halloween

-- sucks when you're alone at home and it's dark as pitch outside and you're ten thousand miles from chapel hill where you really want to be

JCU

Just returned from the James Cook University open house. They have one of the few graduate programs in clinical psych in the country, so I thought that they might be worth checking out. To pre-empt the people who are now like 'you idiot, you turned down one of the top five clinical psych PhD programs in the world for this??':

i) this is three times shorter
ii) which means that in terms of opportunity cost, it's cheaper
iii) and it gets to the heart of the matter, which is seeing patients, and lots of them.

Which, I guess, is what I want to do. Pretty pictures of the hippocampus are jolly, but I suppose it would be nice not to live on Maggi mee and microwaved broccoli for the rest of my life.

The JCU "campus" is in the SPRING building in Bukit Merah, which, as it turns out is also where Dorcas' workplace, the Dyslexia Assocation of Singapore, is. I didn't really expect to run into her on a Saturday afternoon, but lo and behold, she appeared as I was waiting for the 123, looking damp and rather bedraggled (it was drizzling). "You really shouldn't work so hard!" I said in greeting, but we hadn't gotten very far past the mutual 'what-are-you-doing-here's when my bus came and I had to go.

But I digress. The university occupies several floors - it still has that new-building smell, fresh paint and varnish, and the furniture is (as yet) unmarked by the grafitti of bored lecture-attending students. The guide made a big show of presenting the "facilities" (read: percolator and snack machine) in her sing-song English, and it was an age of going up- and downstairs before they finally cut to the chase and hauled out the lecturers to give their talks and answer questions. In the Psychology presentation it was mostly people looking for a B.A., NUS rejects no doubt, so that was another half-an-hour of irrelevancy, and when it finally came to Q&A most folks chose to cluster around poor Dr. Kylie instead of asking their bloody questions from the floor like they should have. Typical. There were only one or two others interested in the MPsych, and I was absolutely sympathetic to their wanting to see her personally since she didn't mention the program at all in her presentation. The rest of the morons, however, really needed to learn how to (a) listen so as not to end up asking for information that had already been given out, and (b) demonstrate some basic courtesy and not take up half-an-hour of a person's time when there are ten others waiting in line to see said person. In particular, there was this Indian fellow (by the way, I used much choicer words when I told this story to Jiahao just now, and am feeling seriously hampered by trying to keep this blog family-friendly) who must have been about 65 years old asking about getting a Bachelor's Degree. Oh, he says, I already have an MBA and an MEng. but blah blah blah fascinated with learning and blah blah blah and can I get advanced placement credits and shut the hell up already, we do only have so many years to live.

Because I chose not to join the line, I only got a very brief time at the end before the prof had to hurtle off to another presentation - which really goes to show that I should stop believing in the basic goodness of other Singaporeans (people?) already and just trample.

Anyway, I was impressed with 3 main things: first, that they have their own clinic where students get to practise, second (as I've said), that there's a heavy emphasis on actually seeing patients as opposed to coursework/research, and third, that they consider social and cultural norms when teaching treatment of pathologies, which I suppose is important.

Meanwhile, in the real world, I can't afford it (or, increasingly, as I go along, anything.)

Found the link

The chairman for the Duke interviewing committee has e-mailed the bunch of us asking us for brief introductions, and I am sorely tempted to pretend that I never got the message. Two of the five have replied and they're both illustrious CEOs in the making with Coca Cola and ABN AMRO, scintillating global escapades and all. In the mean time, of course, their e-mails are devastatingly self-deprecating and perfectly punctuated.

So, the dilemma.

If I introduce myself I'm going to be like, um, hi, I've accomplished nothing of very great significance in my 24 God-given years and look all set for a life of seething discontent. Nice to meet you too.

And if I don't they'll think I'm an obnoxious git.

I do confess, I'm the one causing the lousy weather - if I so much as think of stepping outside, it begins to rain.

indeed

wrong side of the table

the duke admissions office has asked me to be one of the interviewers for next year's incoming batch of freshman, the lip-smacking irony of which i will leave for you to savour on your own

othello

Re-read. Recalled how much I liked it the first time and wished that we had talked about it for 'S' paper. Especially:

The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.

