had dinner with prof ling san and prof leung ka hin at akira japanese restaurant.

1. the restaurant is super ulu. it's in some condo behind the emerald hill stretch. but it was not bad lah... sashimi's v fresh, and the price of the buffet is reasonable. $30+++.

2. went into some gossip about the staff movt at nus maths dept. contrary to popular belief, life as a professor is not cosy and the job is not v secure. two maths lecturers are leaving the dept (and it's not a voluntary choice). apparently, over the last 10 years, 80% of the teaching staff have changed. surprisingly, many young phd holders do not even make it to hold a tenureship. (note: asst professor and below are those who are on short term contract with the university. assoc prof and above are on longer term contract/ tenureship with the uni.) moreover, believe it or not, the competition to teach nus/ntu is v stiff. at the nus commencement dinner, the deputy head of maths revealed that it received 100+ applications for 2 teaching positions. so, dear students at local uni, pls count your blessings...


sometimes, the lecturers cannot speak or elucidate certain concepts well. but this does not mean that they dunno their stuff. most prob, it's simply because they come from a diff environment and culture. moreover, i dun think it’s right if we demand that they assimilate to our culture and teach in the way that we want them to. if they were to meet our demands, then who’s learning from who?

3. prof ling actually visited my blog before. apparently, there are other ppl who came to this website, and mentioned to him about my speech. haha.

4. saw this calligraphy on the wall in the restaurant. i've heard of the famous title before, but i nv seen the orginal piece until today. i'm no calligraphy expert, but i think it's rather interesting. hmmm. possible artpiece to put in my new house (if there is one). anybody care to guess the title of this piece?

a story i read a long time ago...

by an italian writer called giovanni boccacio, entitled the three rings.

to summarize, there was a sultan and a rich and wise guy. the sultan was jealous of the wise guy and called the latter to his palace and wei2 nan3 the latter. the sultan asked the wise guy a question lah.

“which of the three great religions is the true one – is it the jewish, the moslem, or the christian?” (NB: the spelling is inherent from source.)

then, the wise guy told the sultan another story..


there was this rich family with a lot of wealth and assets. the heritage was handed down from father to son, and it was symbolised by the handing over of a special ring. well, the system worked well until it came to a worthy man with 3 equally worthy sons.

the man would soon be coming close to death and be required to choose a worthy heir. of cos, the 3 was equally worthy and the man couldnt come to a decision. so, he hired a craftsman to duplicate 2 other copies of the ring, and handed a ring each to his sons on different occasions.

when the man died, the 3 sons each produced the same ring and claimed to be the rightful heir. the story goes that they argued and argued but the dispute was nv resolved.


the wise guy after telling the story asked a sequence of questions to the sultan. and the sultan was awed and decided to consult the wise guy on all matters.


at different points in life, the story meant a different thing to me. i used to think, why should i believe specifically any 1 of the 3 sons? listening to all 3 would suffice since they are equally worthy and the rings carried little significance. in fact, it’s because of the attempt to find out which ring is true, that we have so much conflicts today.

but then i realise that the father had created the two duplicates not out of convenience. but he created so that, the sons can individually lead and carry on his role. if the father’s intent is for the 3 to lead together, he wouldnt have duplicated the rings. he wanted pple to follow and place trust on either 1 of the 3 sons, cos they are worthy in their unique way. there is only one true ring. but each son is carrying it.

about volunteering

had a debate with my navy colleague about “helping ppl”, not really about volunteering. the following points are some views i wish to share. not to say that i’m right or my colleague is wrong. nor am i implying anything about his character, nor are the following statements his views. the whole debate was very lengthy and covered a lot of area. most imptly, very differents set of experiences would have shaped our disparate views.

1. “people shouldnt help others, because the former thinks the latter needs help.” yes. many overenthusiastic volunteers do commit this mistake. true. many of those whom we think need help have a lot of self-pride and dignity, and would rather struggle themselves than to receive help.

however, i dun think we should stop helping others simply because the latter says that they do not need. simply put. those who ask for help need not need help, and those who do not ask for help may just need help. but it’s not easy to discern who’s who.

but “who are we to judge?” well, many have judged before us. my parents judged and hence made many decisions for me before i matured. my teachers judged and hence decided wat to teach and wat not to teach. my frens judged and decided to befriend me and help me in times of need. most significantly, gandhi, king and many others judged and decided to help those who suffered in silence.

i agree judgement is not easy, nor will it be fair. but it’s necessary.

