Hail the Dragon

For those who may not yet know, SpaceX Dragon capsule docked successfully with the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday, the first commercial spacecraft to do so. With it opened a new era of human spaceflight, the era of commercial development. Now for 20 million dollar you can buy yourself a ticket to space. Yes. Now you can. But it means far more than that, it mean that one man’s dream has come true, he has succeed in doing what no one (8 years ago) thought it was possible. It is a story of besting ridicule and pessimism, a story of sticking to your dream against all odds.

But it means far more still.

Many would not remember the first moments of commercial airlines (I certainly don’t), but perhaps it also had been criticized to be not cost-effective and whatnot, and look what happens today. I daresay the same will happen to spaceflight, there will be doubters for sure, but this is just a first step, a step from zero to one, and everything will follow. I am optimistic that within my lifetime spaceflight will be just as real as air travel.

I almost feel a need to see all that happen, why? Because I believe our future lies in space, one day earth will be too crowded, too dry, too this and that; and if space travel is not mature when that time comes, humanity will suffer. Many have blamed humans for the ruin the Earth is now, and one day even the brightest among us will cease to find solutions upon our mother planet. Many leaders today are too myopic to realise that our real long-term solutions lies in space, but take heart in knowing that in 2012, someone saw the need to start looking for solutions in space and made the first attempt to do just that.

Commercial spaceflight is the first step to colonization of neighbouring bodies such as the Moon or Mars, a prelude to the distant possibility of interstellar travel. All these may sound like science fiction today, but it surely will be the science of tomorrow.

And until that day comes, I will never cease to watch the skies.

Stand back I’m going to try science

Life has been pretty hectic lately, with the converging of events. But Amidst the full schedules I have been able to grab a read or two, a notable one being Alastair Reynolds’ latest work Blue Remembered Earth, personally I do not find it has epic as his Revelation Space series, nevertheless I would eagerly wait for the sequel. Something about science fiction always had this allure, maybe it is the hope for a better future for mankind,or maybe it satiates my imagination for just a while.

Workwise, it has been tiring but rewarding, I amaze myself in the amount of physics learnt over the last five months, it seems that I had not know any physics prior to this at all. Perhaps it is the active problem-solving that led me exploring down many novel areas of science, and the daily dosage of journal papers is a real boost. In a sense I realized the best teacher is myself, because only then will there be true motivation to understand, to explore and discover. Knowledge is to be accumulated and expanded, more than ever at my age at least.

There seems to be a civil war going on in cyberspace over Raffles and what it means, I love Raffles, it was the best time of my life so far, but everyone needs to move on, the crowning achievement of your life cannot be merely graduating from Raffles, or from Harvard for that sake. I am forever grateful to the teachers and friends who set me on the right path to a brighter future, and I hope that rings true to many Raffflesians. Surely the Raffles stand for finer things in your heart, but that scarcely need to be trumpeted, for it takes great courage to voice out the innermost feelings. But after all Raffles now to me is a memory, even as I walk among its corridors daily, I know my time is no longer there. Younger, brighter people inhabit these halls (deservedly), and that thought gladdens me.

That brings me to the constant realisation that I am(finally) university-bound, and little is the time left on this sunny island for me. I hope I can still see my friends and bid them farewell, for I know not when I shall again return.

The disgruntled Slovakian

Pure chance brought me into conversation with a Slovakian-American artist at Cathay Starbucks yesterday. Pure chance, really, for my friend and I were lamenting at the results of the French presidential election and what seems to be a pan-european rebellion against the recent austerity measures imposed after the Greek financial crisis, as I commented,”Imagine the hard-working Slovakian paying the debts of the taxless, frolicking Greek.”

To our surprise a sixtyish gentleman from the next table turned from his computer and said to us, “but it is true. The Slovakians are hardworking, we earn money and are unwilling to spend it, the rest of Europe just want to enjoy, everyone wants a car, everyone wants to go to the beach…” Turns out that he has been around the Asia-Pacific (he lives in Hawaii most of the time, painting, I suppose), for more than two decades now, and he has seen the change globalization brought to the ordinary man, how people are more willing to open their wallets when economy is in boon without considering the times of bad tidings.

