March 2, 2010 - Posted by yaya - 0 Comments
I’ve recently become interested in “happy pills”, apparently made to flush away depression.
I think I’ve seriously become bipolar, on top of pretty serious depression, making me oh-so-attractive-and-gregarious… but then again, who knows how many people are driven crazy in this school? Sometimes I feel like an ant crawling into my hill before the rain, soon to be drowned out. It’s a feeling of martyrdom. What a relief.
Most unfortunate, my other blog is down. A server that refuses to load just when your mind is freshly bubbling with daily trivialities is one of the great tragedies of modern life. If only my Twitter wasn’t linked to my Facebook account, I think I’d give a few Tweets. Who was the last person to talk to me about Twitter? I remotely remember a nice lady in a blue sweater, or something.
I haven’t seen interesting people in a very long time. Shame…
February 20, 2010 - Posted by yaya - 0 Comments
Since budding childhood, I had been taught to be responsible and accountable for myself. Coincidentally, I happened to cruise through that period of my life with perfect ease, without much to account for, constantly being praised and merited for achievements shadowing those of my peers. The boundary between youth and adulthood, however, was marked with rough patches upon which I found my steps faltering. My smooth sailing was no longer, and in applying the principles of responsibilities, I quickly learned to accept blame and seek intrinsic faults for the sake of self-improvement.
At age twenty, I am a mediocre student in the third year of undergraduate studies at a fairly reputable university, and it is with much awe that I record my current observations. Having finished reading two articles (courtesy to the Kansas State University), named quite to-the-point as “I know the material but when I take tests I go blank” and”Stressed out over studying?” As if by magic, these two articles charismatically pinpointed some of my fatal flaws academically that I had failed to recognize, such as an inefficient method of studying, and the inability to maintain poise in taking tests. I had simply assumed that techniques enabling me to do fabulously in elementary and secondary school would carry over well into post-secondary, and my reluctance to admit that there was something wrong with the way I was studying (which, a friend had spoken to me about a rather long time ago - but of course at that time I refused to accept the argument), quite possibly contributing to my very mediocre academic achievements. It always pained me to see peers who had previously been so obvious less competent achieve at the same level I did. It never occurred to me, however, that this may simply had been because they had always needed to study throughout their lives, while I seemed to excel without the least bit of effort - as much as I hate to admit, they may now simply be more accustomed to studying, with hardened methods, while I am like a duckling floundering in the water attempting to stay afloat for the first time.
I had always been of the mentality that if I “tried hard enough” by exerting enough hours to study, this would effect better grades. Yet, as months and years dragged on, I never really improved. Why? Because I was lazy? Because I was less intelligent? I refuse to believe any of these claims as they are simply factually false. I devote my life to my studies, but I do not obtain the appropriate results even though I boast an IQ of over 140 and commendable maturity as demonstrated by my personal habits. There must be a missing link here, somewhere. What am I doing wrong? Pride and self-preservation for many years prevented me from setting out in expedition of this missing link. I had always been the best, so maybe if I focused just a tad bit more, I would be able to improve my current situation - this belief kept me half-afloat and struggling for breath as I continued to despite and beat down myself. Sentiments of self-pity and injustice surrounded me. I hated to see those that tried less hard but got farther. I became bitter, and shied away from others’ company.
It was not acceptable that I could not overcome the problems in my personal life with my current methods in order to focus and succeed. I mildly entertained the idea that perhaps stress and emotional instability were problems, but did little to amend the situation. I often wish for a happy family that makes me feel safe and wanted, but my own I dread seeing, and bestows me with a deep and unspoken terror that even today I cannot quite describe. The images of my immediate family flash before me bring impending doom as if all sources of joy, however scarce, will be ripped away from me. I long to fly away from those that I supposedly love the most, to a haven of tranquility where I can blossom and flower, where I will receive warm applause instead of sardonic snippets. I envy other families, and hate the fact that my own makes me unhappy. This, consequently, makes me immensely guilty and troubled. Why can’t my family understand that I want my love to be simple and enshrouded in kindness? In the back of my mind, the choice between abandoning possible reconciliation and possible peace tears me apart. It is quite difficult to express that kind of despair. What if others see me as selfish and unloving? There is darkness in the heart, a web of frightening outcomes, and I do not know how to overcome it.
This “problem” is a part of me, and whilst I feel that it is important, I also feel as if I need to move on quickly with my academics and career. It is not acceptable to stop at this one hurdle and lose the rest of the race. So there is no choice but to stumble on forever in these chains of gloom, all the while yearning to fly up to the blue skies.
