You Think, Ergo You Are

Whenever I meet people, I will observe their characters, how they act, how they react, and how they think.

My observation is:

You are what you think you are

In other words:

Your current status (financial, emotional, companionship, etc.) is the consequences of your thoughts

To make things more solid, let's start with me, myself. I am, because I am thinking about this thought (as per Descartes) now. I take the 'negation' of myself to denote all external elements (the world, the universe, etc.).

We have two mutually exclusive elements, namely 'myself' and 'the external world'. The union of these will form a complete universe. Note 'the external world' can be defined on demand later, so I purposely leave it wide-open.

My argument is this: most of time we are defined solely by ourselves

Take myself as example, in Penang I don't have many friends, and in weekends I usually stay home. A lot of people think I am a poor soul of not having any company. I used to think in that way, too. However after some thoughts, I understand the problem and enlightened. There isn't anybody I know around here that worths my time (well, Fookie can be counted as one actually, but I usually don't pull people who have home-cookings out for meals). I am not trying to be a snob, but it is really hard to find someone who has similar interests as mine. For the guys, their main interests will be _only_ on the latest handphone models, women, sex, movies, and more women. Although my current colleagues are of much higher quality than the previous bunch, still there is still gap that I can't mend. Therefore my thoughts dictate my actions not to waste my time with them, as a consequence, I don't have many friends around. Fair enough.

Next, do you have friends or relatives who only barely make ends meet? I do. If you go closer and really observe how this person acts and thinks, you will find out the problem usually is not due to the failure of capitalism system; it stems from how that person manages and handles money.

The last example will be on relationship. There are a lot of single persons around. I have heard complaints after complaints of being lonely and the hardship of getting someone significant.

For some cases it is due to the inherent (asinine) social restrictions that force certain people (read: ladies) to remain passive and wait. However, in most cases I do think the problem again stems on how that person interacts and behaves. Egotism is the most common syndrome I have seen so far.

On Information Highway and ODS

I don't know about you, but I admit since my first encounter with Internet, I have had contracted Obsessive Download Syndrome (ODS).

I make up the ODS term. By saying ODS, I refer to a near compulsive urge to download stuff from Internet. In my early years, for some unknown reason I was fond of downloading shareware and competing with my friends to see who would fill up the hard drive first. When we met, we would boast to each other how many programs we each downloaded, installed, and later uninstalled. Until now I have no clue what kick it had on me to go through all the install-uninstall cycles that time, especially the OS of the day was Windows 95, which was very fragile and discriminating on what you put in it. Anything not agreeable to Windows 95 would yield blue screens as penalty. Reinstalling Windows 95 every month or so was one of our silly self-proclaimed rituals to computer wizardry at that time by the way.

Now my syndrome shifts to reading materials mainly on economics, philosophy, and finance. It is very amazing (and interesting) to find out you can get virtually any information, provided you know where to look. However I have been quite indulged in downloading for a while without even step back and evaluate the goals behind all my actions. Today when I was inspecting my folders, I was both delighted and frustrated by the fact I have so many good books sitting in my computer, but I have only read less than 1% of them.

See, instead spending time to peruse the reading materials I have downloaded, I have been wasting my precious time to download more. With the new insight on this, I have stopped all downloads and derived a plan to consume those reading materials. But alas, there are so many attractive books out there!

Maybe I need to live in seclusion for a few years to finish them?

Status Upgrade

With the arrival of this little baby, my status is upgraded..... [drums rolling...]

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I am now someone's UNCLE! Correct, this baby is my niece. My brother is now a very proud father.

Once seen a (cute) baby, the usual question is "What is the name?"

Well, for some reason this girl has no name yet, except I know she is in the Cuppa Chai clan. Her parents are still scratching their heads and trying hard to think a decent name. I and my parents have joined the party by throwing in names we can think of: "How about Mei Li?", "Too common? How abt Mei Eng?", "Xin Jie?", "Xin Ling?", "Ok, cut it short, call her Cutie then". The debates continue until today and after throwing some inputs, I gave up and let her parents to worry about the rest.

So here I am, an uncle. Well, is that a good news? Definitely, but when I called my brother, his question nailed me: "Hey man, when will be your turn?" He reminded me I am no longer young and even taunted me "I am married at your age dude!". Well...

Dear Reader, I am pretty sure I can answer this question soon... [wink wink]

But not sooner (as communicated earlier) ;)

Our English

This afternoon I was involved in a discussion between the hardware and software team on factory readiness to manufacture our product.

