Long story short (pun intended), I had my hair cut (#4 clipper all the way!). Almost everyone asked me why, but I don’t really have an answer to that (my answers mostly went “ummmm /shrug just because?.. /shrug”). I guess I felt like having them cut. I was going to do that a while back, but I had a wedding to go to. Anyway, if I could charge a dollar for every person who stopped by my office to see my new haircut, I would have been rich by now (well.. maybe not really because the stock market is really killing me right now).

It was fun to walk around the company and see people’s reactions. As a matter of fact, many people did not recognize me. The last time I did this was a couple of years ago. The guy who shared the office with me did not recognize it was me for half a day…

If you wonder why, then take a look at these photos…

P.S. This haircut is sponsored in part by Mick & Pla

/gasps

I almost cried… It’s these things that keeps me going.. almost there…

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

I think I’m somewhere between (1) and (2).. thanks to stupid politicians. I hope they burn in hell… /cry

I’m just testing blogging from iPhone. It’s not too bad at all. Anyhoo, I hosted a dinner at my place last night. It went pretty well if I nectlect the fact that I almost burn my place down. Anyway, it appeared that everyone liked the food and they were enjoying the time, which was all that really matters. I wish that I had thought about the dessert a little earlier. I made mangoes with sticky rice in coconut milk. The sticky rice was good but the mangoes were a little too unriped for my liking. They would have been great if they were for today instead. O well.. Maybe next time

The menu (just to tease your saliva glands):
Gai (chicken) satay with peanut sauce (homemade of course)
Beef steak
Kra por pla (fish stomach soup)
Kowniew mamuang (mangoes with sticky rice in coconut milk)

Mick and pla also brought gai yaang (thai grilled chicken). They were great as well. Personally I liked the soup the best. I think it tastes pretty close to a decent sharkfin soup. All in all, it was fun.. I should do this more often..

I don’t really have much to say here. It’s been a while (way too long) since I took this space down. Well, here I am again.. blabbering about nothing. I’m thinking about updating the layout, but we will see if this will happen or not. Check back often to enjoy my usual whines about nothing and everything…

It’s that time of the year again. My hands are shaking and I’m ready to go on a shopping spree. For some reasons, over the past several years I seem to be buying things to indulge myself in during the holiday season… I wonder what I will buy this time. I’m going home this year.. so maybe it won’t be so bad…

Oh.. and happy thanksgiving to all =D

I was reminded of an episode (Mathematics of Tears) of Andromeda today. At the end was this short dialogue:

Rev. Bem: I believe anything that can love has a soul. Have you ever felt love? 
Rommie (Andromeda): I’ve learned that it’s dangerous to love. It can drive you crazy.
Rev. Bem: Then perhaps that’s what tears are for.    

Mood: emotional roller coaster…

It’s astonishing how expectation could change one’s view of an outcome of some events. The higher we go, the higher we fall. Does that mean then that it is better to have lower expectation? Let us consider an event with two possible outcomes 0 and 1. Suppose that a person is monitoring this event. He/she will be happy if the outcome is 1, and sad otherwise.

Of course, the lower the expectation he/she has that the outcome will be 1, the happier he/she will be when 1 occurs. Let x be one’s expectation and let f(x) be the satisfaction function that is decreasing on x. If the outcome is 1, then the person’s payoff is f(x), otherwise it is 0. The expected payoff for this person is then pf(x), where p is the probability that 1 will occur. Given a value of p, we want to maximize f(x) to maximize the payoff, that is by making x smaller. However, we don’t want x to be too small (we know that if we are hopeless and have extremely low expectation, we would also be miserable). Let us then define g(x), a misery function that is also decreasing on x. We can then optimize the person’s payoff by finding the intersection of f(x) and g(x). Let’s suppose that f(a) = g(a). Then for any x<a, if f(x) > g(x), then we choose to stay on f(x) for x<a and g(x) for x>a. If for x<a, g(x) > f(x), then we would choose to stay on f(x) throughout. We have to balance between the misery before knowing the outcome and the satisfaction after knowing the outcome. Of course, if the probability of 1 occurring is very low, then he/she would be better off not expecting anything at all (if you are going to be miserable, then it’s better to just get it over with).

I have no clue how I just came up with that… it doesn’t even make any sense.. lol