sagas in news are like seeds in grapes

Local news coverage often do not scale in the same proportion to importance of the incident. My morning news has been plagued by too many sagas. Especially local news which is certainly getting more dramatic these days. First, Ris Low won the pageant, then Jack Neo decides to open up, Wax in the city went burst, then back to Ris Low appearing on 987fm. I spend a good part of my morning filtering out small time news like these, while searching for answers to my questions from other news providers. After the days of protests, why Thaksin hasn't said anything? There should be more objective reporting on Silviu Ionescu. Else the public opinion is going form their opinions through blogs like this. What's the launch results of iPad? Why is there no mention of the Super cool Adobe CS5 which will be launch this weekend? How will recent murder of apartheid proponent affect the coming World Cup in South Africa?

Good thing we have internet.

a pic a day

The last time I wanted to take a shot of the twilight, I had to crawl out of bed at 4am. Here. Thankfully Singapore is pretty small and her transport network is very efficient. I only had to wake up at 450am to take this shot. Lower Seletar at 6am was really tranquil. The sky was pale blue with streaks of pink. It kicked off a exploration into the forested Seletar area, the last kampong, restricted areas and flying hangers. Rustic charm was the phrase of the day.

"pontoons"-cj

Thanks guys. It was fun.

please

do not tag my blog on yours if you do not want be to stumble upon it.

buck stops here.

paradox

sat awake

in the wee hours of the morning. That same wrenching feeling came again. I did what I always do when that same feeling of nostalgia crawls into my skin; I waited. Soon enough the feeling will ebb.

i doubt i can fall asleep again. should just grab my camera to catch the sunrise..

HDR

"To the last known keeper of my tripod, Thou shall bring the tripod back to the safe hands of its rightful owner. As he who owns the tripod has summoned for it in order to take holier-than-thou HDR photos. Please."-cj

I have seen so many pretty HDR photos around. Now, I am going to make my first one! woot! But i need my tripod..

journals

As I formatted and tidied up the graphs and tables of my academic paper, I felt an immense sense of accomplishment. Beneath this self congratulatory mood was actually a tinge sense of loss. The whole idea of research and pursuit of academia got lost in my hurry to graduate. I sort of have discovered a formula to writing papers. Also, the good thing about research in computational fields is that large amount of simulation results can be churned out in a matter of minutes. Does your computer has 8 cores? heh. mine does.

Back to the problem at hand. If my 2 papers were to be accepted for publication, should I try to negotiate for an early release? Knowing my prof, chances are pretty slim. Should I then write a third paper in the mean time? I toyed with that idea for a while.. I am not so sure if I want to work so hard for a Masters. If I were to churn out a third paper, I might as well do a fourth one and graduate with a Ph.d. At this rate, perhaps I could be conferred in 3 years. Not too bad if you look at it, since I win back a year of the 2 which I lost while serving National Service. There are other concerns though. Firstly, this would be a Ph.d conferred by NUS.Secondly, would I want to do research for the rest of my life?

A friend once told me,"If you do not have a heart for it, then don't do it. Academic should be a genuine pursuit for knowledge. You on the other hand plan to go into computational finance and come up with mathematically sound financial models that cannot stand the test of market irrationality."

Much that I would like to tell him that mathematical models are meant to be used as a spring board for improvements. Researchers will not stop at mathematical models. They will continue to extend their theoretical work into a working model, do out of sample testing and etc. But deep down inside I know and feel that..

I should just quickly graduate with my Masters.