Stalker

Some longtime readers of my blog will remember when I used to stalk this chick who was living in my block. It was hard work. I didn't want to loiter around the void deck waiting for her to appear, but I had to time my arrival down the path which leads down to the MRT, and hope to bump into her along the way. I seldom made it on time, and I almost never got to see her. In the evenings I had to be there before 8. In the mornings I had to be downstairs between 7 and 8. I never made the morning hours: I guess I loved my one hour more of sleep more than I loved her.

Even when I was actively stalking her, and this was over a 6 month period, I bumped into her no fewer than 10 times. After 1 or 2 dates she decided I wasn't right for her, I suspect it had to do with her religious tendencies (holier than thou?) among other reasons but looking back now it's impossible for me to be with somebody who cannot tolerate my flippant attitude towards religion.

Why am I bringing this up? Well there is an ex-colleague of mine who used to join us for Wednesday games. He stopped joining us because he's got to take care of his kid but that's not the only reason. He's since left the company but less than 2 weeks ago I bumped into him. I bumped into him a few times: I guess we have mutual friends: at weddings and at shopping malls, but this time it was my void deck. So I asked him what are you doing on my turf? Guess what, he's now my neighbour. And guess what, I've bumped into him 4 times in the space of 10 days.

OK, I enter and leave my apartment at times that are more compatible with his but I wish I bumped into that chick as often as I bump into him. I have nothing against him but he's just not somebody with great legs, beautiful eyes and a saintly aura.

Dead Mathematicians

There was a time when a lot of jazz musicians I got acquainted with in college died, and another time when a lot of movie directors I found out about died. Now it seems that a few mathematicians whose work I had studied had died.

First off is the father of chaos theory, Edward Lorenz. I attended a course on chaos theory and I came to realize that it is not simply a scientific fad that has made its way into popular culture, but it is a very important way to study systems. One of the important implications of chaos theory is that it is very futile to predict the behaviour of sufficiently complicated systems.

Unfortunately some of the people that I work with don’t really understand this, in spite of the fact that one of them holds an advanced degree from Lorenz’s university. They have an exaggerated belief in their ability to predict events that take place in the future, or their ability to make sense out of it, rather than to do the more sensible thing and just plan for contingencies. They’re also too smart to listen to what I have to say.

I may have blogged about chaos theory at length before. There’s too much to explain over here. People who are interested can just go read this nice book that my professor recommended, “Chaos” by James Gleick

Another person who died was Kiyoshi Ito. I had heard that it was possible, 10 years ago, to earn shit loads of money as a maths geek by studying a maths technique called stochastic differential equations. In the 1970s, a few people – Myron Scholes and Fisher Black came up with a way to use sexy fancy mathematics to make rapid investment decisions on complex financial instruments called derivatives. One of their discoveries was the Black Scholes option pricing model, which calculates the probable value of stock options. To do this they had to build upon a lot of important and cheem work that Ito laid down for stochastic differential equations.

Scholes and Merton, another one of their maths buddies, joined a hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management. Both of them were awarded the Economics Nobel Prize for their “contribution” in 1997. In 1998, LTCM blew up and went bust. Oops.

What went wrong? Apparently one of the central assumptions – that you can use a lot of teeny weeny normal distributions to model the movement of stock markets. But that assumption does not square very well with reality. Benoit Mandelbrot, who is a very important figure in chaos theory (and who also likes to tell a lot of old farts in academia that their ideas are wrong) developed some ideas about a better and more accurate way to assess risk. Unfortunately the maths in his system is much more difficult to work with and he does not have something with the theoretical elegance of the Black Scholes model.

In the meantime, a lot of fingers have been pointed at hedge funds for their role in exacerbating the current financial crisis. This will be debated for a long time yet. This is not to point fingers at Ito, since he only did the maths part and said nothing about applications for finance. Ito’s work has a lot of other applications which make more sense, in electrical engineering, for instance.

The last person is Henri Cartan. I am not that familiar with Henri Cartan’s work. But there was once I wanted to learn about complex analysis, and I ended up picking up a book about it. It is probably the same textbook as the one mentioned in his obituary. Cartan was a member of the Bourbaki group that helped develop the concept of a proof to be something that is completely rigorous, and not leave anything to the imagination. A bit like asking a sexy woman in front of you to please remove the bikini because after all you are almost naked anyway. On one hand this was intensely irritating because my professors would be nitpicking every part of every maths proof I ever did as homework. But it was great for the development of maths because when you are so rigorous with everything, all the ideas behind the proof are shown clearly, and then you can sometimes derive some more connections between ideas, and at the same time drive more maths research.

Who Am I tag

"Who are you? What's your name? Super Brother!"
- Guitar Vader

I am idle enough to respond to a tag.

A. Attached or single?
Single

B. Best friend?
“For the music is your special friend
Dance on fire as it intends
Music is your only friend
Until the end” – Jim Morrison

C. Cake or pie?
Cake. I don’t like syrup.

D. Day of choice?
Every day is your day of choice except the day that you die, and even that is negotiable.

E. Essential item?
A book. The two most important things are your education, and the eradication of cockroaches.

F. Favorite color?
Green. Or gray. I love not seeing the sky so it doesn’t matter if my view is blocked by trees or clouds.

