Boo
A week has passed and I’m heading back towards Chicago. There’s about another hour to the Narita leg of this flight, and then another 11 hours more of being up in the air. I managed to see a sortof sunrise on the plane, and it’s so beautiful. I’d love to do more sunrise watching this spring and summer, as and when I can afford the time. Seeing that stretch of fish stomach white expanding across the horizon, basking in the glow of the sun, sharing the moment with friends.
Let’s see, what thoughts do I want to pen down?
I’m such a kid, but one that’s growing up. My last real (as compared to nominal?) growth spurt was in NS, and I think I’m due for another. Of course I’ve been growing gradually in the past 4 years, and have friends to thank for lighting the way. These past 2 quarters have been some very interesting times; Job search, Price Theory, Wei Ren’s death, meeting Hunter, touring SF, talking with sbf, hearing about Joshua, (not) learning differential topology or commutative algebra and coming back home to Singapore. This upcoming quarter would be a challenge of classes and adjusting towards work; such different lifestyles, such different scenarios. Ah yes, I have to figure out what classes I’m taking, and what the schedule is. I should consider Nori’s 9am class, just so that it forces me to deal with waking up early. Oh, someone please remind to shave on Thursday. I’ve Optiver events over the weekend, and I think I should be somewhat presentable at least. The good thing about staying in Chicago is that I won’t miss Thursday’s classes too
Oh, there goes the threat to destroy all electronics that are not switched off. Oh, so apparently my battery has lost its ability to charge past 70%, though that could be a fault with the Singapore electricity supply… Okie, 2 hours more to this flight, and the sunrise would be on the wrong side (aka left) of this plane. Don’t think I’m time adjusted, even though I slept through half the flight. Ended up watching 7 pounds (bad) and slumdog millionaire. I have yet to understand what the big hoohah in SM really is about. I mean, its good, but X Oscars good? Hm, well, not like I know what the other competition this year looks like. Okie, back to more thought dumping.
Intro to Finance course. The only undergrad course last quarter, hence by definition, the easiest. Didn’t spend much time on it, but the concepts were easy to grasp. Well, once you get them in the correct setting and understanding, the rest would follow. Didn’t do well for the midterm due to numerous careless mistakes that I made. Did well enough for the final (which dropped the midterm grade) and I managed to scrape through. Why am I blabbering about this? Well, I felt that the course on the whole was very easily understandable, and that it shouldn’t be that hard to do well in it. So, once again, why do people have trouble in the courses? I’d admit that Fuchs wasn’t all that good a teacher, and several times the concepts were somewhat unclear and required looking through again. However, he did have good questions which aided understanding. (Sounds so much like Shumel lol) Well, hopefully work would be like that, smooth and easy sailing lol.
What I did over the week. Met up with a whole bunch of other people. Ate 1 box of durian on the car trip home. Spent Friday at home with parents and played MJ with sis at night. Taught induction at SIMO (and had a nice list of non-immediate problems), met up with Chicago seniors in the night (and played MJ). Had Sunday lunch at grandma’s place, which was good chicken curry, yam balls, lotus soup. Then went to buy shoes, to replace my holed ones. Met Mrs Soh for Monday lunch, and that was a good 2.5 hour conversation about Singapore, education, climate, economic crisis, people. Met Thomas Teo for dinner, who brought us to dian xiao er, and was another nice conversation, though more around math stuff. Met boon for tues lunch, and then my Chicago army mates for dinner. Weds lunch was Edmund, and dinner was Chengping at Ding Tai Feng, who gave me a treat and got a pleasant surprise in return. Gave her a postsecret book, which is a site that I quite like. Met Aunty Jenny for Thrusday lunch at Sakura, and then visited grandpa in the evening and had fish head curry and whatnots. Mum cooked Friday lunch, and met Kianboon for tea and Miss Tang + Rachael for dinner. Would be sad to miss R’s wedding in June, but oh well. Sat morn was spent with parents again, and we went out for dinner at Lao Pa Sa. Yup, that about summarizes how I spent my time. Oh, add to that like 5 boxes of durians and 50 X 40 mins of Sie Diao Ying Xiong Zhuan. And of course, lots of chatting too.
