They did a follow-up to the Food court musical! Made my day!

I received a pleasant surprise a few weeks back when an email was sent to me asking me to collect a package. I wasn’t expecting anything, but when I saw that it was from the 4/7 people, I was really excited. Well, half excited. The other half was thinking: “Alright, what evil plot might they have in sending this to me?”

I eventually discovered this:

Food! They managed to get together and bought for me a couple of things that I probably wouldn’t be able to find here in the US. They also managed to scribble/vandalize/decorate the food to prove that it’s REALLY them. And yes, that’s TBBT and Clover feeling really excited about this mountain of goodies.

What’s going to follow is a series of photos of the various combinations of food. I’ve basically finished most of the food, except for the mamee snacks, and the stuff where I have to go out and buy my own meat to add to the recipe. It probably would add to my motivation if they didn’t black out the cooking instructions! Bah. Wouldn’t be them otherwise. (And for a heads-up, my soccer is gonna really suck when i get back. Like, even more than it was previously. Imagine that.)

And for the rest of my friends, I’ll accept food any time! Especially maggi mee and luncheon meat! My address is on Facebook!

Since I am earning a salary here in the US, I was required to get a social security card. I found that the office that is nearest a metro is in Rockville, so I found an excuse to get on the metro and have some fun exploring the area! Rockville seems like a really nice place. In fact, it felt like it was catered for Asians. There was a Chinese supermarket place right opposite the social security administration building, and a number of restaurants selling Asian food, like Chinese, Thai and Japanese.

My most exciting part of the trip involved me going to a Japanese restaurant! My experiences in the past have informed me that any place with a Zagat sign can’t be too bad, so I simply had to get int this Japanese place called Sushi Damo in Rockville and have my lunch there! I also felt I owed myself a nice meal after working so hard on my brithday.

And the food was amazing. I didn’t have my camera with me (although I really should have. The city centre was really nice!), but i did have my iPhone! Here’s what I ate:

Both the soft shell crab and the sashimi were awesome. Especially the salmon one, although its generally seen as lower grade. In any case, I realized two things while I was having my meal.

First, it felt great that I was spending my own money! I didn’t have to consider whether I was wasting someone else’s money, and I also knew that I did have the money to spend on myself if I wanted to. I guess I understand a little more about why people like to go out shopping and stuff. There seems to be some sort of satisfaction with the actual spending of the money itself, not just satisfaction with what you bought. Man that’s starting to sound academic. Shoo!

The second thing, is that there were a couple of Caucasians looking at what I was eating and how I was using the chopsticks (the noobs asked for spoons and forks), and I suddenly felt more aware of being a foreigner. It felt weird and exciting at the same time. i really should have more of these excursions. I’m thinking I’ll bring my readings out and go find a Starbucks somewhere in DC to read instead of cooping myself in my room like I usually do. That’ll probably be fun!

In the midst of doing all my work, I managed to do pretty well on farmville by planting crops like once a day, and finally reached the point where I could buy a villa! It was sort of like my goal when I started this whole thing, so i was really excited when I reached it. And because I reached that goal and had nothing else to aim for, I converted my super efficient farm into a tourist attraction farm! here are the photos of the farm before and after the revamp:

Before (Yeah, with the villa already. I couldn’t wait.)

After

The redesigning thing was actually really fun. My farm now actually has the Halloween stuff right now because its that time of year, but the basic concept is still the same.

I suddenly feel like this is a totally loserish thing to show the world. Oh well.

It’s the middle of the semester right now in Maryland, and I finally found some time to update my friends! I’ll be posting up some of the more exciting stuff I’ve been doing in the next few posts, but I guess I’ll give a rundown of what a normal week is like right here first. I actually consider my work week to start on Wednesday and last till Sunday, while I take my break on Monday and Tuesday. When I say break, I mean more of a break from work and intense mental concentration type of stuff, because I still have to go to class on Monday and Tuesday. The time in class is actually a nice breather from all the other stuff I’m doing. So it goes something like this:

Wednesday: Prepare for Monday class

Thursday: 2h of class. Prepare for Tuesday class

Friday-Sunday: Do important scholarly type stuff, such as research, writing up ideas and coming up with ideas.

Monday: 3h of class. Relax.

Tuesday: 7.5h of class. Relax.

Preparation for class involves reading about 10-12 articles in total every week, as well as writing 2 summaries. Often there’ll be at least one huge other thing that I have to do every week, whether for class or something else, such as having a draft of a paper due on Monday or Tuesday, or preparing to lead a class discussion type of stuff.

