Anywhere but her bed

She sleeps on the couch, on the ottoman, on a chair, even on my feet. Anywhere but her own bed.

Anxious

Have you come across a day where many things go around your head at the same time ? Looks like my answer is yes for every day. Right now, I keep reminding myself of booking our air tickets to Hong Kong on the internet so that I could get the best prices. It feels like knowing that which shop you could get the winning lottery ticket but you just haven’t gotten down to the shop to pay for it and collect it.

A minute ago, I logged into my online university account to check for announcements and latest postings by my virtual classmates and tutors. Someone just mentioned something from an exercise that I could only deal with tonight and I have no idea what he’s talking about. It makes me anxious if I know that someone knows something that I don’t, especially concerning my course.  Here’s another checklist item that keeps ringing in my head till I get to see that famous question number 3.1.

The most disturbing thought that haunts me is the task at work. I just can’t seem to get the coding to breach a counterparty ratio. There’s a numerical limit to deal with. Then there are ratings. And it’s concerning exotic products that I hardly comprehend. At times like these, I wonder if I’m not that good at this job or all these things exist for no purposeful use.

At the same time, I just feel like slamming the turkey into the wall. Gee…just the image alone calms my nerves down. Feeling much better. Will deal with the rest later.

 

I want to do many things but work

I wake up to the same question every morning.
Why do I exist to do this job?
I have better things to do.
Many.

Drawing and painting Evita. Create an e-business. Do my assignments. Finish off Ken Follet's novel. Sketching the layout for our future garden. Create a food blog or a cat blog. Make babies.

Evita at 3 months

She's growing stronger, wittier and crazier!

Evita has grown bigger and stronger in 10 days

Amazing!

Her motor skills have improved unbelievably fast. She can now manage complex manouvers such as walking along the thin chair frame. She balances herself on my shoulder while I'm walking.

She's also responding to her name. She's getting very good at hiding and not letting us find her. ]
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and she can even type the keyboard.... the above was her contribution.

Meet Evita!

We have Evita for 5 days now. She’s such a darling.

Treating 'myopia'

I realised that ever since I left university and started working, I lost grip on current affairs and general knowledge. All I had managed to get were some local news in Singapore, which were not exactly exciting (e.g. murder cases involving a foreign maid, the latest mall opening, etc.). Time was also a factor. Work was hectic. In fact, work was robbing my life. What good is work taking up all your precious hours when you could have used it wisely to acquire knowledge. Even if you don’t intend to invest your time, you could have at least use it for pleasure. The problem exists among many workacolholic Asians. On hindsight, it was such a waste to spend more than the optimal 8 hours at work as I have observed the diminishing marginal returns on productivity.

What I really yearned to do when I missed my personal time was reading and acquiring general or technical knowledge. I have always wondered how much can I learn. I often said to myself, if only I could understand how this complex universe of financial system actually works. How did banks and markets come about ? How do we get ourselves in financial crises ? What are the dynamics of all possible financial instruments in this giant universe ?

When you work in a financial sector, your participation probably involve only 1% of the whole system. Your knowledge base and state of mind become so limited that you become myopic. Very often, friends from outside of the financial sector ask you what you think of this and that, and especially the crisis. I think that most of us (including myself) who deal with so many narrow tasks at work, shamelessly not having much real contributions to the discussion. We could offer our two cents but it’s all speculation. How worthy is our opinion then ?

I can’t emphasise enough that we should read, especially now that we have super access to the vast web of information on the internet. The problem is, there’s too much information. It can be quite overwhelming, really. To my surprise, there exists many discussion papers on financial crises. Both the practitioners and academia have rather interesting opinions and findings from the past and recent events. I find that particularly useful to understand the mechanism of banks and why it is susceptible to failures. So, are these informations relevant to a layman ? I would say yes, if you are curious in the matter. Some of the models proposed in academic papers can appear to be intimidating. If you find that so, try to get as much from the introduction and the conclusion.