Also finished the Patricia McKillip trilogy, which I enjoyed, though I am a little surprised that Minz likes them too.

Currently reading:
Ghostwritten - David Mitchell

busking

I have applied for a licence! Well, for the whole posse, not just me. For reasons no doubt related to censorship, the MCD needs all applicants to audition before approval is bestowed...and auditions are held but once a month, first Friday of every. (As CP noted, very Pratchett-esque: did I check to make sure that the office doesn't only open from 10:15 to 10:18 as well or something?). More when that happens.

Horror movies aren't usually my cup of tea, but i do find myself kind of intrigued by Saw. Hope it gets here soon.

(Maria Full of Grace has opened here after all, btw - thanks to those who offered help or tried to.)

peeve

when people put cheap biscuits into the same airtight container as my oreos so that they end up tasting faintly of khong guan

update

still rather bearing those ills i have than flying to others that i know not of

The Plan

1. Publish book
2. Win Nobel Prize
3. Invest
4. Live off fat of land

writing

It seems that there were other stages of my life when I was extremely bored; while doing upkeep on the hard drive of my old computer, I came across this unfinished piece:

On Mathematics

Back in the days when my friends and I were all still wearing short trousers, I was very much into problems that were challenging without requiring deep or involved mathematical manipulation, problems that tested what De Bono called “lateral thinking” (an epithet that Americans later transformed into the egregious phrase “thinking outside the box”). One of these problems, and one which I’m sure many of you have heard already, runs as follows:

As I was going to St. Ives
I met a man with seven wives
Every wife had seven sacks
Every sack had seven cats
Every cat had seven kits
Kits, cats, sacks, wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?

The immediate and obvious response to this problem is to dust off the mental abacus and start multiplying. My guess is that the average person would arrive as far as divining that there are 343 cats before giving up in frustration and turning his attention to the more interesting things in life like clipping his toenails or doing the laundry. The more persistent and mathematically inclined (geometric progression anyone?) would struggle on, find out that there are 2401 kittens, add them all up, and arrive at the grand total of 2800 (carefully excluding the man, since the problem only asks for “kits, cats, sacks and wives).

All well and good, until a flip to the back of the book publishing the problem reveals that the answer is one. Why? Because, they claim, you, the narrator, were the only one headed in the direction of the town of St. Ives. The entourage you encountered on the way there was obviously proceeding away from the town, or else you would not have met them.

Well, there is the minor quibble I brought up above: that since the narrator is presumably not a kit, a cat, a sack or a wife, the answer should be zero. Apart from this, should we be satisfied?

Hardly! The word “met” need not at all imply that the man, his harem and the menagerie of felines was coming from the town of St. Ives. What if the narrator met this huge party at the convergence of two roads, for example? What if the narrator was simply proceeding at a faster pace than the 8 humans and 2744 cats? After all, a quick calculation reveals that each wife was carrying 392 cats; thus even a conservative estimate suggests that they were toting more than 200 kilograms of weight apiece. Their peregrinations, in whichever direction they were going, must have been considerably hampered by this load.

To solve this problem, it seems that we have to dig a little deeper. We could tackle it from the angle of motive. Does it seem more likely that this huge party was traveling towards or away from the town? Perhaps St. Ives was a place in which polygamy was ill tolerated and the man was fleeing its fetters to enjoy a licentious existence with his wives and pets. Perhaps the town was a place that turned stray animals into sausage meat and sold it to their unwitting neighbors, and the man was headed there to make a quick buck. The cats, after all, must have been packed quite tightly into the sacks, hardly the most humane way to treat an animal unless it was already destined for slaughter.

So what was St. Ives known for? I did a little research to see if I could shed a little light on the problem that way. The two largest towns that bear that name are in the Huntingdonshire and Penwith districts in Cambridgeshire and Cornwall respectively. The former is most famous for having a “six-arched bridge (c. 1415), with a chapel over the central pier ”, the latter has “winding streets and colour-washed stone cottages housing fishermen, artists and potters ”. In 1920, a gentleman named Edward Leach gave its name to a style of pottery developed in this Cornwallian town.