At some point in time, I’d be inclined to pen down some of my thoughts about the current economic situation. It would certainly be useful to do so, esp given all that’s currently happening. Haven’t kept up with much of last week’s events, though it seems quite quiet, at least on the surface.
1. I expected oil prices to rise to $80 at the end of the year, but given developments in the past months, I’d revise that downward to $60. And if the economy recovers by the end of next year, it should be at $80 then. How did I arrive at these numbers? Magic lol.
2. I’m amazed at the effect that propaganda has on the economy. Take Singapore for example – In terms of news information received, it is amazingly sheltered from the true extent of the global recession/depression. It’s also reported that the unemployment rate is still beneath 5% (which is technically full employment), but I doubt that such is true. Teenagers are still going on massive shopping sprees, without regard to the diminishing expected paychecks of their parents. Uni grads are now beginning to worry about not finding a job (which they should have done since last October at least) Well, there would be a bumper crop of teacher applications this year, which might end up being harmful to the overall quality instead
3. China’s call for a world currency is just an initial step. Well, their buying spree of raw materials would come before that. I wonder what’s up their sleeves, but its good that they are taking advantage of this situation, to grow from being a follower to a player. Given China’s massive investment in US treasuries, they would be severely affected by a weakening dollar (US’s declaration that it would buy up treasuries led to about a 2% drop in its currency). This is especially true as their domestic market isn’t developed, and products from their industries have to be mostly exported. But in a world that’s increasingly becoming protectionist, such is hard.
4. Let’s model protectionism as a Prisoner’s Dilema. In this simplistic setting, since we are in a game with finitely many turns, everyone would choose to take P instead of B, which is what we’re beginning to see. While the ‘Buy US’ clauses were toned down, they set the initial ground and biased more people towards P as retaliation. Then came Gordon Brown decision to protect British jobs, and the EU’s decision to not orchestrate a massive bailout of its territories.
Let’s see, what thoughts do I want to pen down?
I’m such a kid, but one that’s growing up. My last real (as compared to nominal?) growth spurt was in NS, and I think I’m due for another. Of course I’ve been growing gradually in the past 4 years, and have friends to thank for lighting the way. These past 2 quarters have been some very interesting times; Job search, Price Theory, Wei Ren’s death, meeting Hunter, touring SF, talking with sbf, hearing about Joshua, (not) learning differential topology or commutative algebra and coming back home to Singapore. This upcoming quarter would be a challenge of classes and adjusting towards work; such different lifestyles, such different scenarios. Ah yes, I have to figure out what classes I’m taking, and what the schedule is. I should consider Nori’s 9am class, just so that it forces me to deal with waking up early. Oh, someone please remind to shave on Thursday. I’ve Optiver events over the weekend, and I think I should be somewhat presentable at least. The good thing about staying in Chicago is that I won’t miss Thursday’s classes too
Oh, there goes the threat to destroy all electronics that are not switched off. Oh, so apparently my battery has lost its ability to charge past 70%, though that could be a fault with the Singapore electricity supply… Okie, 2 hours more to this flight, and the sunrise would be on the wrong side (aka left) of this plane. Don’t think I’m time adjusted, even though I slept through half the flight. Ended up watching 7 pounds (bad) and slumdog millionaire. I have yet to understand what the big hoohah in SM really is about. I mean, its good, but X Oscars good? Hm, well, not like I know what the other competition this year looks like. Okie, back to more thought dumping.
