My relationship with Statistics: a one night stand?

There are times when I feel like giving up, when even a complete assurance that I'll soon be able to leave sg and forget that such a place had ever been part of my life doesn't do much. Today was such a day. Gosh, I really don't have any idea why I have to go through all these. I've been drowning in this super wearisome, pathetic, mundane, crappy, and corny job for almost 3 months, but those 3 months really feel like ages. This week, in particular, has been extremely long for me. I have been trying to be positive, like constantly, telling myself that another 48 weeks won't be that long, that soon enough I won't have to come to sg ever again. But yeah, no such things works for me.


Indeed, I started to have this very important question regarding what I should do for a living in the future. A job like this, like what I've been doing, is definitely a big NO. I'm so not going to be in such a position for the rest of my life. Let us put aside the possibility of me becoming a renowned researcher or university professor, since I'm not even sure if I could really cope with the esoteric real analysis & probability theory in pursuing a PhD. A Master degree in Statistics, on the other hand, would only serve as a mean to get me to a similar sickening scenario, working in an office, being told of what people want me to do, being demanded to finish my work within a very unreasonable deadline.


I'd prolly have to make a huge decision pursuing a graduate degree in another field. The big question is again, what is it that I really want? Languages, yeah I love learning languages. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm only interested in learning new languages superficially, for the sake of being able to communicate with people from different countries, of traveling without needing a tour guide. Sounds cheesy, huh? I can't imagine myself studying literature, working on essays, analyzing phonetics and language acquisitions, etc.
Well then I guess I really have to find out what is best for me, which remains unknown to date. 48 weeks to go, and I hope I'll have gotten the answer by then.

congratulations?!?! you jackass

duh bete bete bete, as usual....td pagi gw untuk kesekian kaliny memulai aktifitas dgn keBTan. Bayangin aje, bgtu gw nyebrang jln, dgn suksesnya 1 bus 188 yg msh kosong lewat dpn muka gw. Trus gw pikir ok lah,abis ini naek 183 aje....tp sial seribu sial, 2 bus 183 yg dtg following the 188 penuh total,ga even brenti....sialan d tu 2 bus emg laknat abis, ga pernah ga penuh.....malesin banget ga seh,gw mo brgkt spagi apapun akhirny ttp nyampe kantor jem9.30....malah ampe NUS jg msh mesti nunggu bus C atau A2 lage....dan kesialan bnr2 numpuk krn si A2 jg sukses ninggalin gw.....arghhhhhh....
sampe di science tentuny gw makin kesel krn tu kantor sial seribu sial letaknya ad di atas gunung, which means gw mesti nanjak lagi.....gimana ga kurus nih badan tiap ari disiksa physically & mentally....kurus + darah tinggi deh gw
anyway, jem3 siang td gw akhirny ke ICA yg ga kalah sialannya....gw gatw org2 dsana tuh goblok tolol idiot apa kegatelan ngerjain orang laen,jelas2 tu PR prosesny konon 3-6 bln.....dan employment pass yg dikasih cuma valid 3 bulan....which means gw kudu bolak balik ngadepin tante2 girang yg super judez disana....sampe hari ini aj ud keitung 3kali gw dtg ksono....
(ganti inggris deh...malu gw indo gw dah ga berbentuk gini,ga jelas mesti taroh koma titik dimane)
and here comes the worst part: so I was waiting there for the EP, sitting nicely having a conversation with Liu Yang who was very unhappy waiting there since 10 am in the morning. We were talking abt how boring my job is, how pathetic it is to be held for even another year in sg, how all jobs statisticians may end up getting are similar and insipid, and so on, when suddenly one of the happy aunty (tante girang.red) called my name, looking if there was someone else called Haskell. The moment I told her that I was the one she had been looking for, she suddenly had this very funny expression and -well, I still can't believe this- she said, "Are you Haskell? Congratulations" *wink wink*. I, hypocritically, said, "Thanks, but may I know what this is regarding?". *tada...jeger lalala* "We are happy to tell you that your PR application has been approved", she replied, still with that funny face. She was prolly expecting me to behave the same way, showing such a stupid fake happiness, full of euphoria. I, on the other hand, being such a huge fan of leave-singapore-asap FC, was of course terrified. I didn't know if I had to feel sorry for her, to laugh, to cry, to smile, to be proud or to puke right at her face. When on earth have I ever expected to be a sg pr?? Had they asked me, I'd be very happy to let them know that it was such a decision Haskell would never ever do, should he not be in such a situation needing a job to "fulfill" the bond and at the same time the only interesting offer (which finally turned out being by no means interesting) he got was from a company requiring all of its employees to be at least a sg pr....haizz...
-I still wanna throw up, btw-
anyway, the good part of today is that I'm home....yayyyy that was like 5.30 pm when I reached home, realizing that even my roommate was not home yet. fyi, he might be the first to reach home everyday, I guess. Yeah, I'm happy to be home early but on the other hand, I have to be at work again tomorrow, which sounds like 14 hours away from now......sigh