2. “many times, ppl help others to feed their own egos and hence makes the latter feel inferior.” my fren referred to a famous sociologist who described her experience in a hospital. as a patient, she felt the entire medical experience v condescending and she felt very inferior.

ok. i’m guilty of this at times. many times we go into volunteering so that we’ll feel good at the end of the day. we go to other countries so that we can “show them the light”.

well, maybe such thinking is very prevalent before volunteers embark on their jobs. but this is certainly not true at the end of the day. in fact, many will find the experiences very humbling. having compiled articles for my club magazine, a recurring theme in all articles had been that, the volunteers received more than they gave. they’ve learnt more from the so-called “impaired” or “needy” than they’ve helped. the strength and determination of those we helped. their warmth and kindness. these are wat is most inspiring and that keeps volunteers gg.



there are more issues to volunteering than what i’ve described, and certainly are not as simple as i’ve described. but there’s one more message, “volunteers dun become great volunteers overnight”. in csc, those experienced at volunteering are apparent. they do not give in to all the requests of the elderly. they cheer up the moodiest mentally ill patient. they make a hyperactive kid listen to them. but all these skills are not acquired overnight. these skills are slowly developed and the volunteers learn to tackle the above issues over time.

the world has an endless demand for kindness and help. yet there are issues in “giving aid”. but we should not use these issues as excuses. yes. we’ll make mistakes along the way and some may be detrimental. but these mistakes will serve as lessons and make us better in helping in the future.

will end off with a quote, from martin luther king (i think),
“it is not the violence of the few that i fear, it is the silence of the many.”

today i was discussing about signal transmission with navy friends (which was totally irrelevant from the course.) basically, i learnt more about the transmission process. well, my honors year project was about coding theory, which forms like only a small part of this process. but nevertheless, it's rather interesting and there is a whole industry working on it. yup so i'll share more about coding theory and try to illuminate it in a layman's fashion.

coding theory has another name, which i feel is a more apt description of wat it is about. the theory of error correction. to me, the theory of error correction is very similar to an aspect of the mechanics of our daily language.

consider the word 'lettter'. i think with one look, you'll notice the typo and correct the word to 'letter'.

how did you do it? a simple explanation is that the english dictionary, while containing a lot of words, do not contain all the possible permutations of the 26 letters. there's no such word as 'lettter', and from our many years of education, we know that and hence we detect the error. this is also why it is almost impossible for a monkey to type a comprehensible sentence by chance.

wat i described was an aspect called 'error detection'. how do we then correct the 'lettter' to 'letter'? in some sense, 'letter' is the 'closest' to 'lettter'. if we delete one letter (no pun intended) or add one letter or change one letter of 'lettter', the only possible word you can end up with is 'letter'. (i didnt try but i think it's true...) so, intuitively, we simply just correct 'lettter' to 'letter'.

(there's a danger here. wat i described was making only one alteration. if we allowed to make two alterations, we could end up with words like 'latter' and 'litter'. and we have another aspect to discuss about..)

yes. so in coding theory, or theory of error-correction, that's wat we do... to conjure up some dictionary, but with only the letters 1 and 0. and we measure the efficiency of this dictionary by the number of errors it can correct.

(this is very very vague. for the above example of 'lettter', we can say that we can correct up to one error, but not to two errors... and the overall efficiency is measured by the worst case scenario)

application of error correcting codes are quite common. NRIC, ISBN or even bank accounts used it. (well, maybe not in the way i've described. more commonly engineers use terms like parity check, or redundacy...) more advanced application will be cd technology... that's why we still can scratch ur cd a bit. and more advanced, will be communications over space.

super tired after one long weekend

1. fri evening went to double o with navy ppl. got coursemates (who just wanna have fun), squadron pple (a clerk’s bday) and my ship crew (boss’ promotion + one officer’s bday).

double o drinks are v cheap, and some navy ppl are just too rich.

they just keep buying drinks and passing them around. i drunk dunno how many diff types of drinks... bottled beer, syringes, shots and jugs of dunno wat...

i dun recall much of the nite, as i was too drunk. apparently, after finding out from friends on sat and mon, after double o, we went out for supper, and some guys fetched me home in a cab. and miraculously, i managed to walk up the flat alone, and go to bed. all of which, i can only recall.

wat a decadent lifestyle.

