binomial & poisson

I went for my medical appointment at NUH today and found out that I have to go down again, on Jan 15th and Jan 28th. At this rate, it looks like I'm only going to enlist into NS in April or later. I will have about 3 months to myself, at least- which I swear will be the most productive months in my life so far. :)

When I get home later, I will be blogging about Barack Obama, the mother of all conspiracy theories, Superfreakonomics, global warming, optimism and human progress. Stay tuned. :P In the mean time, I'm heading to Starbucks for a drink and to study some statistics. See ya.

tired; drained; exhausted; spent

Well it's not nearly as bad as it sounds, but I'm really astonishingly tired. I covered quite a bit of maths today with a change of approach. I dabbled in a little bit of functions, graphing techniques, AP/GP and mathematical induction. I figure that it makes more sense at this stage to try and salvage a few marks from every topic instead of trying to master one topic at a time- which takes too much time for too little gains. You could say I'm applying the 80/20 principle to good effect, for once.

To be consistent with that spirit, I've decided to take a quick moment to weed out the seemingly minor habits which end up devouring the bulk of my time. With regards to internet usage, I'm not going to allow myself online for more than an hour at a stretch- and all I will do is to check my Facebook, LiveJournal and GMail. I'm going to stay clear from YouTube, Wikipedia and all the awesome RSS feeds on my Google Reader. I will have a lot of fun catching up on all the web comics and blogs I've been following. (As I type this, I just chanced on a 30 minute video from the White House called It's Time To Deliver- I think I can make an exception here.) As you've probably already figured out by now, I am a very flexible person- and that's something where the cons are far more visible than the pros.

I'm heading for my medical check up at NUH tomorrow, I figure I'd bring a book to keep my mind occupied. I'm not sure whether I should bring along Superfreakonomics, which I've been wanting to read, or some History, Economics or Literature material to read up. I think I ought to play this one by ear, and I don't feel traumatized enough to want to take a break. So notes it will be.

Heh. Such discipline is very new to me. I can't help but to snigger at myself. Even I don't believe in me! Hahahaha. We'll see, man.

quick word

First of all I want to say I am astounded by the amount of raw readership this is getting. I expected to get more hits from me discussing the Singaporean Government or Maria Ozawa, but it seems that the bulk of my daily hits are coming from random Singaporeans who directly come to this URL. I can never ignore a nice audience, so I want to say thank you for following me so far. I hope I've made some of you think about some things or look at things in a different way, and I hope you'll follow me back to my main blog after my A Levels are over.

Some nitty-gritty details- I have to head down to see a cardiologist at NUH Clinic H tomorrow at 1400 to verify my PES status. (and if I fail to comply I may be charged under Enlistment Act Section 33- so exciting!) The medical guys at CMPB decided that I might have Marfan's Syndrome (wikipedia that) because I'm unusually tall for a Singaporean, so I'm guessing I got to get a cardiologist to ensure that my heart won't fail in the middle of a route march. I'm pretty sure I'm fine- everything else points towards PES A. All I really want for my National Service is to be challenged during my National Service, and preferably not in the "test your personal fortitude by doing mindless grinding work" way because I'm getting enough of that right now.

With regards for my strategy for my studies- I've decided that I'm not going to let myself be more confident about my GP, History and Literature- subjects that I know I can get A's in, and stress myself less about my Economics- a subject I know I can do fairly well in when I put in the necessary effort. I'm going to devote all my time and energy now to saving my Mathematics, at least for the time being. I need to see some results to have some peace of mind.

I'm heading down to Siglap Starbucks again to study. These days, you'll find me either there or under Block 67 at Bedok South Avenue 3. Feel free to drop by and say hi. I'm a friendly chap.

Okay, less talk, more study! Ciao!

temporary paralysis

The moment I wrote that as the title I immediately thought of that little device that Obadiah Stane used in Iron Man that could temporarily paralyze people for 15 minutes.

Anyway, I really haven't gotten any work done in the past 4 or 5 days. It's ridiculous. When I started this blog, I was thinking that I was going to be documenting how much I'm doing every single day for 80 consecutive days. What remains here is a testament to the weakness of my will and my absolute lack of discipline- yesterday I watched two movies at a friend's place (Let The Right One In is an absolutely awesome show that cannot be easily described) and ended up going to bed at 7am- and waking up at 4pm.

So today was productive, right? No. I went to Starbucks to study, but I ran into a group of friends who convinced me to play 2 hours of LAN- which we did. We played DotA and Left 4 Dead, both games which I haven't touched in months. We then ate dinner at McDonald's and went back to study... nope. We went to watch Liverpool beat Man Utd at a nearby coffeeshop. All I did today was about 3 or 4 questions on Vectors.

Above all that, I am starting to get edgy when I think about my other major commitment- Armchair Critic's EP Launch. For those of you who don't already know, I play in a band called Armchair Critic and we're about to release our debut EP (which is like a mini-album). We figured that we'd have to release it after our A Levels because me and my guitarist will be serving NS soon after and we'd probably lose a lot of our drive and steam if we had to wait until much later to get it done.

The problem? The EP still isn't completed. I am now concurrently trying to save my Maths from Absolute Fail AND trying to complete a mini-album that still needs quite a bit of work... and I'm not sure that I could accomplish one or the other in this given span of time, let alone both simultaneously.

I need to perform a miracle.

The realistic side of me tells me that I'm going to release an average EP that won't be that great, and that my A Level results will be alright but nothing to brag about. That bums me out. I don't want to be average. That's not how I live my life.

Before I pursue that thought further, I think it's best that I focus on getting some stuff done before I start to think about it.

