Germany is like Cookhouse Food

(Once again drawing meaningless links between vastly different issues of life)

But yes, Germany is like cookhouse food

1. Costs little/nothing to you, but much to the government.

2. Don’t really know what you’re getting every day, but hey, uncertainty makes life fun, sometimes.

3. Canteen food sometimes tastes better, but you’d get bored of it or get broke, whichever happens first.

4. Much decadence in the canteen; the cookhouse less so uh

5. They are foreign (to your tastebuds)

6. They come with lots of rules

7. Drinks are free-flowing (beer is almost free-flowing)

8. Nobody tells you how it tastes, cause canteen food is naturally assumed to be better.

9. I don’t know anything about both of them.

The Woe of being Singaporean

Because everybody’s (read: the MMan himself) now into the subtle here’s-why-it’s-actually-not-all-bed-of-roses-for-Singapore-talk, Here’s three – three which can never be changed, anyway.

1. National Service – Needs no elaboration. Anyway, it’s not the 6 months one found in (now conscription-less) Germany or the <12 months because-i-live-in-the-militarily-ambivalent-state-of-Switzerland one, but the 22-24 month “i’m-gonna-lose-two-years-of-my-prime-because-of-this” one in Singapore. Of course, we factually have the longest NS period, amongst the democratic states of the developed world, that is. Then again, is irrevocable, considering we do need some sense of defence, no?

2. Bilingualism – Because “being good” in two languages means you’re generally only mediocre at both. Explains why trilingual Malaysia is not what you would call, trilingual. You know pseudobilingualism when you hear the general population going something like:

“Eh,  你这个 Saturday 有没有空去 clubbing ah?”
“Aiyah, 不可以 la, Monday 要 hand up Project.
“Orh, PW 的 project arh?”
“不是 la, normal project lor.”
“Orh, 你这样是在读 Poly ah?”
“Eh, 你的 results 不错 leh, 为什么不要去 JC leh?”
“不可以 la, 我的 GP 不好 la”

Honestly, I wouldn’t exactly know how to converse that entirely in Chinese too?

3. Lack of cultural roots – which is why we always make lousy Chinese Dramas, cringe-worthy English Dramas, shun the annual local films during CNY season, wonder why we have to close down the Lions and finally realise the “Creative Industry” is actually the painful alternative to the “Productive Industry”. Also ultimately the reason why our universities are authentically schools of vocation-driven studies, not “Liberal Arts Colleges” we hope they might be (through tie-ups and whatsnot). And hence also, why we will never have these people and many others.

Depressing truth, but hey, could at least do with being grateful for everything else nonetheless.

Basic Purpose

Hi

It’s been day 5.5 since i last went to work/or since i’ve been on leave – perspective – and I swear it feels like day 50. I’m totally cool with not working – that is if i have something ELSE to do, but no…not having anything consequential to do is stagnant at best, severely detrimental otherwise.

(Mental note to self: DON’T take so much leave at one go again, unless you’re planning to go overseas, or planning to take over the world.)

Actually, I HAVE been doing things. Many in fact. On top of going out every day except today, I’ve been diligently waking up before 830 (awesome ikr, except for one), reading Bild, working on apps, reading Time Traveler’s Wife and watching classic films. They are not too bad activities while they last, but just leave a huge void of purpose thereafter.

SO. May I suggest what we all need here is some purpose? Purpose, not as in i-am-who-i-am-to-be-a-difference-to-the-world – that’s for later – but just basic purpose. Like what keeps me going to work every morning is the prospect of going home every evening, or like what keeps me going through Mondays to Fridays is looking forward to Saturdays and Sundays, or like what keeps me going through NS is the prospect of ORDing in around one year.

Ahha convoluted enough, but hey, it works! Beats complaining.

Letter of Realisation and Apology

TRUTH: We often become the very people we once criticised. So to save yourself from the pain of realising it YOURSELF, learn from mine, would you rather?

Dear random-girl-who-love-KDrama-especially-those-mindless-love-shows-and-would-sit-at-home-watching-them-all-day,

I’m sorry.

You deserve my sincerest apologies for having damn straightfacedly criticised your conscious escape from reality with Korean dramas that otherwise are just impossible. While I still do not condone the fact that you’ve wasted much time trying to imagine you have 4 hot and rich guys chasing after you (oh pls come on), I’m thankful you’ve gone ahead of me and made me realise that I’m no different. In fact I could be worse for making the same mistake.