There are plenty of misunderstandings, circular dependencies, false assumptions, and downright wishful thinkings in the whole project, from head to toe. You won't believe all the participants are adults.

A 'classic' conversation:

The Real Thing:

Hardware Guy (HG): You software people really cannot ah, firmware delay here and there, give us quick quick lah, set up equipment take time you know?

Software Guy (SG): Aiyo, you assign us a model ID first lah so that we can put in firmware, or else cannot one.

HG: Aiya, can't we just program that number in meh?

SG: Cannot lah. Before program in that number the firmware will read the model number to see write where

In English:
HG: You guys are not doing a good job. The firmware has been delayed for so long. We need it asap because setup also takes time.

SG: We can't deliver it yet because we are still waiting for the model ID

HG: Well, I thought we can just program in the model ID through software?

SG: Nope, the software will check for the model ID first to decide where to write, hence without the model ID the software can't do anything

Note:

Words like 'ah', 'lah', 'meh', 'kah', 'hoh', 'mah', 'aiya', 'walau eh' are interjections, ergo meaningless.

Words like 'kah' and 'meh' express doubtfulness.

Example Usages:

You go to movie yesterday kah? (You went to watch movie yesterday?)

This result correct meh? (Is this result correct?)

Checking the dictionary for these words will be a futile exercise. I am not encouraging the use of all these, but if one is aware of this quirky use of English, life in Asia (esp. Malaysia and Singapore) will be much easier.

The Harvard Investment Advice?

Recently there is an article in The Economist on investments using university endowments.

The investment returns from the endowments keep beating the markets year after year at an average rate of 10.7%. The high-flyers include MIT (23%), Yale (22.9%), and Harvard (around 15%) are having returns that continuously defy the efficient market hypothesis.

Most people may conclude this phenomena is due to the advices and guidances from strong faculties in the respective universities.

Well, not quite...:

"According to one former Harvard official, its endowment fund has done so well because it has avoided taking advice from the economics faculty."

I find this both amusing and illuminating. The best advice is not to listen to any?

P/S: Original article is here, but it may not work because this is a paid subscription.

Free Flow of Information

Recently I have been reading a lot, mainly news articles in English and Chinese. I found out two things:

1. China people are learning and studying very aggressively, be it the hippest programming language or the latest management information, there are significant number of people busy swapping information. China no doubt is a country with a lot of people, but the attitude and hunger to advance are not only impressive, it is down right scary. It seems like in a race, they are running like crazy, while I am strolling around. I think this also applies to countries like India and Brazil also.
   
2. Aptly called the information super highway, the ubiquity of internet has nearly everything you need (plus a lot of stuff you don't need). This further aggravates the differences between those who wield this knowledge and those who don't.
   

Are these obvious? Yes, they are, but not many people are paying attention to these.

Local Optimization vs. Global Optimization

Updated Jan 18, 2006

A hypothetical economy has the following industries: farming, fishing, quarrying, and mining.

Question 1:
Does maximizing the output of all industries will yield optimum economic value for that particular economy?

I have been pondering upon this when I was stuck in front of an ultra-long waiting time traffic light on my way to badminton.

What do you think?

Tentative Solution:
For now we assume

1. The activities of each industries will have no side-effects i.e. no environmental problems due to over-farming, no landslide due to over-mining, etc.

With the above assumption, local optimization tends to be globally optimum.

Even if we extend the time horizon, it seems optimized subsystems will yield a globally optimum system. However this is just my gut feeling.

Question 2 (Renewable Resource):
Zoom into the fishing industry and consider it as a system. Subsystems are the individual fishermen.

Will optimize outputs of all fishermen will yield maximum output for the fishing sector?

Tentative Solution:
In the short run, yes, maximizing individual fisherman will maximize the output. However in the long run, indiscriminated fishing will deplete the sea resources, therefore ultimately the fishermen will have diminishing returns, which is not desirable.

In this case, maximizing local subsystems will not yield a global optimum.

And we are bordering on game theory. Let's look at Prisoner's Dilemma:

2 felons have committed a crime and are caught. The police can convict them for 10 year jail time only if they testify each other. Or else the police can only charge them with a minor crime which will jail them for 5 years.

The police put the two persons in different locations and offers each of them a deal: if he testifies against his accomplice, he will be freed on the spot while the other will get the full sentence (10 years of jail time). Each of them is told the other person is offered the same deal as well.

