OK, Let's Call It A Day...

Since I first created this blog three years ago, a lot of new features had been added to Xanga. The more prominent additions include the ability to upload audio and video clips. What they did nothing about is the ugly left sidebar with practically no room for customisation -- that is, unless you pay them. Sadly I only use my blog to, well, blog. In writing. Pictures and music and video have little if anything to do with my Xanga. Yesterday was the last straw. I came up with a new design for my Xanga but when I looked at the details (the HTML) I realised it would not work out because some of the elements in the page were out of my control. This is despite my design is minimalistic because I had anticipated for the limitations. Therefore, upon discovering Blogger has fallen out of beta and will now accept Goggle accounts, which I have, I promptly created a blog there. I will start blogging at my new blog immediately. I will maintain this account for comments, but you won't find another new post here. I believe I'm done here. Goodbye, and if you're staying in Xanga, good luck.

A Book Review

Warning: some spoilers in first paragraph

I would never have bothered to read The Da Vinci Code if it weren't so controversial. In fact, I only picked up the book from the local library because I "bumped" into it while browsing for one of my favourite authors Dale Brown, who writes about the U.S. Air Force and their "secret projects". So I started reading, expecting to find out why the church had so much to say against the novel. When I put the book down two days later, my first reaction was I enjoyed the plot. Mystery has always been one of my favourite genres. Interestingly, I did not feel Brown had incriminated the church despite a "fact page" detailing the existence of the Priory of Sion and the Opus Dei prelature. Actually, I didn't feel anything. I treated the novel as an interesting story and that's it. Some would clearly be offended by Brown's claim that Jesus had in fact married and gave birth to a child. The way I see it, this "fact" was mainly used to increase the importance of Brown's version of the Holy Grail so the various parties in the story had to fight for it thus giving life to this story. I think the author mentioned this just enough to create the sense of importance but did not dwell on the point so much you would think he is trying to bring the church down. To me, the main point of the story is still "to find the holy grail before the bad guys do" and not what the holy grail is or implies. My view of Jesus and the church is not altered after reading the story, and I believe this to be the case for most readers. Just because someone says something is a fact doesn't make it one, and the fact that this is a novel rather than a research paper means most people aren't going to take it seriously regardless of the author's claims. There is no need for the church or the media to make such a fuss about it because their worries will never be realised. If anything, their protests and condemnations probably gave the story more publicity than is warranted, which is ironic, because in the story the church was fooled by the main villain into helping him, whose hidden agenda turned out to be an attempt to overthrow the church.

Besides the plot, the story gave me a few extra interesting ideas. First, because the story purports to be entirely fact-based, the locations it visited exists in real life (at least the main ones). Now I have never set foot on European soil before and would not have any reason to go there (I'm not a sightseeing person). By providing more or less real descriptions and background information on the locations in the story, I can now relate to these places better, and I now have a greater incentive to go to Paris or London. I think this goes for other novels as well as long as the information in them are accurate.

The second idea, sadly, came to me only after I finished reading. It involves using a mapping application such as Google Earth to support the descriptions given in the book. For example, the first scene involved a trip to the Louvre and a subsequent car chase originated from it. The author named a few of the streets so you are able to follow the route taken by the characters. Unfortunately I am no Parisian so could not really picture any of these scenes. What I realised afterwards is that many of these places and streets can be easily located on an online map. With Google Earth, you might be able to view photos of prominent landmarks such as the Louvre and the Westminster Abbey, giving you an even better picture of the set. Of course, if you have already been to these places or have lived there you do not need to rely on these tools, but for people like me it makes the story more realistic and convincing.

Special Occasions

I first had this idea around the beginning of this millennium. The transition from 1999 to 2000 was eagerly anticipated by many, many people and the media had made a lot of fuss about the event. When the last second of 1999 ticked away, I was at home watching the countdown on TV. I felt weird because what might have been the "biggest" event in my life was taking place right in front of my eyes, and all I did was staring at the TV and wishing my parents a happy new millennium. There were no shouting at the top of my lungs to a large crowd, no jumping up and down in excitement, no laughing at a friend's jokes, no partying -- no nothing really. Just calmly counted down to zero, gave the obligatory greetings to mum and dad, and went back to the computer trying to catch some live footage of foreign celebrations (which did not eventuate due to "technological limitations" at that time -- live webcams never did work for me at that time). The atmosphere was totally wrong. It was then that I realised for any given date, I can pass it just like any other typical day or celebrate it like there is no tomorrow, it doesn't make any differences in the end. When I wake up the next morning, it'll be another normal day and I'll get on with my life, celebration or not.