49 more weeks

It's finally saturday....I'd love to say "yayyyyy" but unfortunately the time now shows 9.40 pm, which means monday is only like what? 26 hours and 20 minutes away? What a real turn off....darn
Anyway....last week was again super hectic, thanks to the canadian guy I had prolly mentioned in my previous post. This reminds me of what I was doing few days ago, something a statistics graduate should never ever do in his entire life, nie im Leben. Some friends of mine asked me, "Oh come on Kell, what are you up to now?"...Well quite frankly speaking, I was up to a very shitty job, and almost down to hell. I had to manually input like thousands of numbers to MS Word, and for those of you who can't seem to relate what manually means, it simply means by hand, no ctrl C ctrl V whatsoever. Luckily enough, I'm way more capable than they think I probably was....yeah I found out a very fast, efficient way of doing it=p
So much about the shitty job. Today I had my Spanish and German classes again, as usual. The Spanish class is getting more and more exciting. We learnt about genealogy and possessive pronouns. Things were completely ok, at least until now; Spanish is more similar to English in terms of the grammar and everything I guess. The German class, on the other hand, went pretty boring. Little did I know that the class'd run constantly in this kinda style-Goethe sucks. I'm afraid that I may end up losing my passion for German after quite a while. So I think a 2 or 3 months break will be a good idea. Yeah, we'll see...
Another highlight of the week is....set theory(?!?!). Yeah, I finally have to admit that in order for me to pursue my PhD in the future (if I will really do it), I definitely need a good background in mathematics, and NUS undergrad education is really a joke when it comes to mathematics background for its statistics students. So I started to learn (or brooding over to be exact) the infamous set theory, starting from nothing. After few days working on it, I finally managed to understand some basic notions like countable-uncountable and finite-infinite sets. There are still definitely many things I need to do for the coming week, so I guess we'll just wrap it up here for now....

it feels good to be home early

Another boring day in the office has passed, leaving me with 4 more days for this week. Yeah, I'm just 50 weeks away from my ultimate goal ever, or even slightly less than that if I really go to Europe next July.
So today there was a meeting with this Canadian guy who works as a collaborator for whatever research my company might be doing. It felt really good to be in the meeting, not because I understood what they were talking about, but because I had a chance, once in a blue moon, to hear someone talking in real, proper English in the midst of this Singlish-speaking population.
The meeting, however, ended up sucks as I would probably have expected. They had a bunch of ideas of how the huge dataset I've been working on for the past couple months should be utilized even more. So, for the coming few days I'll be busy again doing many analyses (and by "many" I mean "a lot"), which I personally consider a complete nonsense.
Anyway, I purposely decided not to go to the CO5102 lecture today in quest of a better, more proper body-rest. Gosh, it feels really good to be home early today, after taking some time going to Orchard meeting one of my friend to get my Indo movie DVDs (yayyy!! thx to Ato). I actually had this plan to watch Murder of the Inugami Clan tonight as well, since I was already in Orchard, but some Singaporeans out of nowhere just happened to be kiasu enough there was no ticket left for me - not even one.
So here I am right now, blogging with my almost-2-months-old lappie, enjoying the windy night and at the same time trying to gain as much energy as I possibly can to start doing my German homework. The person I'd be very keen on having a chat with has yet to go online, so I guess I'll just wait for her and also for some important replies to the email I sent this afternoon regarding our massive plan on One Month in Europe.
Btw, congratulations to my friend Nancy who has been successful (or lucky=p) enough securing a job at NY stock exchange for herself. Proud of you=)