You see, while your escape-from-reality pill (thereby mentioned as EFR pill) is K Drama, mine ist a much better series of How I Met Your Mother (VIRTUAL HIGH 5 COME ON).

(Actually if you happen to like both, you REALLY need to do something with your life. And i don’t mean just studying)

Like you, I started taking my EFR pill because my friend introduced it to me and said it’d be a good watch (always starts innocently). Well, initially, it wasn’t me that liked it, just my subconscious mind that eventually consumed my entire being into it. And from there on, you begin to live on the pill and its ideals.

Y0u eat the pill because you know outside of the pill, your life is as mundane as it gets. Your friends are as boring as they get, and the 4 guys that are chasing you, are just either rich, hot, smart, or charismatic – all mutually exclusive. And yes, outside of my pill, my life is as mundane as it gets too. My “gang” of friends are all guys, no hot Candian chick, no sweet loving couple, and no Awesome friend. For that matter, we live on average 10 MRT stations away from the nearest bar, and alcohol costs 50212348123 times more. And the worse part, each episode sums up like this –

“NS sucks”

…

“Oh y’think”

…

“Oh, bout that…”

So you see, just like you, i’ve found this the perfect way to escape into an alternate universe of make-believe-awesomeness, where random sitcom-worthy stuffs happens all the time. Yet, ultimately, when you’re done with the last episode you downloaded, you sense the void in you that seems to eat you inside out.

I guess what I’m saying is that – we need to move on after all them seasons and episodes. You need to get up and create your own destiny, your own happiness and own love, while I, well, go create some real sitcom-ish moments in life. We create our unfortunately broken reality because we can’t survive on ideals alone, which is why literature is ANALYSED, not INTERNALISED. Most importantly, when you see a fellow friend being sucked into the deep abyss of escapism, don’t crticise. Tell him/her your story about how after running away for too long, the only way forward is to turn back and come home. It’s true we all need somewhere to run to, to empathise and to idealise, but just remember to come back when you’ve had enough.

Regards,

Me

Just blows your mind

“…I’ll just warn you right now that you’re lacking the key to her heart.”

“And what’s that?”

“A job at Goldman Sachs. That’s what her boyfriend has. His stated ambition is to be worth a hundred million at age 30.”

(And i was really just laughing real loud when i turned the page to see “A job at Goldman Sachs…”)

Jon Franzen’s book just gets better and better and better and blows your mind multiple times every time (not unlike an Apple product). The dude seems to have the whole culture of the 21st and 20th century uploaded in his head, and he’s 51…

“If you’re good, you’re for finance”

To avoid demonising the already “morally condemned” financial industry, let’s put aside our tinted glasses and look at reality normally, shall we?

Two of the all time epic economists, Paul Samuelson and John Maynard Keynes were once heavily involved with all things evil in finance, i.e. trading, speculating, hedging, something that Mr Sowden would deem as a “scumbag-of-the-earth” activities. (I guess I bought into all that fundamentalist teaching for a while)

Well, Samuelson co-founded Commodities Corporation along with other PhD whizz kids which at its peak raked in more income than quite a few of the Fortune 500 firms. CC eventually became the forerunner to GS’ Hedge Fund Strategies so you can see how big these things can be.

Keynes too, played the magic of the market by SPECULATING (ouch, what a scumbag) with HIGH LEVERAGE trading currencies. He got like >50,000 pounds off all these by 1924…

So yeah, to the self-righteous imma-study-econs-for-academic-sake-for-the-purposeful-use-towards-society person, C’MON SCREW IT and let’s all HOP INTO THE BANGWAGON (I typed BANG accidentally, so let’s just leave it as that) OF DECADENCE! Well even if you’re NOT studying econs, hop on too! The lure of the dark side is just irresistible, you’ve got to admit.

Bad economics

First serious post in 5892493 years, apparently inspired by thinking too much about pointless issues.

Anywhere here’s an attempt into treading the waters of behavioural econs with something uniquely uh, Singapore. Because I think i’ve forgotten much fanciful concepts/theories and lack empirical evidences, this is clearly uneconomic and not the way you should answer your H2 essay qn, or write a rigourous paper, or try to look smart, but nonetheless, some introspection on steroids.