G. Gummy bears or worms?
Gummy bears

H. Hometown?
Singapore.

I. Favorite indulgence?
Masturbation. If you didn’t want to know you didn’t have to ask.

J. January or July?
January. My birthday is in January

K. Kids?
Making kids. Yeah baby.

L. Life isn’t complete without?
Life is never complete. Thank your lucky stars you can wake up in the morning and still find something to do.

M. Marriage date?
Unknown.

N. Number of magazine subscription:
Some of my regular reads: Economist, Guardian, Independent, New York Times. I used to read Rolling Stone, Mojo, Q, NME at bookstores. I like New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs for history stuff. Scientific American for science. Playeur and FHM for porn. But no magazine subscriptions because I like free material.
(nb: if you have to admit being a porn freak it is better to bury it under a whole pile of other magazines.)

O. Oranges or apples?
Apples. They make you burp and feel manly about yourself afterwards.

P. Phobias?
Used hypodermic needles

Q. Quotes?
I’m the man

R. Reasons to smile?
I’m the man

S. Season of choice?
Winter. My zodiac sign is associated with winter. Plus I used to have 4-5 months of it so you might as well like it.

T. Tag 5 people.
See my reply to “B”

U. Unknown fact about me?
I am a musical genius

V. Vegetable?
Primarily vegetarian: veggie bee hoon good. Yong Tao Hoo OK. Double boiled soup so-so. Steak bad.

W. Worst habit?
Watching TV / surfing / reading / using the bathroom / fixing the computer while having dinner

X. X-ray or ultrasound?
When you say ultrasound I think about Sir Alex Ferguson giving me the hairdryer treatment. Therefore X ray.

Y. Your favorite foods?
Eat to live not live to eat.

Z. Zodiac sign?
Half goat half fish.

My Sassy Girl

I usually have some reservations about adapting movies across cultures. Yes, one of the most successful Hollywood movies of all time was an adaptation of a Japanese film. There was a movie about a bunch of rebels attacking a samurai fortress, called “Hidden Fortress”. It later on got remade into “Star Wars”, although George Lucas did add some stuff of his own.

There have been some remakes of “The Ring”. Now The Ring may be a big hit, and the ending (which I can’t reveal) may have been inspired by the internet which is a western invention, but there are a lot of aspects of “The Ring” which are very Asian. Long haired ghosts, the notion of the supernatural being unhappy people with some axes to grind with the living - these are Asian types of ghosts.

The one adaptation which was never going to work is “My Sassy Girl”. Some things about human nature are just not universal. The original premise of “My Sassy Girl” is not going to work in the western context, because all these people are behaving like Asians, not westerners. Yes, emotional masochism is universal. But the Jeon Ji Hyun character using her violent behaviour on her boyfriend as a mask for her grief over the previous boyfriend is something rather particular to Asian culture.

I can imagine an angmoh doing that, but I can’t imagine an angmoh being so selfless as to hide these problems away. When angmohs have psychological problems, they do not make Korean soap opera out of it. Instead they beat somebody up, shoot up on drugs, go to therapy, blog about it, whatever. But they will tell somebody about it. They will discuss it. Angmohs don’t suffer in silence because they are not Asians.

The guy is also clearly not an angmoh. Angmoh guys are macho people. It is more Asian to be the sensitive new age guy. In fact many of them are. So this SNAG is not a real issue. Asians also tend to be more sentimental than angmohs, who see this as a sign of weakness. But angmohs are not more stoic than Asians, rather they are more stoic about different things. If you make an angmoh stay back longer in the office than he has to, he will either quit his job or badmouth his boss to the rest of the world. The asian will be better at tahaning this. We all know this to be true: angmohs are better at fighting for their rights, and Asians are better at eating shit.

Ang moh women do not bully guys and then fall in love with them afterwards. They do not get touched by his unwavering devotion. What his actions communicate to her is that he has a small dick.

Conversely the whole spectacle of the woman loving the self sacrificing guy, and yet being constrained by both her own reservations and by society’s norms to express it, is something intensely moving to Asians. Angmohs are much more likely to say “what a fucking idiot, she has issues, she should go and seek professional help”.

The issue is that while these 2 people are fairly unusual even in Korea, the rest of their psychological makeup is fairly common. She’s the one who masks her suffering. He’s the one who is a mother’s boy. But these two people will be considered freaks in angmoh society. They would be wimps and losers.

Yes, Shakespeare wrote “Taming of a Shrew”, another romance involving a sassy girl. But in that play, the guy manipulates her and eventually dominates her, instead of winning her over by putting up with her shit. When I found out that the remake was directed by Yann Samuell, who also directed “Love Me if you Dare”, a light turned on in my head. That was a good movie, and there are some similarities, like the fire of being extremely attracted to the other is starkly contrasted with the ice of playing a game where you have to act cool. But that was love as competition, and is in some respects quite macho.

Anyway I read somewhere that the director of the Korean version was brought in as a consultant for the Hollywood version, and when he saw the mess, he threw up his hands and quit. I can imagine why.

