Really Hungry Today

The famous huge ramen near our client's office in Shinagawa.
_________________________
I am feeling very very hungry today. I finished my lunch as breakfast, beef stew with noodles. Finished my colleague's snack on the table, started to work on the gummy bear candies. Around 5pm, I was so hungry that thinking is impossible (my is stomachaching). I ate my supposingly breakfast. Now I am thinking something with grease and temperature...

Fooled by Randomness

Rollerskating around Tokyo street is very fun thing to do
____________________________

Just read Gladwell's outliner, the ran into Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness". I guess there is all fate. If I have read Fooled by Randomness, I guess I would have laughed by way through the outliner. The 1000 hour rule, the connections, and all other factors deciding why some people outstand others in any field... are all becoming objects of my skeptism.

According to Taleb, there is no prove why you should put your money to a fund manager because of his track record of not lossing money (when time is good, he is even making money) for the past 10 years. Why is he famous? Because no one can be bothered to study the 99.9% of failing fund managers. There is really no enough statistical data to support any pricing models or money making strategies.

In financial market, randomness is the king. The book "Millionaires next door" depicts frugal people saved money and invested wisely, they eventually become rich. That's all pure luck! What if they bought the loser stocks that went under and, thus, losing all their investment?

It's depressing, all our work in financial market has been depending on luck.

IBM Korea, India and New York

Being sent to the project everyone in our company thinks impossible and difficult (in terms of communication due to culture differnce), I had amazingly good time there. Part of the reason is that I was only there to design the prototype and IBM consultants will be implementing and delivering it.

But seeing all the incompetent IBM consultants working on the projects (of course, there are a few exceptions), I started to contemplate why banks would like to contract with such a large organization filled with useless people. I guess that has everything to do with project failure risk. Suppose the big name fails to deliver, the bank can sue its ass off, having a 10 year long law suit to get their money back (plus interest not lower than the risk free treasury rate). In that aspect, I guess it is better to have big name associated with my project.

People I have met in Seoul are geniunely nice but being a nice person is not a guarantee to deliver.

End of Seoul Excursion

There are again a couple of interesting things I observed in Seoul. People likes to drink hot drinks from the straw (inserted into the cup through the cup cover with a opening designed for sipping). Seeing a lot of young people doing that on the street while strolling. That's very strange, nope? Isn't the hot drink hot enough to burn your tongue? To me, the smell accompanying the warm (sometimes hot) fluid into my mouth is absolutely essential. Perhaps it is because the temperature is so low that they cannot afford to lose any warmth from an open cup?

I have also observed a single guy taking taxi by sitting in the front passenger seat (just like in Beijing). I understand it is a lot easier to give direction to the driver that way, however, it is a bit not proper. Taxi drivers are the service providers, not your friends. You are not getting the ride for free. I am not saying I don't want to be friends with a taxi driver, I just think that's a bit insensitive to do that.

Eating around in Seoul sometimes, I found that I am not very happy with the steel chopsticks and rice bowl. Stell chopsticks are slipery and heavy. Percise and hygenic maybe, but not elegant. It is always hard to pick up the rice bowl with steaming hot rice. You have to leave the ball on the table and scoop up rice with, again, steel spoon. I do miss the nice, earthy ceramic bowls and plates.

Long Time No See

Midway through our Sunday City Stroll, I felt hungry and produced a half-drunk ice tea (yes, in McDonald's paper cup with a straw) and a half-eaten McMuffin, from my backpack. All my skating friends were cracking up. I started to breakfast and skate at the same time.
__________________________________________
I cannot believe that I almost didn't write anything for almost a month. The shortest month in a year cannot seem to be my execuse. Oh well, there has been a lot of happening to me during these past couple of weeks. I had a couple of very good ideas to write about, but just didn't have the displine to login to my blog.

Back to the writing business, I promise, will try to catch up the average number of posting per month before month end.