“Money indeed changes people, I don’t know what I’ll do if I get a hundred thousand, I really don’t”, he said. I think perhaps, the illusion of money, or the promise of money, that very scent is enough, like the waft of blood whets a shark’s appetite. The world has grown brazen, and the result is what is splashed across the newspapers of Europe right now.

Partial default is not the solution, it is the prelude. Everything we have experienced deserves not superlatives because we are yet to experience so much more, and no one know what the future holds. I remembered what Homer Simpson used to say “This is not your worst day, it is your worst day so far.” Pessimism is useful at times because it is the way thing would turn out, contrary to the optimist’s idle hopes.

We left the gentle old man brooding, muttering about Mr Lee and Singapore. Perhaps we should be glad that we live in a calm glade amidst the storm, how long that is going to last I do not want to find out.

p.s. With the victory of Francois Hollande, what bodes for the EU, I dare not guess.

p.p.s. I should start using American spellings sigh.

I’ve been reading

Mythological Introduction
Philip Larkin, 1943, from Collected Poems 2003 edition

 

A white girl lay on the grass
With her arms held out for love;
Her goldbrown hair fell down her face,
And her two lips move:

See, I am the whitest cloud that strays
Through a deep sky:
I am your senses’ crossroads,
Where the four seasons lie.

She rose up in the middle of the lawn
And spread her arms wide;
And the webbed earth where she had lain
Had eaten away her side.

Nassau beckons

April has come and gone, and what an April it was. I had almost relived the moment two years ago when another package from Princeton came through the mail confirming my admission. This time it is so much more real, as the two year gap has finally been bridged. Finally, I am going to university, to the initiation of a new stage of my life. It took a long while to sink in, to realise that I have precious 4 months left on this island I called home for more than a decade. Looking at the travel plans and documentation, there was joy, mixed with trepidation, for this time round I am really going down the deep end.

But nothing is going to stop me now, after the two hellish years everything seems lighter and easier to bear. So many things happened in these two years, but that beacon has grown no fainter. Towards the light I come.

House of cards

I was constructing this thought experiment the other day, a thought experiment of human nature you could say. (lol random rhyme)

Imagine a house of cards, built by a child, what does he see in that house of cards? Maybe an afternoon well spent (certainly better spent than a plethora of other time wasting unhealthy ways, but I digress)

But what would other people see?
A mathematician sees a pattern, perhaps;
A physicist, principles;
A chemist, structure;
A biologist, system;
An economist, risk;
A fortune-teller, the future;
and so on…

The clichéd conclusion to be drawn that perspectives matter, they govern our world-view, and how our education/upbringing affects how we view things. The slightly less obvious question would be that is there some overarching thing that links whatever that one infers from that house of cards, so that they are actually not so different once you get past the intuition? A hand-waving answer would be philosophy, however nebulous that may seem. Maybe life is the process of finding an answer to that.

Raffles Diploma as an RPG

I have wanted to write this post ever since I found out the details of the newly initiated Raffles Diploma programme form my juniors. It struck me as so strikingly similar to a role playing game (RPG), let’s say Diablo 2/3, the parallels between which I shall draw below:

Character classes: First of all the most defining characteristics of any RPG is the availability of the player to choose one’s class, be it a warrior or a mage, assassin or a priest. And the Raffles Diploma is no different. There are five main tracks, each corresponds to a class of characters befitting the description (I’ll use Diablo classes as an example):
Cognitive (Sorceress);
Leadership (Paladin);
Community (Monk);
Arts/aesthetics (Witch doctor);
Sports (Barbarian/warrior);

Well you don’t really have to choose at the start of the programme what class you wish to be, but it will do you good to have a general idea.

Attribute points: Second, well you have a certain set of attribute points, stats or whatever, which you can put into certain things like strength or dexterity or intelligence, welll certain characters have bonus attributes, like mages generally will gain more mana per unit of stat point devoted to intelligence, well RD candidates do too, probably for a runner 1 hour at the gym will go much more good than to a lab monkey, and so on, how one spend our time is affected by what one aspires.