I have come to admit my weaknesses; I have come to recognize what I need to change, but among these, there are some which I will be able to accomplish on my own, and some with which I desperately need help. I am a vast, completely, unhappy person. In the dark, I fumble for the window latch - wherefore it my candle?
- Thursday, February 18, 2010, Orlando International Airport, FL
February 6, 2010 - Posted by yaya - 0 Comments
I don’t remember the last time I found a series of lecture notes mildly relevant to real life. I think managerial econ, aside from the awesome-like-every-other-ECO-class-set-derivative-equal-to-zero-ness, has something here…
[Courtesy to: Gerstein Library's ability to make me very hungry, Prof. J. Serrano's couple of sentences about density economics in his lecture notes, and THE INTERNET] Here are a couple of scribbled lines I found in my new notebook (Shopper’s Drug Mart, $3.99):
Wal-Mart and Economics of Density
Wal-Mart has a dense network of stores. stop. This network facilitates logistics of deliveries as well as the transfer of personnel much more efficiently, and also adds ease to the promotion of the “Wal-Mart culture”. (I think we can correctly assume that the consumers are unable to see this team spirit…)
Contrast Wal-Mart with Kmart: Wal-Mart structured its store network from the centre-out (see Holmes’ work), and focuses on logistics such as delivery and communication technology, while Kmart simply does not. stop.
January 24, 2010 - Posted by yaya - 2 Comments
something is terribly wrong but I don’t know what
January 24, 2010 - Posted by yaya - 0 Comments
something is terribly wrong but I don’t know what
December 4, 2009 - Posted by yaya - 0 Comments
Kind of sick and stressed and wish that people would stop bothering me.
Take us back in time for twelve months, if the same number of things were wrong back then, I would have long jumped out of my sixth floor window, regardless of the expected outcome.
December 3, 2009 - Posted by yaya - 0 Comments
I think I came across an article somewhere that said something with the essence of “You will be a more productive person if you keep up the habit of doing something useful daily, such as writing or drawing” and felt quite ashamed of myself. I think that in the midst of what I call “I am busy with”, I have put on hold the self-improvement that has always marked my character. Today I sat in disdain, slowly translating an invitation, while a certain engineering student who by all acceptable logic should be revising for a number of upcoming finals, played SC after returning home from a performance at a Christmas-carol-sing-along. It is certainly not because I do not appreciate music.
November 20, 2009 - Posted by yaya - 0 Comments
Main pages - Joomla
Ticket engine implementation - osCommerce
November 13, 2009 - Posted by yaya - 0 Comments
One of my conversations last night proceeded somewhat as follows:
X: “I really think that real business cycles are quite interesting.”
Y: “Oh? How so? I thought that it rejects demand-side factors and is a rather inaccurate depiction of how the economy works.”
X: “Ah… well that may be true, but nonetheless I think the model very clever.”
And that was exactly it - the RBC model is a clever mathematical model that makes me shake my head hopelessly at my inability to become as creative as my intellectual predecessors. I was engrossed with the idea of representing the production function as subject to a series of random shocks. Reading further into the text (which was originally intended for graduate students in any case), however, only yielded mathematical analysis quite similar to the growth models we had covered in previous chapters. After several meaningless intervals of attempting to stop my eyes from glossing over at the Lagrangians and logarithmic functions, the only plausible solution seemed to be Wikipedia.
Unlike a textbook, of course, Wikipedia outlined several criticisms of the RBC theory as well as pointed out RBC as a major point of contention in macroeconomics. Naturally, a cynical student’s question in response to this information, would be “Why are we learning such a heavily-contended model?”. This led me to reexamine the course description in the syllabus that amounted to about six lines. The following caught my attention: “…students will develop analytical skills in solving and constructing macroeconomic model.”
The above statement came to me as somewhat of a surprise, for my experience thus far with the course has been to analyze specific problems contained within the theory, and has none of construction of models. Like I said before, previous intermediate macroeconomic learning has yielded nothing close to the sophistication and critical ability of being able to construct such complex models of thinking.
All this may mean nothing, but somewhere at the back of my head, little details began to ring. Scenes of an enthused professor exclaiming that she loves mathematics and is in fact currently doing research in real business cycles theory made me wonder if those were the true reasons why we are using a graduate textbook and looking at such abstract models that seem a huge jump from IS-LM and AD-AS. I appreciate the dose of intellectual stimulation, but I wonder… what is the correct dose?