You know, I'm working part-time now... and because of that, the time I spent working has a monetary value. And because of that monetary value is negligible to my roommate who might be getting a job paying 250% my pay, I would like to think of me getting paid in beers.

It's a lot more amusing, but it incorrectly defines me as an alcoholic. I don't drink... that often... seriously.

So after like slacking off for 15 minutes, (that's half a beer) I'll think I return to work. By the way, a beer is worth four dollars at Nevada Smith's. Wait, maybe five. But for my purposes, I'll assume four

When I let slip that I didn't have a cellphone, I got nothing but incredulous stares from people, as though I just innocently mentioned that I want to be like Hitler, I eat puppies for breakfast, I steal candies from babies and I push old ladies into incoming traffic.

Seriously, guys, not having a cellphone is NOT a crime. I just refuse to pay so much for a service that I wouldn't use. It's very much like the cable paradox. You pay for five hundred premium channels, yet you won't watch all of them, and some of them you won't even touch. Yet you pay for each and every one of those premium channels. It's very much like so with the telcos in America.

10 years ago, a cellphone subscription was like USD40 monthly. Today, it is still USD40 monthly, and though you might marvel at the fact that inflation hasn't crept into the figures at all, the fact is telephone calls don't cost as much as they did 10 years ago and if anything, costs should have dropped drastically over the past 10 years. Instead, these telcos realise that while their profit margins are rising due to decreasing cost, they must offer something else to the customer, while refusing to cut prices. So they start adding funny stuff like extra minutes which you won't use, services that you didn't know exist and hidden costs that appear to triple the bottom line of your phone bill. Out of the blue you start seeing misc. charges, federal taxes, state taxes, mom's taxes, dad's taxes, municipal taxes, service fee, service charge, extra service fee, federal regulation fee, government mandated fee, extra charges, charges-put-in-just-for-the-heck-of it and especially charges-you-think-you-need-not-pay-but-you-do-now-if-you-pay-five-dollars-more-for-a-detailed-billing-statement.

So while you think you might be paying USD40 a month, you're being screwed in the ass by false advertising and large corporations paying the government so that their profit margins remain that way.

So, forgive me if I do not own a cellphone and refuse to be connected to the rest of the world like I should. It's just that I know that a cellphone subscription isn't worth more than USD10, and why would I bother to pay USD40++ for a service that doesn't even work properly. Yes, I've heard too many complaints of crappy service and reception to even doubt the authenticity of these gripes.

I may not have a cellphone, but at least I'm still human. I don't answer calls in cinemas, I don't receive SMSes in class, I don't walk around 24 hours with a phone affixed to my ear, I learn to get along without mindlessly droning on to a friend how awesomely drunk I was last night, I don't decide to call a friend while hanging out with someone else, and I don't think that survival depends on a cellphone and radio waves travelling through my brain to denigrate whatever intelligence I have left.

Between getting drunk, doing homework and getting drunk while doing homework, I have neglected my blogging. I apologise, and blogging would resume soon.

On the side note, I was gastronomically harassed on Friday night. Yes, gastronomically harassed. It is very much like sexual harassment, but then I was harassed not because I have a nice ass, but rather because I was carrying a 16" pizza while walking down the streets of New York. A couple of people looked leeringly at me, with the sort of eyes that undressed, opened and penetrated the pizza box and imagined the curved deliciously sexy slices of hot steaming cheese pizza while they drooled saliva down their chins. Then they had the cheek to ask me, "Can I have a slice?" showing their inept aptitude in begging for food.

Yeah, now I know what it's like being whistled at and wolf-called while walking down the streets. And yes, it shames me to share this bit with you guys. So pretend this post never existed.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

So you bit farewell,
All that's left of you is a cloud of dust,
And choking exhaust fumes of carbon monoxide,
Which I inhaled deeply into my lungs,
Just to hold you next to my heart.
I stood underneath that chestnut tree,
Watching the road that took you away,
Digging my toes into the dirt,
Wanting to be the earth you thread upon.
As I slowly turned away,
I hope all roads lead to everywhere,
And that I'll meet you once again,
Even if I walked the other way.

Gah, decisions, decisions. I hate decisions like these... dammit, yeah I think this is pretty much an omen. I was writing this poem, inspired by my class of Foundations of Financial Markets, when the bad news hit me in the next period. Now I gotta make decisions. Dammit, I'm not good at making decisions.