2. sat evening went for julian’s, my NO’s, wedding as sword bearers. you know the type who line the aisles and holds up the swords to form arches for the bride and groom to pass thru.

actually it’s supposed to be an easy job. but julian’s wedding was q a formal one. (cos he’s from new creation) the ceremony was horrendously long and we had to stand and hold up the swords for almost an hour.

was super tired. but the dinner at marriott was super. (though not as wonderful as he had promised) but overall, thought the whole ceremony was v well planned and sweet. (julian actually sang to his wife... i’ll nv do that for mika, for the audience’s sake)

3. sun morning went for my commencement. many thanks for those who came and it was nice to meet up frens from sch.

thought the valedictorian cheryl made a v good speech. actually, if i knew that cheryl had such a story, i would have gladly let her speak. there was no need for us to write drafts and let the faculty choose.

her story is an inspiring one. her father passed away last year, and yet she persevered on and did well to earn her honors. rather admire frens who can carry on with their lives despite the departure of their loved ones.

4. sun afternoon. mika and i went for can project. pls visit official website www.nuscsc.net/~can for more details. though we didnt go around collecting cans, sorting cans and dried rations was just as tough. so many diff types of cans and diff types of dried rations... sort until my eyes blur liao. but the most siong part was carrying the huge boxes unto vans, into containers, down slopes.... argh...

but i must compliment the committee as they were v organised. the whole collection was v well planned and executed. it is apparent that the culture of knowledge sharing is growing v strong in csc. certainly csc is the epitome of organisational learning.

5. sun night. world cup 2006 at mark’s place. the weekend ended at with a climax with italy’s victory over france. haha. was super tired... i only watched the first half and slept through the second half. woke up a while to see zidane head butt an italian. slept again and woke up to see the penalties.

later departed from mark’s place to safti mi for course. kept dozing off in class.

another book review. this time on mitch albom's the five people you meet in heaven.

like albom's other book, tuesdays with morrie, this is yet another book expounding on the meaning of life. well, mika told me 'tuesdays' got a bit preachy at some parts. well, but i prefered 'tuesdays' with 'five people'. but the latter got a more creative narration. basically, it's about this average guy who dies and goes to heaven. and realises that heaven's q different from the typical perception. in heaven, there are five people that he'll meet who'll tell him more about his life. and yes... the wonderful insights come in. at parts, it's q motivating too. the main moral is that, everyone has a meaning to his existence.

but there's a sad part to albom's novels. his main characters have to be either dead (like eddy) or going to die (like morrie) to realise all these wonderful lessons on life. haha. but of cos, the point of him writing these novels is to bring forward these lessons.

each existence has its purpose. this is a truth which many of us lose faith in. my fren commented that singaporeans work v hard but they do not know wat they are working for. to some extent, this is true. however, i think it’s a matter of perception. and i believe if we have the faith in ourselves, we are able to find the meaning for our existences.

sorry i cannot substantiate this with any examples. but i’ve got this quote to share:

‘a great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society, and further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.’ –daisaku ikeda

since i'm still online, italy 2 germany 0. hmmm. shows that playacting works well.

hai....

watching germany vs italy now... gg into extra time, 0-0. kinda expected sia. italy’s kinda disappointing. playing defensive has been always their style. but this year, they added play acting to their style, and it gets kinda disruptive.

anyway, that’s not the point of this entry.

unfortunately, i’m gonna talk about something negative (haha despite my entries on positive thinking). has anyone followed the www.mrbrown.com vs mica saga?

mr brown with his usual sarcasm criticises the recent price hikes and increasing income disparity and such. you can read his column article on his blog. then some minister from mica wrote a letter to criticise mr brown. note. the chap criticised, not refuked. yup. you can also find this letter on his blog.

so much for being an open and inclusive society. i shant write more less i get reprimanded too. but do go and take a look before the blog gets shut down.

about the price hikes... n also e headlines on mon about pple spending their cpf on housing. ‘surprising’ news. actually when i was at e wp rallies back in apr/may. i distinctively remember these issues being raised.

someone (dunno which wp chap) mentioned that singaporeans are always in debt. for car or for house. blah blah blah.

mr low thia khiang prophesised that when the elections are over, there will be even more price hikes. wat a prophesy.

k lah. maybe such predictions are not difficult to make. but hey, it certainly shows that the opposition is much more worthy than wat e media makes them out to be.