THE CONTEXT: $100 entrance fees into the casino

Contrary to the popular (neoclassical and logically Singaporean) belief that setting a ($100) cost to any illicit/vice activities would intuitively decrease the incidence of vice, addiction is probably a uniquely difficult variable to model into cost-benefit analysis and shouldn’t be analysed with standard demand/supply frameworks.

1) The entrance fee only reinforces the need to gamble, not curb it. No rational (or irrational, depends on what you define as rational) football team concedes defeat if given a (hypothetical) 2-point handicap against another team even before kick off. They just fight harder throughout the whole game, right?

2) The (official) rationale of a fee is to “discourage potential gamblers” or whatever – not interested to quote verbatim. Which clearly fails when you consider the magnitude at which ‘problem gamblers’ gamble with; $100 is just another cost. (The standard layman argument, all of which can be found on brainless forums, so shan’t elaborate.)

3) So, premise 1) and 2) just illustrate a higher fixed cost for ‘problem gamblers’ which only results in greater volume of gambling to cover losses, since exhilaration feeds addiction. In fact, it’s a SNOWBALL effect starting with the initial $100 loss.

4) This is a purely counterproductive policy. The people to be protected from themselves through this policy are actually coerced to crash and burn – welfare loss. And this is not even considering the welfare loss by normal, curious citizens who are inclined to explore the casino, but are otherwise not inclined to.

5) Bad economics in action, or could it just be GOOD PROFITEERING?

On second thought, econs papers looks drastically nonsensical with esoteric English. Layman talk does quite fine in fact. Maybe topped with some appropriate math and empirical research would make it just suitable?

Then again, what use are they?

News outside of News

Been doing some serious studying of Deutsch these weeks, how hardworking ^^. And yes of course, reading german tabloids in the name of studying too. Ziemlich interessant…

Politiks there, apparently, is quite colourful for reasons. So here’s some facts…

1) 7 out of 18 ministers in Angela Merkel’s Cabinet are < 50 years old, 3 of which are < 40.

2) Germany’s Minister of Defence is 38 and looks like Matt Damon, somewhat. (Link)

3) To put things into perspective, only 2 out of  21 Cabinet Ministers in Singapore are <50, and they’re nearing 50.

4) Singapore’s Minister of Defence is NOT 38 and DOES NOT look like Matt Damon, at all. (That of course, does not suggest anything about his competence or leadership, so this is NOT sedition.)

5) Two weeks back, Germany’s State Secretary Rudiger Wolf called upon DPM. That’s probably the same appointment as PS(D) in Sg. Perhaps the only reason he came was cause it isn’t really nice for a 38 y-o Minister of Defence to meet with a 56 y-0 Minister of Defence, at least for Singapore?

So yes, 39 y-o CDFs and (future) women BGs are not TOO alarming I guess.

A constant struggle

Because life is a constant struggle between time and inspiration.

Inspiration without time (like what is happening to me now), is a life lived unfulfilled.

Time without inspiration, is just a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

Given the choice, I would rather have an intermediary, where inspirations can be saved and channeled to people who have the time to put it to fulfilment, while providing me with handsome dividends over the years. Of course like any other system,

That sounds efficient?

Then again, of course, you would be an idiot to say that sounds efficient.

Some altruism

After going to OC 158239012 times too many, I realised Far East Organisation is either 1) A very BAD retail property developer 2) A non-profit, community-minded, altruistic business.

Because finally after 158239011 times of overlooking the B2 level, it finally dawned upon me that they have A WHOLE BASEMENT nearly vacant. (Not to mention they could put some benches and make it a convenient study area.) Its probably the only remedy to the market failure of NOISE and CROWDS that Orchard Road sees every weekend. For that matter, storeys 2-11 aren’t exactly populated either…

And more evidence for case 1). Attached is the list of other shopping centres Far East develops…

a) Square 2: Whut? Yes there is a ‘Square 2’ in Novena, obviously being dwarfed by its much more popular counterparts United Square and Novena Square.

b) Central: Yes the misfit of Clarke Quay that even after so much hype fails to even get the lunch crowd on weekdays.

c) Lucky Plaza: Your quintessential Filipino hangout. Another merit good there, external benefits fully subsidised, courtesy of Far East Organisation. Where would all our maids go on their off day if not for Lucky Plaza? Otherwise, a failure of a development, can’t be renovated either.

d) Far East Plaza: RGS girls would have such a hard time finding places to hang out if this was demolished. Otherwise, its failure of a business model (like Lucky Plaza) renders it un-en-bloc-able.