Sometimes you find dreams in the weirdest of all places. Like take my Junk E-mail Folder for example. All my dreams are there. A free iPod. Student loans. Mortgage Refinancing. A longer... line of credit. Young sexy nubile girls ready to meet me.

If dreams do come true, I just want half the junk mail in my inbox to actually deliver what they claim they do. Just that.

Anyway, I was at this guy's place, and he was sort of looking for paper to roll his weed in. After searching around, he couldn't find any suitable paper that was thin enough. So after rummaging through stacks of magazines, suddenly he says, "Anyone got a Bible?"

The irony, yes, the irony.

Do you know that if you search for "failure" or "miserable failure" in Google, and click I'm Feeling Lucky, you'll find yourself staring at the official White House autobiography of the current US President, George "Dubbya" Bush?

Yeah, well apparently some group has been manipulating the search results of Google, such that that result comes out top. But amidst the protest of misrepresentation, lies and slander, somehow I don't feel that this is too far-fetched a joke; because the joke's really on us.

I love MCQ exercises and exams. They are just so amusing sometimes. Take this one for example.

Fixed income securities promise...
A. a fixed stream of income
B. a stream of income that is determined according to a specific formula
C. either A or C is true
D. neither A nor B is true

Now assuming the question doesn't make sense to you, and assuming you're logical. The first assumption is just so that you ignore what the question tried to say and focus on what it did. The second assumption is so that you understand this question from a logical Boolean perspective. There are a couple of other assumptions but I think the most important is that there can only be one correct answer.

Therefore, since A or B is correct would imply that C is correct and vice versa, there would be direct contradiction of the assumption that there can only be one correct answer. So by computational logic, the "correct" answer is D.

Sadly it is not so.

But there are just so many loopholes in MCQ that it is kinda amusing sometimes. Instructions posed at the beginning of my paper go something like, "Please write your answers on the answer sheet at the end!" To the untrained student, this means just writing the correct answers at the end of the paper. BUT to an experience student like me, I have to take it such that the teacher doesn't want the correct answers, but rather the teacher wants MY answers. Clearly here the teacher has intentionally asked for my answers, whether correct or wrong, and hence I will not be held liable for any flunking out of college due to miscommunications between teacher and student.

However, MCQ exercises also hold tremendous statistical power. I recall my first actuarial exam was MCQ, and I met a guy there who shared a little bit of trivia, that in 40 questions, there are like 7 A's, 9 B's, 13 C's and 11 D's (numbers not accurate due to fuzzing of memory) on average in the past year papers. So technically, since this is the average, therefore, when in doubt in such an exam, put C as an answer, and you'll have a statistically higher chance of getting it correct. MAYBE, since this was a statistics and probability exam, this was the correct way for it to be done, rather than studying through textbooks on probability. After all, this would be a test on our creativity and statistical skills in collecting data for future application, and it would then be the perfect test. However, we must remember that the people administering these exams are geniuses at probability. Hence, we must observe that after an infinite number of papers, the distribution of correct answers should be approximately equal. So in future exams, there could be more A's and B's in the papers as compared to C's and D's. So either way, if you're taking the exam, it's your call.

But my statistical education has long been lost in the halls of the casino in Malaysia. And MCQ is so alike betting red or black on the roulette wheel, and in the off-chance both answers are wrong, the house wins. But MCQ still remains a pathetic way to test students, because in the off-chance that they decently picked up question-answering skills, they'd know... the longest answer is usually right, the most complicated answer is true and there is hardly ever any situation where you get 4 or more of the same answers in a row, and it is impossible to score less than 33% on an MCQ test, because anyone can at least omit one incorrect answer leaving them to choose one from three. But yeah, what do I know about statistics and MCQ?

You see, the biggest reason MCQs should not be used is because think about which possible realistic scenario can be construed into an MCQ. None! Imagine this:

Your wife asks you, "Does this make me look fat?" You respond in the following way,
A. "Yes" and sleep on the couch tonight
B. "No" and sleep in the garage tonight
C. Run out the door to the nearest bar to get drunk
D. Kiss her and remove the offending garment to have sex before you throw up.

See? MCQs are hardly valid. Just like Jeopardy questions, "Who is Darth Vader?" and they are suppose to respond with a question. Of course I could answer, "Not my father." but that's besides the point! There are so many answers to life, the universe and education that I'm somewhat surprised that it is possible to reduce such choices to four letters of the alphabet. But MCQs are here to stay, because they were made for the offendingly lazy... afte all... when there's only one right choice among four... what could be more simpler? Oh wait, true/false questions.

