other currencies cannot offer prospects much better.

Personally, I think people should be buying up Asian currencies, especially the renminbi. The renminbi could potentially become a reserve currency if China allows full convertibility and the use of renminbi in more international transactions. Recently China concluded a few bilateral currency swap deals in order to enhance the use of the renminbi.

Right now, a lot of countries seem to be paying tribute to China. France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, recently visited Hu Jintao for an audience at his London hotel on the G20 meeting sidelines, declaring that France would not support Tibetan independence. Recently, Vietnam's president toured China, encouraging Chinese investments in a bauxite mine in Vietnam's Central Plains so that Vietnam can patch up it's US$11 billion trade deficit with China. And just last year, China warned ExxonMobil about conducting a deal with PetroVietnam in waters that it considered Chinese. Cross-strait relations between Taiwan and China are also warming as Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou proffers a hand to China, opening up tourism, transport, and investments. Even the Asian trailblazer, Japan, has seen it's prime minister Taro Aso paying a state visit to China.

The renminbi could indeed be important in the future. And so could Mandarin!

21st Century Breakdown

2009-05-07T08:03:00.002+08:00

Green Day's 2009 album, 21st Century Breakdown, will be released in May 2009. It might hit stores Malaysia later than in other parts of the world.

But it's definitely a pleasure to have them back on stage. Their punk rock-style songs, fused with political rhetoric, are unique. They've got good lyrics, which is probably the main reason I listen to them. American Idiot, Green Day's last (2004) album, American Idiot won a Grammy Award at the 2005 event. Also, their single, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, won Record of the Year at the 2006 event. I expected Wake Me Up When September Ends to win something too (in fact I thought it better than Boulevard in some ways), but to no avail.

I was a huge fan of Green Day in those days (I and I still am!). I didn't buy the original American Idiot album, however, because my sister bought it. Their best tracks from the 2004 album, in my opinion, are:

#1 American Idiot
#2 Jesus of Suburbia
#3 Holiday
#4 Boulevard of Broken Dreams
#5 Are We The Waiting?
#7 She's a Rebel
#9 Extraordinary Girl
#10 Letterbomb
#11 Wake Me Up When September Ends
#12 Homecoming

However, that's nearly every song.. my bad. It's that good. But most people don't get that their songs are political. Wake Me Up When September Ends is really about the Iraq war, not about some guy who leaves his girlfriend to fight in a war. Good political music, comes few and far between. Expletives present, yes, but good lyrics all the same.

As for 21st Century Breakdown, preliminary reviews say that it's pretty good, and some tracks are overtly political. That's what I've been waiting for. The songs are defiant, but also defiantly hopeful, referencing the unsettled political climate as well as more personal and generational turmoils. Its blend of claustrophobia, freedom and urgency is well illustrated by the album’s cover art, which depicts a tight shot of a young couple kissing against a graffiti-covered wall.

Can't wait!

The NUS Saga

2009-05-06T18:19:00.002+08:00

I just got a hard copy of my offer of admission to National Univerity of Singapore. Apparently, it's a provisional offer because.. I haven't satisfied my Mother Tongue Language requirements! Yet, I submitted my SPM results slip showing that I obtained an A2 in SPM Chinese! I will have to go back to my aunt's house in Singapore and rummage through 30kg of stuff to find that Mother Tongue exemption form then.

Also, I have to reply to NUS by the 1st of June whether or not I will accept the offer of admission. However, my admission to Cambridge is also conditional on whether I pass STEP II and STEP III with grades of 1, and STEP results are released only on 20th August 2009. Which means to be safe, I would have to enrol at NUS for one term, in case I don't pass STEP with the required grades.

But I like to live dangerously, so I think I will take a risk and reject NUS's offer of admission, and just take Cambridge's conditional offer now. Otherwise, I would have to pay for one semester (or maybe one year) of fees at NUS. The downside is that if I don't pass STEP with 1s I will have no university to go to (then I only have Bill Gates' path left). My in-built risk-reward mechanism tells me to go ahead and just reject NUS's offer though. Tell me if you think it is a bad idea. Haha.

That said, I have been working hard on STEP. I finished the 43 problems from Advanced Problems in Mathematics yesterday. I have a few more past year papers to go, so if I manage to do 10 past-year papers, I think I can nail it. I won't have a problem for STEP II (I think); the problem is STEP III because some topics like hyperbolic functions and chi-squared distributions are not covered in A Level mathematics in Singapore. Self-learning through Wikipedia suffices, but the learning curve is steeper. Luckily, Cambridge and Professor Stephen Siklos have been helpful in providing problems and solutions.

Stomp!

2009-05-05T10:56:00.002+08:00

I saw these quite a few years back, but I still think they're awesome. Stomp Out Loud is a Brighton, UK-based band that makes music from poles, dustbins, basketballs, and all other unconventional "instruments". The amount of teamwork and coordination involved, is of course amazing.

Poles

Brooms

Basketballs

And today, I purchased plenty of pounds. So now I have an incentive to work hard for my STEP math exam and get into Cambridge. Self-imposed incentive!

Those Days in Lodge

2009-05-04T09:31:00.006+08:00

I remember plenty of chess games every break time. In Form 4/5 I conveniently borrowed Sarajane's table as it was right behind and it was the cleanest. Every chess game saw all sorts of swears bouncing around and lots or witty remarks.

#1
Melvyn Ting: Something's cooking.
Me: Your ass?

#2
Melvyn Ting: Want to play chess with me?
Me: What for play with you? I know the results.
Melvyn Ting: You lose right?
Me: No, you lose.
(sorry in those days arrogance was the thing. Lol)

#3
Me: You made the same mistake again.. still using all your muscles except the one that matters?