what a week

Last week was like a hell to me, super hectic and definitely grueling. Gosh, even my usually-not-so-tense work has been a pain in the ass as the boss started to keep asking me to do a bunch of things, which I personally consider really nonsense. Anyway, I finally have to admit that the idea of being a full-time worker & part-time student just doesn't work for me afterall. I have to give up one of them, and since I'm still practically bonded to get ~50k by July next year, this would mean giving up my "part-time-studentship". A tough decision Haskell wouldn't normally do.
I did try to manage my time working in the morning till late afternoon and attending some graduate classes in the evening to keep my stats skills on. Yet I ended up being super tired, half-dead for the whole day, not functioning in any single thing I was doing. I left house at 8.30am in the morning and came back at around 10 pm just to have a 1-hour chat with friends, check my emails without even thinking of replying any of them and appreciate that the day itself was almost over - I had to go sleep and face all the same mundane routines the following day. What the fuck....that's definitely not the way I wanna define how my days are.
so today I'm more convinced that I have to let go this idea of going to graduate classes after work, not even one. I'm gonna use my Saturday for German & Spanish classes, and the Sunday for revision, doing homeworks, etc. Did I miss something or do you really think I still have time to revise any of the stats?
Btw, I got my old lappie sold for 250 bucks. Albeit not good enough to get me a new ipod, let alone an iphone, I'm still gonna get one of those. My cell just doesn't do any good when I'm stressed out, the god damn headset just won't work....
alright, time to get back to work.....Spanish here I come

*happy independence day to my beloved country Indonesia*

hadiah ultah sg

Today I'll start my 9-hour-in-office story with a gag. So this morning I got a reply from my email to OSU, sent almost a year ago...what the.... OK, it's actually not about the email being replied after a year, but what was on the email can prolly be an interesting birthday gift to your (not my) lovely island

Dear Sie Haskell,
...
The OSU rule on the TOEFL is that international applicants who will have a university degree from an institution in an English-speaking country at the time they would start our program at OSU do not need to submit TOEFL scores.

"well ok, that's gr8, I don't have to waste another 17 bucks for sending my toefl score", so I thought. But wait, there's still this baffling part of their email:

Although the classes at the National University of Singapore are taught in English, the language of Singapore is not English, thus the TOEFL scores are required.

"The language of Singapore is not English". Are they kidding me??
It took me just a few seconds to realize that they are indeed making a point....gosh, am I really this stupid? I have indeed repeatedly said it myself, the language of Singapore is not English. Does anyone have a guess what it actually is?? Go figure it out.
So the TOEFL score is required in this case, because some people -like me- just don't like the idea that the highly regarded English will be tainted by some filthy particles like lah,mah,meh,moh,walao....*I'm still laughing, btw*. Well then I guess one of my Singaporean "friend" who insisted that his English is fine was just trying to make a joke. Not a good one, though.