Running this blog is a very strange experience because I am conscious that I am wasting my time, and my instinct tells me to stop blogging or stop thinking and all that because I should be getting work done instead. Then and again, if I used my time effectively, I should be able to do everything I want to and more. Forgive me if I'm being a little random and unrefined in my phrasing but I'm just throwing things out as they run through my mind.

I'm in a bit of a mess right now- I don't mean emotionally or psychologically or in a negative way, but I need to get to work... and I've been saying this how many times already?!

I know that in time, I will be able to go over this and sort things out- because I always can.

So I can do it later. See? That's me managing my time effectively. It can be done. Now to

translate it to the rest of my daily routine.

C'mon, Visa.

i can do better than this

now is not the time to be making new friends

now is not the time to be doing movie marathons

now is not the time

i can do better than this

i can do better

i can

i

sweltering

I realise one of the problems I have with keeping this blog afloat is that I always procrastinate getting to it. My typical online routine involves going on Facebook, stalking my friends' LiveJournals, checking my forums and covering some of the webcomics and news feeds on my Google Reader (which repopulates faster than I can read it).

So I figure that if I just make sure I write something every time I get on the internet, I will start to turn this into a more consistent habit, which means you can come back here more often without having that disappointed "Aw shucks, there's nothing new to read!" feeling. I hate that feeling, so I'm going to do my best to make sure you aren't subjected to it. (In my head, I was thinking "you don't kena". Singlish is so wonderfully succint sometimes!)

Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, Tipping Point, Outliers) has a new book out, and so do Levitt/Dubner (Freakonomics) and Tim Harford (The Undercover Economist). I am foaming at the mouth! Absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on them and devour them all from cover to cover in a single sitting, and then go through them again. I've already gotten the second two, now to get my hands on Gladwell's latest work. Mmm. I am such a nerd at heart.

In other news, it's a brutally hot day today.

i know i haven't been posting

I feel so bad. I just got me some new books; Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt and Dear Undercover Economist, a collection of letters to economist Tim Harford in the Financial Times. They are awesome! I know I should be studying; but still!

I'm pretty confident of an A for History; my SEA history is strong and my International History is almost there. GP should be an easy A as well. I think I could do the same for Lit.

Which brings me to Maths and Econs. Econs isn't too bad- I think I'm at about a C standard and might be able to push for a B, or even possibly an A (not at the rate I'm working though).

My maths is still at Status Fail. Will have to fix that.

Ciao

3:18am

I left my house at 9pm to study; and amazingly I really got quite a substantial amount of my Southeast-Asian History covered. I don't think I've ever sat down and gotten so much work covered in such a short period of time before (excluding rushing to meet deadlines; in which the work is often slipshod).

If I can sustain this, I might even surprise myself!

Goodnight!

self-determination is the aberration of the foundation of this degenerate nation

24 days left to the A levels, which will define the past 13 years of my life as an unorthodox student & determine my legitimacy as a self-indulgent know-it-all for the next decade or so. Each day's consequence has an entire year's significance. How's that for a real-world application of chaos theory? I have rarely felt so alive or self-aware. I love it.

obvious

My sleep cycle is slowly messing up again; I'm sleeping at 3am, going to school at 6, then falling asleep soon as i get home. The immune system is starting to get slightly affected. I'm going to nip this in the bud.

Today is history essay outlines day!

O_O TIME IS RUNNING OUT

Did I say I was calm?!

>____>

Well, to be honest I still am rather calm, but I'm starting to get that sense of foreboding doom again. It seems to be directly related to the amount of effort I've been putting in- I feel more of it when I haven't been getting much done.

I'm going to quickly do a SEA history essay outline and meet my tutor for a consult! Byebye

25 days left

I should be getting more frightened and pressured, but interestingly, I'm not. In fact I'm starting to feel more calm than I have in quite some time. I'm looking forward to catching Mr. Big when they come to town this weekend. I'm heading to town to buy clothes for Deepavali. Gotten started on my Maths!

seething.

I have to do well for my A-Levels, more than ever, to prove a point to all the people who don't believe that I can do it.

hey guys!

I haven't been blogging here for a while; and I am so, so touched to see that there are quite a few of you who actually are regular visitors who pop by every other day or so to see if I've updated. The thought of that alone is enough to get me back here to post again. If you guys would make yourself more visible by commenting or leaving tags, I would feel a lot more pressure to post more regularly! (hint hint)

The countdown meter at the left says it all; as I write this there are only 30 odd days left to what my society has heralded as the most important examinations of my life so far; something pivotal that would either catapult me to University, or leave me jaded and helpless about my future while serving my NS stint. (That's absolute tripe, of course. You can burn all my certificates and qualifications, and I will honestly relish the challenge.)

So what am I up to right now? I didn't study today, unfortunately. I really feel like singing right now (at 1:03am; have you ever felt that way?) so I'm going to pick up my guitar and sing.

Life is beautiful!

interesting moment

So today I skipped maths lecture to eat a sandwich and read a book in the canteen. One of the teachers who I'm quite familiar with approached me and asked me why I wasn't in lecture. I said "Aiyah, never mind lah!" She half-smiled as she shooed me off to the lecture anyway, saying something about how it was the right thing to do.

It was an interesting moment. She's one of the nice teachers who obviously cares about the average student's well-being and academic performance. I wonder what really went through her mind? I don't think I come across as a trouble-maker or a problem-student. If anything, I imagine it would have been something along the lines of "I hope this joker is studying hard."

I would hate to disappoint her. She's a nice lady. History and Maths today!

rarh

i know i haven't been posting in a while;

things are difficult

please bear with me

panic attack

october already omg omg omg omg omg

omg

i shall commemorate the occasion by sorting out all my stuff by subject... and hopefully by topic