#4
Sing Yue: 我让你. Give you face only that's why I didn't eat your rook.
Lee Lip: Ok

#5
Sing Yue: You move your bishop here and kam his rook.
Adrian Hng: Cibai ah.
(Hokkien/Cantonese swear words)

#6
Sing Yue: Don't checkmate him so fast.. Naked-ed him first.
(meaning, clean out all his other pieces and leave just a naked king)

#7
Melvyn Ting: My queen is going to seduce your king soon.
Me: Your queen is so ugly. How to seduce?

#8
(during team chess)
Melvyn Ting: I gave you a sexy queen! Give me a good piece.

#9
Sing Yue: Always cheat. No wonder always win.

Strange how I can remember all the details after so many years. Unfortunately, no one in Lodge does that these days; people will just talk during break times and "de-stress". Well it wasn't stressful there at all! Compared to the average school in Singapore, I think Lodge was quite a breeze. It's a comfort zone for Lodgians anyway.

The guys in our class used to have a little race every math/physics exam time. It went "whoever finishes first drinks water" - Sing Yue's suggestion. My personal best for SPM Math was 18 minutes 33 seconds, but I think I did make one careless mistake for that one. For SPM Math, full marks should be a given. Not so for additional mathematics though. However, the conditions soon bordered on arrogance. "Whoever finishes first, drinks water, slams the exam paper on the table, throws his hands up, and exclaims 'No standard!'". Needless to say, no one who finished dared to do that.

That was in Form 4. Back in Form 1, when Cikgu Siti Aishah was our form teacher, we were planning to "mengamalkan semangat kejiranan dalam peperiksaan."

Cikgu Siti Aishah: "Semangat kejiranan tidak boleh diamalkan dalam konteks peperiksaan."

After the exam, she was also saying: "Kalau tidak membuat pembetulan, rugi."
Me: "Rugi dari segi apa?"
Cikgu Siti: "Rugi sahaja!"

And then there was Ms Kamala Rao as our English teacher in Form 2. She was new to the school and didn't know the rules well. This was hilarious. I was once eating guava in class. I was sitting somewhere at the back, and I was the Class Monitor too.

Ms Rao: Eating in class ah?
Me: Yeap. Guava. It's really nice.
Ms Rao: Are you allowed to eat in class?

At this point the whole class was starting to erupt in laughter and Sing Yue ventured to say that I had gastric problems. And all sorts of other excuses popped up to "save" me. Eating in class, of course, was forbidden.

Me: Actually, as a class monitor I have special permission to eat in class.
Ms Rao: Is that so? I didn't know that.
Me: I think it's written somewhere in the school rules.
Ms Rao: Oh, okay then.
Me: I'm done eating though.

I got away just like that! Lol.

Before Ms Rao's classes, some of the guys in my class would bet on whether she would be wearing a sari to class. I won quite a few times, if I recall. Ms Rao's best class exercise was "Imagine you are in a bubble".

The New EZ-Link Card

2009-05-02T11:09:00.005+08:00

The EZ-Link card is Singapore's contactless smart card, used on its public transport system. Yesterday night, I got the new EZ-Link card from my sister, who's just returned from Singapore. She helped me to change my old student EZ-Link card to the new adult one which adheres to the New Singapore Standard for Contactless ePurse Applications (CEPAS). However, this time there is no travel deposit in the card so you have to make sure you have at least S$3 in the card before you start using the bus/MRT in Singapore. The card design looks more professional this time.

The new EZ-Link card will also have enhanced capabilities. You can use them at the following places by the times shown in bold:

School canteens, printing services, F&B outlets, Private buses - 1st Quarter 2009

7-Eleven convenience stores, ERP, EPS, SMRT Taxis, NLB library branches and MacDonald's Restuarants, school bookstores - 2nd Quarter 2009

F&N Coca-cola vending machines, Singapore Pools and Hospitals - 3rd Quarter 2009

So by the time I visit Singapore again, probably in June, I'll be able to use the card at the taxi even. Hopefully in the future more retail and other stores accept the use of the card; Singapore would then be well on its way towards a cashless economy. The security of this card is also pretty tight (Triple DES encryption), so you can't design a machine to top up your EZ-Link card that easily (I have, of course, done my research and opened up an actual EZ-Link card to convince myself of this. Couldn't resist!). If I'm not mistaken, EZ-Link operates on a Radio Frequency Identification System with a frequency on the order of 13 MHz.

The improvement in this card has definitely made Singapore a better place to live in. As if it didn't already have high living standards though!

Acceptance to NUS

2009-05-01T21:29:00.005+08:00

You have been provisionally offered Science in academic year 2009 - 2010.
The details of the provisional offer will be stated in the offer letter.
Your letter of offer was sent on 24-Apr-2009.
For acceptance of the NUS course that has been offered to you, please refer to the instructions enclosed in your offer package.

I just checked my application status online on a whim after chatting about Singapore university admissions with ~~some people~~ Kai Lun. However, that provisional thing looks suspicious. My offer from Cambridge is conditional, and this one from National University of Singapore is provisional. Which means I may not actually have a firm acceptance from any university yet. Lol.

I think Bill Gates' way out is the best. Don't attend university, make it big, and collect a honorary degree years hence.

Anyway, I already miss some restaurants in Singapore. Of course, I gave my sister good recommendations, but she couldn't even finish one bowl of La Mian at Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao. I'm gonna go back and visit Akashi, Sushi Tei, and Din Tai Fung soon!

Love Story meets Viva La Vida

2009-05-01T19:03:00.003+08:00

Taylor Swift and Coldplay fans would like this one. It's a really good piano-cello arrangement. Thanks to Kok Ming for the heads-up!

Alternatively it might be faster for the video to load if you watch it on Youtube itself.