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

Have you ever wondered how each and everything in the universe are connected? Have you ever wondered if a decision you made could be affecting millions or even billions other lives? What could have happened if today you had worn a pair of pink socks instead? or if you had walked a little longer to that coffee shop you had never tried before? or if you had taken a different route to work? How do you know that you have made the right decision?

It’s a wonder how each of us as an individual makes decisions, also as an individual that could be affecting how others are making decisions of their own. At each of the decision point, there is a nexus that can lead to many different and perhaps unpredictable outcomes.

 As chaotic as it seems, what would happen if there is an equation or a series of equations that could describe this complex system? What if our consciousness could be linked together and make decisions as a collective? Would it be easier to make a decision? What if we could look into each link within the nexus, where each path will take us?

Staring through the windows, flakes of snow are floating. Unable to resist the unrelenting gravity, they slowly drift toward the ground. If they were alive, would they be wondering why they are falling? or where they are falling to? Would they wonder if they would be gathered by some young children to make a snowball? or even a snowman? 

Winter has come. Summer has gone. Seasons change. Things change. Time moves forward.  We move forward, adrift, wondering where we would land…

A great movie. Very beautiful story. It’s one of those movies that could keep me shaken (emotionally) for much of the movie. The movie just came out.. (sneak preview today), so I’m not going to spoil the fun for you… It’s a must see.. especially if you love music.