the alchemist

it's been some time since i read a fictional novel. well, mika said it was nice and i should read it. yeah. so i read it. quite nice... so i put some excerpts here.

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"What's the world's greatest lie?".....

"It's this: that a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie."

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(Basically, the main character is a boy, who became a shepherd. Here he met an old man in a town.)

"Why do you tend to a flock of sheep?"

"Because I like to travel."

The old man pointed to a baker standing in his shop window at one corner of the plaza. "When he was a child, that man wanted to travel, too. But he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside. When he's an old man, he's going to spend a month in Africa. He never realised that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of."

"He should have decided to become a shepherd, " the boy said.

"Well, he thought about that," the old man said. "But bakers are more important people than shepherds. Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open. Parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds.

...

"In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own Personal Legends."

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Hmmm. As you might guess, the book goes onto describe the boy's adventure to fulfill his Personal Legend. Like what mika pointed out, the book expounds that when one tries hard to realise his/her dream, the "whole universe conspires" to help him/her. There'll be numerous signs/omens along the way.

When I was reading it, I was wondering, "Is this book an omen?"

2 years 21 days.

run your own race

42.195km is really no joke. i tot after being able to complete 21km in an ok fashion, 42km shouldnt be too unsurmountable. wah... it was really tough. and many others were like struggling to complete. i think for the last 10km, almost everyone around me were walking/strolling. even when the volunteers were cheering us on, we were all super bochup. haha.

anyway some lessons learnt:

1. must at least run 30 km before the marathon... 21km is really not enuff

2. must put petroleum jelly or something to prevent abrasion. this time, my nipples kenna quite a bit. and some point of time, i was like pulling the singlet away from my chest and running.

3. must drink lotsa lotsa water... hmmm. had some gruesome encounter which i will not describe

anyway, i still manage to complete the race!! thanks to my wonderful, adorable, lovely, inspirational, sweet, awesome, exceptional girlfriend who came down to support with this beautiful placard!! really helped a lot in motivating me to get to the marina cove, kallang stadium (though i missed her) and the finishing point. hee. mika's the best!

innumeracy

yesterday, i was helping my boss do some analysis with some data (have to be vague here). anyway, i realise some disturbing (but not-so-surprising) misconceptions.

1. ppl who get good scores in a-level maths or engineering maths do not necessarily know wat they studied. i'm not saying ALL who get good scores do not know wat's happening. but rather a majority of them are able to solve exam questions using standard methods without any idea why the methods work. so when they go to work in the real world, they try these standard methods, hoping (and sometimes succeeding) to impress other ppl (who also dunno wat's happening). i wonder how many people really know wat all the t-tests, z-tests mean...

2. ppl think math majors study engineering maths/a-level maths and statistics. the logic is simple. for those who are not engineers only come to contact with maths via statistics. so maths = statistics + a-level maths. for those who are engineers come to contact with maths via engineering maths + stats. so maths = engineering maths (which is advanced a-level maths) + stats. somehow, this logic applies only to math and does not seem to extend to other discipline... anyway, i did only one module on statistics, and it was not even close to statistics. it was on probability theory. so i'm one of those who dunno wat t-tests, z-tests, really mean...

3. ppl think that math majors can solve any problem which has numbers in them. this is like the most irritating thing. ppl like to ask me if i can help to analyse a set of data. huh??? i think a social science major who did two courses on statistical methods can do a better job (assuming that he/she knew wat he/she was reading). then when i say 'i didnt learn this in uni,' they'll respond 'then wat do you learn?' sometimes, i just feel like saying 'things that u'll never comprehend in this lifetime...'

haha. but at the end of the day, somehow, and with some help from google and microsoft, i can do some decent work on the problems... haha. this brings to mind a somewhat arrogant quote from euler (when he solved the 'bridges of konigsberg' problem):

'i do not know why even questions which bear so little relationship to mathematics are solved more quickly by mathematicians than by others.'

heh