Etwas erzählen, um die Zeit totzuschlagen

Der siebte August 2008 ist fast vorbei, und nach einigen Stunden vom letzten Artikel habe ich jetzt noch nichts zu tun. Die Chefin sitzt eigentlich neben mir, aber es gibt zwischen unseren kleinen Plätze eine kleine Wand, durch die sie kann mich nicht sehen (Gott sei dank).
Jetzt ist es 18 Uhr. Ich warte schon seit 3-4 Stunden darauf, dass ich das Büro verlassen kann, um nach Cineleisure Orchard zu gehen und der neue Film Pathology zu sehen.
Morgen ist endlich Freitag, aber das Wort frei klingelt aber nicht sehr richtig. Jedem Freitag bin ich nicht frei, weil ich im Büro sein muss, habe aber nichts zu tun. Na ja, trotzdem freue ich mich auf jeden Freitag, auf den Spanischkurs und auf die Wochenende, die folgt.
Ich erinnere mich daran, dass es ein bisschen schwer war, Deutsch zu lernen. Die Wortstellung, die als Englisch sehr anders ist, machte mir Sorgen. Nach zwei Jahren habe ich zurzeit weniges Problem mit ihr, aber das Genus der Deutschsprache ist noch ein großes Problem für mich. Jetzt will ich mehr Chancen haben, die Sprache zu üben, damit ich fleißender sein werde.
**Ich muss jetzt gehen, sonst werde ich zu spät ins Kino kommen** tschuss...

51 weeks & 2 days to my freedom

It's been almost a week since my last post and I'm still sitting here not knowing if I have anything interesting enough to write. Anyway, instead of doing nothing this afternoon, like I usually do in any other afternoons *note the plural form*, I'll just point out some important highlights from last week (like there's any)....
hmm, where do we start? I heard someone saying MRI?? ok, let's start with the MRI....
Exactly 8 days ago, I underwent an MRI for my brain and cervical spine. For those of you who have read my previous posts, I'm sure you know why I ended up doing this pricey test. Aside from being held unnecessarily for 40mins inside that whatever-you-call-it thing, the entire scanning process was ok to me, nothing to be afraid of. Well, the scan turned out fine as neither the radiologist nor the neurologist found anything suspicious based on the MRI report. The doctor then prescribed me another set of medications which I have to religiously take for 2 weeks--1 more week to go. For the first few days, I could feel that the medicines were doing me a great favor; I was recuperating, finally. These past couple days, however, I start to feel funny again every time I sit or walk for quite a while. Gosh, I really don't understand what's wrong with me, but yeah, we'll see if 1 more week is enough for the headache to be completely cured. This time for good, please.
Speaking of 1 more week, I still have 1 + 50 more weeks (= 51 weeks) and couple of days before I can regain my freedom as a human being. Leaving this pathetic island for good has definitely been my dream since 4 years and 20 days ago, counting back to my very first day in sg (July 19,2004). So, before that day comes, I still need to keep myself busy to kill the remaining time. Any idea how I should do this?
....oh wait a sec....I have my own idea...: going back to school, doesn't that sound great?!?!?! Yeah, as any other newly-matriculated students will start their first lesson this coming Monday, so do I....I'm doing 5 graduate modules this semester, unofficially. For God's sakes, I really need to do some REAL stats or I'll end up being like a complete idiot this time next year when I start my PhD. Yeah, I got everything planned and scheduled last night: 5 stats modules and 2 language courses a week for the rest of this year. Here's how my timetable will look like from next week onwards:

Mon 18.00-21.00: CO5102 Principles of Epidemiology
Tue 12.00-14.00: ST5214 Advanced Probability Theory
Wed 19.00-22.00: ST5202 Applied Regression Analysis
Thu 12.00-14.00: ST5214 Advanced Probability Theory
    19.00-22.00: ST5201 Basic Statistical Theory
Fri 19.00-22.00: ST5210 Multivariate Data Analysis
Sat 10.00-12.00: Spanish Beginner 1
    14.30-17.45: German B.2.5

Now I'm really excited., I just didn't know that I love school that much haha...believe me, working sucks. While I could skip any classes I didn't feel like attending, I don't get to skip my job every time I feel like doing it (which basically happens every day). What's more, I've barely had any chance to optimize my brain to its fullest potential. Now you see why I need to get some stats?