Not very helpful. What about the narrator of the problem? Do we have any clue what he was up to? One website claims that he was off to the “famous” St. Ives fairs (the St. Ives here referring to the one in Huntingdonshire). This is pure speculation, of course, and has no bearing whatsoever on the direction of travel of the polyamorous husband. Looking at the rhyme itself, the only fact that we may glean is that the narrator had a burning intellectual curiosity, or the question of the size of the party would not have arisen in the first place.

Let’s take a step backward. Does it help at all if we assume that the narrator of the rhyme was also its real-life writer? No, it does not, for the verse is attributed either to Mother Goose or “Anonymous”. There was an earlier version of the problem written in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, but this was credited to someone called Ahmose who lived circa 1800 BC, and I highly doubt that St. Ives and its quaint riverside fetes existed back in those days.

(He got the wrong answer, by the way. He thought that 343 x 7 was 2301.)

Perhaps it is best to discard the problem altogether, arguing that such symmetry of numbers is highly improbable anyway. For instance, the average size of a cat litter is four (excepting the Abysinnian and Siamese breeds which have larger and smaller litter sizes, respectively). To be in possession of 343 cats each with a litter size of exactly seven is quite a mind-numbing coincidence. If we are treating the problem metaphysically, and not as merely an exercise in mathematics, it is surely necessary to consider its ecological validity as well. In other words, if the solution to the problem requires that we consider whether the husband is coming from or going to St. Ives, it is essential for us to also question whether such a situation could ever actually occur.


It goes on in this vein for a while. What a weirdo I am.

home from putting together a bunch of christmas carols (which will, with luck, actually be performed at some point this year, and possibly bartered for food of the homemade and chocolatey variety), i loaded up xmaslist.b4s on winamp with the intention of internalizing the tempo of the swingle singers' and is it true. ended up listening to most of the take 6 album as well, and the manhattan transfer christmas songs and recalling fondly the story of how anything remotely associated with the yuletide is strictly forbidden from the grillo household until the first advent candle is lit, how kristen's parents used to hide the xmas cds and candy canes and how no tears or tantrums could ever get them to cave.

Currently reading:
Surfacing - Margaret Atwood

moral responsibility

it is as many have pointed out - singaporeans die by stages, from young, unaware that it's even happening. creativity, independent thought, chutzpah, free-spiritedness, hope, dreams - all systematically snuffed.

i'm reminded of this by the latest psle brouhaha - devastated children, angry letters etc. - and honestly, it really is getting to be too much. the moe will defend itself to the death, i know, but the fact remains that there is something seriously wrong with an examination that wilfully reduces twelve-year old children to tears year after year after year. it started, iirc, with the math question in the 1992 paper - our paper - the one about the two bloody trains that approach each other at different speeds, when will they meet? (i always imagine people like yisheng putting down something like 'never the twain' and waking up the next morning to find themselves in acs.) and ever since we set the precedent it's just been one big annual sobfest.

look at it this way. say you're walking along your way and you come upon a grown man beating up a little kid. other people around. intervention, i feel, is a moral imperative (unless you're a singaporean, in which case you find out the boy's age and the number of times he was hit and come up with a 4d number). my suggestion, therefore, is that we hunt down mr. shanmugaratnam and punch him in the nose, many times. seriously. people should learn to pick on those their own size.

Currently reading:
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
The Sea and Poison - Shusaku Endo

see the world, they say

my chatty barber (who still calls me 'boy', and who can never keep straight what exactly it is i'm doing at any given period of my life) took about 10 minutes of persuading today before he would believe that i am no longer in ns, was in fact done with that 3 years ago (or whole lifetimes if according to my internal measure of time). this is important because it means i'm constantly in danger of getting a buzz cut, though on a positive note it might also indicate that i'm going to look 18 for the rest of my life. i think i got stuck in this particular time warp some time in sec 4 - all strangers i have met over the past decade, when asked to guess my age, invariably come up with a number between 17 and 20, except for american gas station attendants selling me alcohol who think i am 12.