Over the years that belief grew stronger and stronger, as I passed "special occasions" with little or no fanfare. The only recognition I gave to such occasions were dinners with family or friends, if they were available, and I would be there for the social aspect more than the celebration. Recently, not only do I not care about celebrating these dates, I began to question the need to designate certain dates as special and make a fuss about it. Mo gave his take on this, and I will add mine to it. While Mo focussed on celebrations based on the calendar (which is artificial), I want to talk about the case when someone would assign a "theme" to a particular day and make a fuss about it. For example, on Valentine's Day you're supposed to buy flowers and gifts for your girlfriend and take her out to dinner. Now why would you do that on the 14th day of the second month of every year? Does something out of ordinary happen on this day? What is the motive behind giving your girlfriend a treat? To demonstrate your love to her? Shouldn't you be doing that every day? I just don't see the point in that. I think any and every day is a good day to give flowers or have candlelight dinners. In fact, she might get a pleasant surprise if you don't "stick to the rules". The same can be said of Mother's day, Father's day, Children's day, AIDS awareness day, etc. Sure, giving a theme to a specific date raises the awareness on that topic, but I argue we should be aware of these things every day, not doing a lot in one day and then forget about it the next. Just how effective is it to stop smoking for one day per year, or practice safe sex once every 365 times? Wouldn't your parents happier to have dinner with you every day at home than dine out at an expensive restaurant once and not see you for the next 12 months?

Overall, I have to agree with Mo. Celebrate your graduation. Celebrate your marriage. Celebrate your promotion or the firing of that mean boss. However, don't celebrate "573 days since we first met", or give special attention to things you should be doing every day. To me, every day is ordinary and every day is special.

Clashing Ideas?

I was in a cafe yesterday when two separate ideas hit me. The first is that we have the power to shape the future. In other words, it is the believe that one can decide their future via their choice of actions. I am a strong believer of this idea; it is what keeps me motivated in actively working towards my goals. The second idea is that God knows everything, including events in the future. As I am a Catholic, this idea is not unfamiliar to me. Somehow these two ideas went through my mind one after the other, and I found a problem in them.

The problem is that they are mutual exclusive: both ideas cannot be true at the same time. If God really knows what will happen in the future, then all future events will have been decided, thus there is no scope for me (or anybody) to affect the future through their decisions. In fact the above will hold if any person or being can predict the future with complete certainty. If someone knows for sure you will pick A over B, then it implies your only choice is A. It doesn't matter that you think you can choose B because in reality you would never do that, otherwise the person would be wrong in his prediction.

Needless to say, this discovery caused me to panic. I'm not the most devout person in the world, but I'm a long way off from rejecting the existence of God. "Perhaps," I thought, "God still exists but he just doesn't know about the future." However it seems unsatisfactory to think of a God who is not omniscient, and I'm sure it contradicts the Bible too. The other possibility is that life is like riding a train and looking out of the window. You can't see what's ahead of you but that doesn't mean the objects are not already there. I don't really want to embrace the idea of a pre-determined future, for that would take away my sense of achievement when I succeed at something ("It's not because I chose to work hard -- I was destined to work hard this time").

Actually there is a third possibility, namely my theory is flawed. If anyone can point out my mistake I will be glad to hear it.

Currently Reading The Da Vinci Code By Dan Brown see related

The Joy of Studying Commerce

I think I have already explained my rationale for studying engineering and commerce in a previous post. I picked the former since it's something that interests me, and the latter to "cover my back" when finding a job. I didn't really know what to expect from a commerce course but when I found out, I was thrilled.

I'm focussing my studies on economics and finance more or less by process of elimination -- I'm simply not too interested in the other fields, which includes accounting, information systems, marketing and management. Compared to engineering, the commerce subjects are more readily applicable in real life and often more relevant from a layman's point of view. For example, knowing how the circuit in an electronic device works usually does not change how you will use it, but a change in the interest rates will directly affect the interest you earn in the bank which may affect your spending decisions.

Economics taught me terms commonly seen in the papers, such as the interest rate and GDP, their effects on the economy and how they interact with each other. Going further, we analysed the economy using different models. The insights we gained from these models can sometimes form the basis of government policies. More and more I am able to understand why a government might adopt seemingly unpopular policies (because the benefits are not obvious "at first glance"). Perhaps the more obvious consequence of knowing these insights is that I can better judge the government decisions, whether they are doing us more good than bad or the opposite.

I began studying finance expecting to learn the mechanics of the stock market, with the result being able to better predict say stock prices. Over two semesters I have instead learned that any approaches to predicting prices are fickle at best (unless one is willing to operate outside the law), and in fact the various financial instruments were never designed to make money "out of thin air". Instead they were introduced  to make better use of idle money (like your savings) and remove risks (uncertainties about the future). That one is able to speculate prices and make above average profits is only a side effect and no different from walking into a casino and winning games of blackjack. This immediately altered my idea of possible careers. Initially I thought it would be possible to profit from making prudent investments in the financial market. My newfound knowledge pretty much shattered this, only to be replaced by even more ambitious ideas like becoming a funds manager in charge of hundreds of millions of superannuation funds .

Because the interactions I learn about in commerce subjects are easily observed in real life, unlike electrons moving through a conductor and generating magnetic "flux" that are not even tangible , I am now more interested in these studies than when I started. Who knows, maybe these interests will one day dominate the engineering ones and I'll become a financial consultant rather an electrical geek.