For each of these felons, he is only interested in his own welfare, and he is aware of the deal is offered to the other person. In order to optimize his own welfare, he will choose to testify against his accomplice. However, optimizing of individual will make the situation worse, which is similar to the fishing example we see above. Therefore local optimization is not equal to global optimization in this case.

Question 3 (Non renewable resources):

Homework question. :P

iPhone

Updated Jan 13, 2007

iPhone has been officially launched by Apple and this marks the start of a new era for converged devices. Triple-play anyone? No, it is not a dirty word. ;) It means the convergence of TV, Internet, and Phone.

iPhone sends chill down the spines of all major phone makers, and its launch has literally start a fire under the seat of every CTO who has some business in mobile devices. Eventually a lot butts will be baked.

Why? Mobile phones nowadays are very hard to use. They are so complex that you must study the brick-thick user manual before you can take advantage of most of the functionalities. As an example, Moto V3i has about 50 A4-pages of user manual, and still I can't find where to turn on/off GPRS after reading it twice.

Apple has the track-record of delivering stunning beautiful and easy-to-use user interface. I am quite optimistic it will make a cut in the ultra competitive cell phone market.

Side-item: Do you know that Siemens-BenQ alliance on cell phone business has failed?

If I have to choose between Apple and Microsoft, I will definitely get a Mac powered handphone, but carrying an expensive cell phone is troublesome. For the phone I am carrying, though it comes free, I am still constantly worried it will get stolen, or misplaced and lost during my frequent submersions in thinking. On top of that, its user interface sucks big time. Now it is more like a liability than an asset to me. Trading it in for another one (obviously not Moto anymore...) is a mental note long stuck in my mind.

Technical Training

Today is the first day of a 3-day training on an embedded CPU from Texas Instrument. In class I asked a lot of questions as usual, and in fact, that processor is pretty slick and loaded with tonnes of interesting features.

Quite thrilled because this skill can be used in Singapore also. Ha! :P

Tidbits of The Day

#1: Beta Testing of Company Product

I was sent out to do beta testing of the company product on the field. Altogether 4 persons, we drove around the industrial zone and acted as users. The outcome was entirely discouraging. First was the product sucked so big time it would be a pain to use, and honestly, it borders on useless. I wonder if anybody will fork out US$4k to get one piece of crap.

Next, the engineers were all clueless. I won't blame them as they were relatively young and inexperienced (2 years at most), but the problem solving skill and framework are not there. I had to nudge them to do the tests properly. Well I guess this was why my boss asked me to go with them at the first place.

#2: Email & Knuth

Donald Knuth is one of the semi-gods in terms of algorithm analysis. His books "The Art of Computer Programming" remains the holy grail to algorithm wizardry. But by merely reading his books proves nothing, the gems are the exercises. If you are able to solve most of his difficulty rating of 40 and 50 problems, I think solving interview questions from Google or Microsoft will be a piece of cake for you.

Years ago I came across his FAQ on Email and he says he stopped using email since 1990. The following quote is very illuminating:

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study.

I find myself unintentionally drifting to his stand on emails and other communications devices. Now I only hang on MSN messenger sporadically, and starting to cut down on Google chat gradually. For emails I check around a few times per day and no longer it is forever on.

The first thing I need to clarify is I do want to talk to you, my dear friend. I am not shutting you down. But asynchronous tools like these really don't let me concentrate to the fullest. Having these tools in operations, my mind will unconsciously tend to poll them once every 5 - 10 minutes. This is a huge time waste.

BRIC?

Quiz time:

1. BRIC stands for:
a) Britain, Romania, Italy, Chile
b) British Resident Identity Card
c) Brazil, Russia, India, China
d) Don't know

2. In Dec, US has a strong employment rate and falling oil price. If this continues, what will the Fed most probably do?
a) Interest rate to go up
b) Interest rate to go down
c) Interest rate will stay to support the growth
d) Don't know


This quiz is on globalization and general economics (more on the macro side). Answers:
1) c
BRIC stands for the emerging countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China. The characteristics of these countries are relatively low income per capita, flourishing economies, large pool of talents, governments are encouraging foreign direct investments, and a lot of potential customers. If you don't know this term, you aren't tuning in to the globalization wave.


2) a
The Fed will rev up the interbank loan interest rate to suppress spending, and thus to prevent the economy from overheating.