anyway, freshly tonsured and no longer hacking and sneezing, this monday is already an improvement upon the last. i'm not entirely sure how healthy (psychologically) the pendulum swings between hope and devastation are, but i have the feeling that i should be settling upon on or the other pretty soon. hope, after all, has its own demerits. one of the lessons of ns was that if one is going to process towards despair, one should at least do so consistently, with fortitude. after all, once set on that path, a person can be armed fully with the acrimony and cynicism necessary to survive it, and not waste time chasing fleeting palliation.

hope: buying $1 worth of toto every time the jackpot creeps above 1 million dollars. did you know that you're about six to seven hundred times more likely to die in a plane crash than win the lottery? hope: applying to the ywca on the off-chance that they want a neuroscientist to design curricula for 7-year old girls. it's amazing how you can spin a resume to fit any job if you really put your mind to it.

chatty barber's conclusion was that i look like i should be some sort of a military person. except...obviously not. anyway thanks for the hint, destiny, try harder next time, and do compensate ria's hair salon for the visit i will not be paying them whenever my hair next overgrows my ears.

Currently reading:
Howard's End - E.M. Forster

every grain of sand

Making my way through Bob Dylan downloads, I come across:

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

letter

Dear Mr. Yeo,

I am a recent honours graduate from Duke University, having received a BSc. Psych. from this institution.

As a concerned citizen of our country, I have come to recognize, as our government officials have persistently pointed out, that our resources are scarce, and that we rely largely on the industry and innovation of our citizens to keep our tiny ship afloat in the choppy seas of modern-day economic uncertainty.

I have thus returned to Singapore of my own volition to contribute my meagre talent to this cause.

Bearing in mind the comments you made in the capacity of A*STAR chairman in 2002, and noting how difficult it is for a person of my own mediocre ability to find any other meaningful employment, I wish to submit my application to your organisation for the position of Test Tube Washer. Please find my resume attached.

I am willing to provide my own dishwashing liquid, in a brand and scent of the organisation's choosing, and also scouring pads.

I look forward to hearing from you very soon.

Sincerely,
J____ L_____

Thanks to all who asked after me - all symptoms have abated except for a slight cough. Oh, and I seem to be 4 kg lighter.

Destitution is, as always, imminent.

Currently reading:
The Jane Austen Book Club - Karen Joy Fowler

I really want to see Maria Full of Grace but have the feeling that it has been banned in Singapore for whatever reason ("Whatever reason" being "drugs". And perhaps that it's a good film.) Tried downloading, but all I've come up with fakes and partials, so if anyone can get me a copy electronic or otherwise I'd be most grateful.

blech

flu. two boxes of kleenex in as many days. no appetite. voice like macy gray's. grossness coming out of nose. endless cups of lemsip, probably enough paracetamol to cause a rhinocerous liver failure. activity: read for 5 minutes, doze off, wake up, repeat. wrote script for canon short film contest while high on phenylephrine. despite grogginess, decided to play monday night duplicate anyway. slogged through 25 boards. more panadol halfway through. stayed up till 2 analysing progressive double squeeze on board 23. letter to forum once again not published. food: almost nothing, choked down fish porridge an hour ago.

fever has finally broken, though, so i sense that the worst is over. touch wood. etc.

My life at present, perfectly encapsulated

Lunch with Dorcas at Ikea. She's doing well, as one might expect (being the only Humans student among us who's actually relatively normal. No offence.) She had fish and chips. I had poached salmon, in an effort to be healthy (eyeroll). Was failed by the fact that the fish came drowning in something pretending to be Hollandaise sauce but that was, in actuality, melted butter.

Walked around afterwards searching for a housewarming gift for one of her friends. I suggested recycling my lava lamp idea, but that thought was quickly put to bed because Ikea doesn't sell them. She settled, instead, on a rather phallic table lamp, in spectral white, because she wasn't very sure of the colour scheme of the house. I sort of approve - I like gifts to sit right on the line between practical and whimsical, and a lamp isn't the sort of thing that's likely to end up sitting in a box no matter how fugly it is.

Waiting for the bus, I promised Dorcas (again) that I would get myself to one of her cappella group's concerts, and as penance for missing so many of them already, will give her a little publicity here:

publicity