Skillsets: Third, every character comes with different skills, barbarians have weapon mastery, sorceress can cast ice bolts, people do too. Rallying your peers is one, so is memorizing the periodic table. Some skills may synergise, but not always, choose wisely what you learn.

Bosses: Oh well what’s the use of being all powerful without some giant-slaying to do, in RD you will face exams, competitions, olympiads, you name it!

Exp rankings, loots: Like any good RPG, the satisfaction of beating a boss is like no other. In RD the spoils of war will be deans lists, medals, bragging rights, and a whopping shower of life experience! If you are really good (top-tier diamond league players), you may even get admitted to the university of your choice! haha uncanny similarity there.

PvP mode: The most exciting part of an RPG game is when you take it to the multi-player level (MMRPG), and in RD there is an exciting PvP mode where it’s you against all your peers, compete with the Goliaths of their character classes, and sometimes you get to be David!

The hype: A good RPG comes with good advertisement, the RD is probably the most exciting product of the Raffles family to date, alreadys it has thousands of players vying for a place on the leader-board. Get yours today!

Disclaimer: All text above is a work of fiction, any events that mirror real life are of pure coincidence. The author does not take any responsibility for the topicality, correctness, completeness or quality of the offered information. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency.

成功领导必有理,失败领导必有因

成功领导必有理

遇苦则忍，遇事则担
遇功则让，遇利则公
遇难则克，遇险则应
遇名则歉，遇权则惜
遇贤则敬，遇弱则扶
遇钱则廉，遇色则避

失败领导必有因

遇苦则躲，遇事则推
遇功则抢，遇利则夺
遇难则退，遇险则逃
遇名则争，遇权则斗
遇贤则压，遇弱则欺
遇钱则贪，遇色则迷

The big things and the small things

Physics is all around us. A lot of magic of physics is hidden away in the innocuous corner; they can turn out to be much more surprising than the grand elegance of theoretical physics. For the past week I have been wrapping my mind around something so commonplace and yet so counter intuitive: water. The papers I’ve been reading describes so many unqiue and downright surprising properties of water quantum coherence, electrodynamic behaviour etc) and in one of them it was commented that water is the most abundant substance available to man, hence its various forms are the most intensely scrutinised. Yet water is also one of the most unique and puzzling substance known to man, so much so that many of its properties still befuddle the scientific community of today. Physics is about the big things and the small things, but it is more about the everyday things, the ordinary things, because when you are willing to look a bit further, nothing is ordinary anymore.

p.s.

…
You found me when no one else was lookin’
How did you know just where I would be?
Yeah, you broke through all of my confusion
The ups and the downs and you still didn’t leave
I guess that you saw what nobody could see
You found me, you found me
…

~You Found Me, Kelly Clarkson

CERN should play that song on the day that they finally find the Higgs boson. Just sayin’

Pattern, what pattern?

Normally I refrain from posting ultra-nerdy maths equations on my blog. But this struck me as something that goes beyond maths, something that concerns our very nature.

This simple quintic function f(x))= -1/24 x^5 + 5/12 x^4 – 35/24 x^3 + 25/12 x^2
Simply evaluate it for x from 0 to 4. You will get

x=0, f(0) =0;
x=1, f(1) =1;
x=2, f(2) =2;
x=3, f(3) =3;
x=4, f(4) =4;

Now, what about x=5?

It seems from the previous pattern that f(5) =5. What follows 0,1,2,3,4 naturally but 5?

No.

f(5)=0.

After you have doubted this and checked it for yourself. let’s move on.

The thing is, just because f(x) = 0,1,2,3,4, has no bearing on what is going to happen next, perhaps in that lies the beauty of mathematics, you can have f(x) well behaved for millions and millions of numbers and you cannot predict the next result. I’m not talking about the drawbacks of inductive reasoning per se, but rather a peculiar characteristic of human nature. We inherently want to find a pattern and extend it, any pattern we see. We try to make lists, diagrams, plots, the purposes of which will allow us to find a trend and thereby determine the structure or reason. It is almost Pavlovian. This human nature has served us well, in fact it is one of the tenets of the scientific method, but it does not work like how we wish every time. The simple function above is a stark reminder that we should always check our bearings before moving on.

p.s. This is also why we should be careful when we do regressions and then extrapolate, but that is for another post another day.