I’m also involved in this project where we’re going to use a simulation to do experiments. It’s like an advanced form of battleship where you use radars to detect enemies and tanks to engage those enemies you find. Its really really cool!

(tangentially, I only recently found out that there’s actually gonna be a movie based on battleship, as well as monopoly. I REALLY hope this isn’t true.)

One thing found out as we reached the middle of the semester, is that we don’t have a mid semester break! At least I’ll still get spring break next semester, but I guess I was spoilt by the existence of these breaks in NUS.

In any case, classes have been great so far, and I feel like I’ve been learning new things everyday! I think I’ve accumulated a lot more words that aren’t suitable for daily conversation, or will elicit puzzled looks whenever I use them. Efficacy? Anticipated and anticipatory emotions? Valence? I’m expecting a lot of “Swiftly moving on….”s from my friends.

Well that’s the state of my life address for now. I’ll be posting up some other stuff tonight, but I can’t guarantee when the next update will be…

Despite trying hard to maintain a regular posting schedule over the last two weeks, I have found it increasingly difficult to do so. I blame all the work we have to do in the program. Have I mentioned how I think I should start measuring my readings in terms of how thick they are like Serene was doing in the past during honours thesis? I’ll probably need more than one ruler at the rate I’m going. However, the work is fun in a way, so I don’t mind doing it that much. I just gotta grit my teeth. I’m considering putting up the stuff I’m learning and reading and researching, but that would probably be too much of a bore. I’m still thinking about it though! Then I can practice explaining concepts to students.

I’m starting to appreciate being based in the US, because of all the people I will get to meet/see during my time here. I suppose being at Maryland helps too, because people want to interact with the faculty and the students at the school, and its near DC. On Monday, we had a cosy session with Jim Parker, the former CEO of Southwest Airlines, who was a cool guy to talk to.

On Thursday, Obama is actually gonna come down to our campus to hold a rally. I can only imagine the traffic and the crowd that will be gathered on campus to catch a glimpse of him, and hear him speak. And before anyone badgers me to take photos of him, I HAVE CLASS. The lecturer kinda decided that Obama’s not that important. Ha. But I think it probably won’t be his last visit to school, since its such a short hop away.

Oh, and I got free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream at the school entrance last Friday as well. Props to school!

Can anyone tell me how to describe Singapore food? My friends at school started talking about where to go and eat for our gathering, and asked me if there was any Singaporean food around, and I went “Er………..”. Then they ask me what Singapore food is like, then I also went “Er…….”. Its actually pretty difficult to say what Singaporeans eat in general, because off-hand I can think of a couple things we eat everyday that don’t fit into neat categories, like Nasi Lemak, Roti Prata, Wanton mee and Char Kway Tiao. The best answer I could probably come up with is something like, “Go to Singapore and try it yourself!” Oh. And chicken rice, of course. How could I forget that!

The reward for finishing work early is not more work.

One of the reasons I moved away from the corporate environment is this tendency for bosses to think that you should give more work to whoever has extra time on hand because he finished his tasks early. It seems like the perfect recipe for motivating your employees to work as slowly as possible. The great thing about being in an academic environment is that I decide my own work. The bad thing is, I think I’m more demanding of myself than a boss would be of me. I can’t seem to relax knowing that there’s something out there that I could be doing right now instead of slacking!

I need to stop for today.

Damn.

I just thought of something I should be working on for tomorrow.

People want to make the perfect decision; Regression equations don’t do that.

That thought stuck in my head after we discussed it in class this week, and I shall indulge in my nerdy tendencies to discuss that today.

Regression equations are often used as a tool to make decisions, such as which stock to buy and what kind of policies to implement. Some people even use it to decide the house they buy, or the school to go to. It is billed as a tool that helps to make rational choices.

However, one fact about regression equations should make you think twice about using it: Regression ALLOWS room for error. Over a large set of decisions you make, you are guaranteed to have the least errors possible. However, any individual decision in that set can still go hopelessly far off the target. And if you’re buying stocks, one off target decision could kill you.

That’s why people are sometimes uneasy even when they are told that it is a best guess, or a good estimate. People want to be perfect. They want to be certain. It is not good enough to be told, “Although there are many good candidates, we think you have a high chance of getting into the program.” We NEED to hear, “You’re in!”

And that, is why regression equations don’t work.