Adventures in the US - Summer 2001

Another thing I’ll never forget. I was going to start my 4th year, after spending 1 summer in Singapore. I had to move out of my place after my housemate, Willow graduated. My new place would be across the street, and I had requested for the new tenant (of the place I was moving out of) to allow me to store the stuff at the old place for the summer.

My flight from Singapore to the US had a stopover in Tokyo. I spent a week there vacationing with a Malay friend of mine. One of the interesting things is that we went into a hot spring and I was able to see for the first time what someone with a circumcision looks like. But of course that’s not the only or main reason why I vacationed with him.

So my flight back was a little bit hectic, to say the least. I would check out of my hotel, go to the airport, board the plane, fly to Chicago, stop over, fly to (small town near my college), have my friend pick me up from Syracuse and drive to college. At this point it would be midnight at my college but 2 in the afternoon Tokyo time. So at this point, at the end of 20+ hours of travelling, I would move house just so that I would have a place to stay at night.

This is the sort of thing you can only imagine yourself pulling off when you’re in your 20s.

I ring the doorbell, and there are these 2 pseudo Latina ppl who say hi, typical American superficial friendliness and all that. I noticed that they have a new sofa set and they said, “yeh I asked for new sofas, asked them to throw out the carpet, yada yada yada and they did it for me. I was like, what?! You mean I lived in a flat for 2 years with crappy furniture and all I had to do was to ask them to change me a new set and I could have been having much better furnishings?

But before I could think too long, one of them said to me, “look, it’s getting late, and we’re not going to be staying up forever, so why don’t you take all your things and put them out here…” I was like, yeh, a bit unfriendly but reasonable.

So I move box 1, and carry it 50 m across the road and up the stairs, no problem. Box 2 and 3, still OK. Box 4, I’m almost about to die. So I park Box 4 on my front lawn. It’s summer, see and there’s no snow. I take 5 inside the house: my room is the one that faces the front lawn. I dig out a rare jazz CD that I bought in Tokyo and play it – it feels good. (Actually that CD has since been re-released with new mastering so I think I should not have bought that CD at that time but nevermind…)

I open 1 box, and it has all my bedsheets. I make my bed, get my blanket out and at least I have somewhere to sleep for the night.

Suddenly I hear some loud noises on the lawn. A bunch of frat boys who have just finished partying and are walking down the street have found my box, and they were opening it. My jaw was on the floor. They were ripping off the cover, taking some of the contents, and splaying them around the lawn. Mind, they didn’t steal anything, just messed everything up like a bunch of hooligans (which they were.) I was thinking about whether to go out confront them, but 4 against 1, I thought it was best not to. That was the one time in my life I was willing to retract everything I had previously said about gun ownership in America.

5 minutes later, they were gone. Cursing under my breath, I packed everything back into the tattered box, and carried it upstairs.

That was August 2001. 1 month later, the WTC would cease to exist.

Manic Street Preachers

Every morning before I go out, if I’m going on the MRT, I pick a book out before I leave the house. I was about to reach for “the Girl in the Picture” when I changed my mind and took “A History of the End of the World” instead. That book was a book about the book of Revelations in the Bible, apparently the nuttiest part of the Bible and the one that says that the end is at hand.

When I entered the train, almost immediately the angmoh standing next to me said, “hey, that’s a pretty interesting book you got right there.”

Oh shit, I was standing right next to a preacher in a necktie!

Angmormon: Hey, you a Christian?

#9: No.

Angmormon: You aren’t a Christian, why are you reading this?

#9: I’m just curious.

Angmormon: What is your religion?

#9: I’m a Buddhist.

Angmormon: You believe that the world is coming to an end?

#9: No.

Angmormon: Yeh what do you think is going to happen?

#9: Well things go on as they always used to.

Angmormon: Yeh but we all know the sun’s going to turn into a red giant one day don’t we?

I thought yeh but I dun worry about that because the human race will be gone by then.

Then he passed me a booklet where he talked about his church, the church of the latter day Saints, and talked about his hero, the prophet Joseph Smith. That rang alarm bells in my mind. Joseph Smith was from New York, he said. Yeh. I thought, but he got cast out to Utah because they wanted that cracko as far from civilisation as possible.

He claimed to be a Maths major just like me, and I asked him what he does when he’s not evangelising. He said, nothing. He evangelises from 7 in the morning to 11 at night, and I detected an undertone of resentment as he told me that. That is cracko. I mentioned about having gone to Utah earlier this year to see the arches. He said wow that’s great. How did you know Mormons are from Utah? I said, I was curious. Actually I met a Mormon in Europe once, but I didn’t say that.

It’s unusual for people to be chatting in the MRT. Our MRT is very quiet compared to subways in angmoh countries when everybody is talking away. He left the station at City Hall.

Well thanks for the booklet. It will feed my intellectual curiosity but I’m just not interested in being a Christian, much less a Mormon. If anybody is interested in contacting him, his name is Elder Tuckfield and you can get him at 6455 6425.

There was a third book I considered bringing along before I left the house. It was a biography of a band called the Manic Street Preachers.