Of an old pastime

I wrote my first webpage in 2003, when I was 11 years old, using the then Macromedia Dreamweaver 4. It was a first step into the world wide web for me, learning how all the complicated things (however complicated the internet was then) come together. HTML at that time seemed to be the be-all and end-all of everything one could do.

Now as I stare at the source code of my new modern webpage, it is like a page in James Joyce’s Ulysses, with every other line calling for some obscure reference in the non-native language. PHP, javascript, HTML, CSS, all interweaved into an intricate web of information. From the front end displays to the back end databases, nothing can quite capture the explosive development of the internet better than this. In the short 10 years’ time, we saw social networking, tablet computing, Google taking over the world, a spot once dominated by canvas and the written word.

But this is not the end, it is merely the beginning of our information age, web 3.0 is probably a decade away. I shudder at the extent of the power of the internet of the future. Be careful what you wish for, for it may just come true.

People keep asking me what I think of it now that it’s done. Hence my protest: The Web is not done! ~Sir Tim Berners-Lee

 

Time and time again

It’s A levels results day again, I see another batch of awesome students top the achievements of their seniors. It truly makes me proud, for this day – perhaps more than any other – marks the progress we’ve made through the years, to be the hope of a better age. To those who excelled, congratulations, but remember life holds far more challenges than the bubble of JC life, press on and may you find success. To those who fell short of expectations, despair not, for life holds far more opportunities than the ones you perhaps have missed, strive hard and may you find your prize. To me who feels far to old to be walking around school today, life moves on, so should I.

When plans go awry

Many would have heard a saying that goes: Fail to plan, plan to fail. It stresses the importance of planning before execution, advocating thinking before leaping. Yet it may seem ironic that nothing goes perfectly according to plan, denting what otherwise would be deemed omniscience.

But why do we plan either way?

Because humanity is inherently deterministic, all of us want  to glean information, to influence, to control what we can of our uncertain futures, and hence the natural need of planning arises. A plan, in its essence, is a series of responses to situations that will – if adhered to – lead to a favourable outcome for the planner. It seeks to qualify the unpredictable, to ascertain the nebulous, to encompass the whimsical Mother Nature.

Isn’t that a beauty?

Yet when plans go awry, it seems almost instinctive for people to panic and ask “What now?” As if all these hours spent under the lamp went up in smoke and everything has to be started from scratch. Some people call it “thinking on the spot”To me, that is all the more counter-intuitive, because when you forfeit a plan, you do not only lose the time and effort spent making it, you also may lose sight of the intended benefits of the original plan. Nothing, really nothing, that one comes up in a snap of fingers can beat the careful deliberation during planning. It is flawed to advocate “flexibility” when the plan hits a snag, if one finds oneself changing ideas and directions too often, that is not real flexibility, that is just poor planning. It simply means not enough was taken into account. Why not iron it out and get back on track? After all the intended course of action is the best course of action, no?

p.s. An apology to my readers, the previous upload of this post was magically erased by WordPress, this is the re-upload. The irony.

 

梦与路

 

(夜，灵光一闪，方成此笔)

仰望
梦
如繁星闪烁

俯视
路
如大地寂然

如果说
路
是前人留下的
经验
积淀
一条路
诉说着过去

那么
梦
是上天赐与的
机遇
憧憬
许多梦
歌唱着命运

不知是梦
引领着路
还是路
铺向了梦

路的尽头
有没有梦的身影？
梦的背后
有没有路的脚印？

一步步
兢兢业业
通向罗马的路
永远在前方

一颗颗
点点滴滴
巧如人生的梦
永远在天堂

 

A good old tune

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harp-string, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning?
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

~J.R.R.Tolkien, Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers

Fell in love (again) with the LOTR soundtrack lately: the solo flute that brings in the scenes of Hobbiton, majestic motif of the Fellowship, the haunting melodies of the Ringwraiths, the majestic clashes in the Battle of Pelennor Fields, it distills the very essence of the movies. Howard Shore is really unparalleled in his rendition of the orchestra, absolute genius.

p.s. Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.