Last night I went to this poetry slam somewhere on Ave B and 4th. Honestly, it was my first time at such an event, and I must admit, I was really impressed by the poems they recited. It is an art, really, loads of showmanship, fire and thunder in the lyrical utterance of words... no, meaning, that flows and resonates with my mind, creating visions, muses and inspiration. It is like one of them said, "Poetry isn't putting on a mask, it is taking off a mask."

I've picked up numerous insightful gems from these poets, and yeah, they are right about one thing. At least I hope they will be, that history would no longer be told by who's right, or who's left, or the history tellers, but rather history would be told on the streets, in the dark lit cafes, between people, and amidst the truth. Though there were some political rants, these were also amusing and entertaining in their own right. Just like the poem dedicated to Optimus Prime, who was a black guy, from the Transformers, fighting against this group of other robots led by this evil white robot named Megatron, who travelled from planet to planet, draining them from their natural resources and is called the Deceptecons.

But beyond that, there are personal stuff... just like the one about the guy talking about marriage. He speaks from a perspective of a guy married, has six kids and getting none in bed, and he criticizes romantic poets who are single tha they don't know what love is, but he ends up with a light tone, something like "Family, single poets, is what love truly is, but it'll sure be nice to have sex." Then there was one from the dude who works helping abused children, and he's torn up by his job and laughed scornfully when someone commented how rewarding his job was, when he walks among the underside of humanity, where all the filth is. Yet he comes out positively, when he said, "Reward is knowing that everything is all right."

It was inspirational, definite change in the entertainment I indulge, and I didn't need two Coronas to make the night more interesting.

Life by RavenHawk

Hanging in the middle of a tight-rope,
On a bleak dreary Monday,
Almost ran out of hope,
Hanging four hundred feet in the air,
This stinks, and life's just not fair,
Life, I don't give a damn, I just don't care,
Sh*t happens, and sh*t happens good,
It just happens to everyone it could,
Looking down,
To the ground
Below,
I'm sick of this sh*t, I'll just let go.

In my absence, Erick has kindly provided a guest post.

Bush has declared 16 September as Katrina prayer day. Now, I am not opposed to the idea itself. However, I am opposed to the fact that Bush is initiating it. Shouldn't a few religious group leaders do it instead? This seems too much similar to Bush's campaign to my liking. Whatever happened to the separation of the church and the state?

Well, I suppose the sentence itself says all. It is not called the separation of faith and the state, or some other neutral term. Face it, even though de jure it is in the very constitution of the strongest country in the world, de facto majority always wins. Appealing to the conservative Christian constituency is so wrong seen from a religious point of view, but you would have to admit that from a political one it was a brilliant strategy. I refuse to think Bush has anything to do with it, though. He is merely a dumbass figurehead surrounded by intelligent advisors. Or at least I would hope so, for the sake of the rest of the world.

Yeah, well, we had an interesting conversation from this point about Bush, Katrina and America in general.

E: But seriously... In Indonesia at least they have the decency to call it a national mourning day or something...
Me: hahahaha...
E: And the religious group leaders from all 5 religions will be involved.
Me: It's Bush... he's just trying to cover up the fact that his administration BUNGLED the entire rescue and relief operation
E: Yeah... What happened, man...
E: You'd think that the most powerful country in the world is capable of more than that.

It is sad to see natural disasters. However I think the natural disaster which was Hurricane Katrina was largely overshadowed by the artificial disaster that was the FEMA and Bush Administration. Whatever happened to the Homeland Security and all that bullsh*t that Bush talked about? If they can't respond in time to Hurricane Katrina, would they be able to respond in time to a terrorist threat, a fear that has been ingrained into us by politicians of the Bush Administration? Where was all the changes, when we cannot see America leaping into action to save a part of itself again, not from the clutches of terrorists, but from Mother Nature this time?

Look, I'm gonna criticize the "War on Terror" again. This Katrina disaster has shown us that NOTHING has changed since 9/11. Homeland Security still sucks, aid and relief doesn't come when needed, terrorists are still capable of hitting a major world city in 7/7 London bombings and rogue nations are still pursuing nuclear weapons. So what has the "War on Terror" achieved actually?