Intro to Finance course. The only undergrad course last quarter, hence by definition, the easiest. Didn’t spend much time on it, but the concepts were easy to grasp. Well, once you get them in the correct setting and understanding, the rest would follow. Didn’t do well for the midterm due to numerous careless mistakes that I made. Did well enough for the final (which dropped the midterm grade) and I managed to scrape through. Why am I blabbering about this? Well, I felt that the course on the whole was very easily understandable, and that it shouldn’t be that hard to do well in it. So, once again, why do people have trouble in the courses? I’d admit that Fuchs wasn’t all that good a teacher, and several times the concepts were somewhat unclear and required looking through again. However, he did have good questions which aided understanding. (Sounds so much like Shumel lol) Well, hopefully work would be like that, smooth and easy sailing lol.
What I did over the week. Met up with a whole bunch of other people. Ate 1 box of durian on the car trip home. Spent Friday at home with parents and played MJ with sis at night. Taught induction at SIMO (and had a nice list of non-immediate problems), met up with Chicago seniors in the night (and played MJ). Had Sunday lunch at grandma’s place, which was good chicken curry, yam balls, lotus soup. Then went to buy shoes, to replace my holed ones. Met Mrs Soh for Monday lunch, and that was a good 2.5 hour conversation about Singapore, education, climate, economic crisis, people. Met Thomas Teo for dinner, who brought us to dian xiao er, and was another nice conversation, though more around math stuff. Met boon for tues lunch, and then my Chicago army mates for dinner. Weds lunch was Edmund, and dinner was Chengping at Ding Tai Feng, who gave me a treat and got a pleasant surprise in return. Gave her a postsecret book, which is a site that I quite like. Met Aunty Jenny for Thrusday lunch at Sakura, and then visited grandpa in the evening and had fish head curry and whatnots. Mum cooked Friday lunch, and met Kianboon for tea and Miss Tang + Rachael for dinner. Would be sad to miss R’s wedding in June, but oh well. Sat morn was spent with parents again, and we went out for dinner at Lao Pa Sa. Yup, that about summarizes how I spent my time. Oh, add to that like 5 boxes of durians and 50 X 40 mins of Sie Diao Ying Xiong Zhuan. And of course, lots of chatting too.
At some point in time, I’d be inclined to pen down some of my thoughts about the current economic situation. It would certainly be useful to do so, esp given all that’s currently happening. Haven’t kept up with much of last week’s events, though it seems quite quiet, at least on the surface.
1. I expected oil prices to rise to $80 at the end of the year, but given developments in the past months, I’d revise that downward to $60. And if the economy recovers by the end of next year, it should be at $80 then. How did I arrive at these numbers? Magic lol.
2. I’m amazed at the effect that propaganda has on the economy. Take Singapore for example – In terms of news information received, it is amazingly sheltered from the true extent of the global recession/depression. It’s also reported that the unemployment rate is still beneath 5% (which is technically full employment), but I doubt that such is true. Teenagers are still going on massive shopping sprees, without regard to the diminishing expected paychecks of their parents. Uni grads are now beginning to worry about not finding a job (which they should have done since last October at least) Well, there would be a bumper crop of teacher applications this year, which might end up being harmful to the overall quality instead
3. China’s call for a world currency is just an initial step. Well, their buying spree of raw materials would come before that. I wonder what’s up their sleeves, but its good that they are taking advantage of this situation, to grow from being a follower to a player. Given China’s massive investment in US treasuries, they would be severely affected by a weakening dollar (US’s declaration that it would buy up treasuries led to about a 2% drop in its currency). This is especially true as their domestic market isn’t developed, and products from their industries have to be mostly exported. But in a world that’s increasingly becoming protectionist, such is hard.
4. Let’s model protectionism as a Prisoner’s Dilema. In this simplistic setting, since we are in a game with finitely many turns, everyone would choose to take P instead of B, which is what we’re beginning to see. While the ‘Buy US’ clauses were toned down, they set the initial ground and biased more people towards P as retaliation. Then came Gordon Brown decision to protect British jobs, and the EU’s decision to not orchestrate a massive bailout of its territories.
posted by calvinlinzw at
8:11 AM
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