Tuesday, January 26, 2010 @ 9:16 PM: Failure and success
In binomial distribution, one always considers two cases: failure and success. The society judges success by different ways - in terms of status, money earned, qualifications, etc. As such, people usually congraulate those who succeed (like scoring tonnes of As in examinations, getting a gold medal in a prestigious competition) while at the same time reject failures - which is pretty normal!
And ultimately the boundary between success and failure is just a thin line to draw. A guy may have gotten 10A1s and 1A2 in an examination, and looked upon as being 'successful' by his peers and parents, while he might think himself as a failure deep inside. Similarly, a sportsman may have got gold in a competition, but might think he is a failure in the competition as he has not met the expectations he has set. In these cases, the main character might tell others that 'hey I don't really succeed', and might be looked upon as an insult. And this is where different expectations come into play isn't it? Success and failures are just a certain level of expectation which people have set for themselves or others where they either met it or not.
And thus, I would like to apply a different dimension to the word success or failure which can be seen as a more 'equal' playing field for everyone. It is a matter of whether you have tried your best in whatever you want to do. I have had a good taste of that in bridge. I would always take a good day of bridge as one where I made no mistakes and had brilliant plays with logical bidding sequences; while a bad day of bridge would constitute errors that could have been easily avoided with more thinking. There could be days where you would win a lot on the table due to your mis-bids finding the correct slam that would be impossible to find by correct and normal bidding. What people say is that the end-result matters or some bring more to the extreme of 'it is my brilliance that has resulted in this contract', but I think you have failed in the context. Simply because you have made a wrong move that wouldn't earn you a good score for 90% of the time. In other cases, people would always slam each other when a competition is lost. You would always hear things like 'you can never bid like this, you know this costs us the first place?', but seriously when it is the correct bid, just accept it and move on. Partner hasn't failed and you should appreciate the times that the correct bids have paid off.
As seen for the examples, luck has been a main factor that makes the difference. Be it good luck or bad luck, tell yourself that the success or failure you have had due to it hasn't been really under your control, and you have tried your best in every instance, and be proud of it! If circumstances are down, change it and even if you can't change it, always do the best out of the situations!
And once you know you have tried your best, you know you do not deserve the tag 'failure'. Smile and move on!
thank you for bringing me memories...
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 @ 4:58 AM: Random Musing
Sometimes when some things that we have always taken for granted are lost,
we would then start to wonder how important these things to your life.
Sometimes you could recover it,
Sometimes it is just too late.
thank you for bringing me memories...
Monday, January 11, 2010 @ 2:33 AM: The True Nature of Friendship
Was having my regular habit of reading newspapers when I'm pretty bored and Sunday Times brought me some comfort and relief with some good articles...
The True Nature of Friendship
By Dr. Lee Wei Ling
I had gone to bed at 7pm on Dec 30 from sheer exhaustion. I woke up at 2am and responded to e-mail on my Blackberry.
I noticed that I had missed two phone calls from two very close friends. It was obviously inappropriate to return the calls at 2am, so I e-mailed to say I'd return the calls during lunch time.
I then went back to sleep and have just woken up at 6am, trying to recall what day of the week it was because that would determine my schedule for the day.
For a moment, I thought it was Friday, New Year's Day. It was only when I went outside to pick up the newspapers that I realised it was only New Year's Eve.
I do not usually place any emphasis on 'special days' - whether it be Christmas, New Year's Day, Chinese New Year or birthdays.
These days are determined by the calendar, but to me they are no different from regular days.
In fact, they often are less pleasant than regular days as I dislike the noise and crowds of special days. I solve that problem by simply staying in my room at home on such days, clearing e-mail and paperwork. This applies even to the reunion dinner on Chinese New Year's Eve.
I am by nature not a sociable person. Indeed, I had become asocial by the time I reached pre-university in school. I do have friends and I have never neglected to help any of them when they needed help.
But for most of my adult life, I have not been willing to spend more time than necessary on conversations and social interactions with my friends. I felt that would be a waste of time - time that could have been better spent reading medical journals, analysing research data, exercising and other 'more important activities'.
It was only since 2001, after repeated bouts of illness, that I learnt that friendship does not just mean mutual goodwill, but also spending time with friends talking about things other than medical research.
Staying for months in hospital makes any friend dropping in to see one a welcome relief, though I was not bored as such as I could work on my laptop. As prisoners know, solitary confinement (even in a hospital) can be terribly punishing on the spirit.
Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: Simply to exist as normal human beings requires us to interact with other people.
There is a Chinese saying, jun zi zhi jiao dan ru shui
xiao ren zhi jiao tian ru mi. The literal translation is: 'The friendship between two honourable people is as understated as water.'
Many of my English-educated friends have difficulty grasping this concept. They would often exclaim in surprise: 'Surely you have changed the saying. The relationship between two honourable people must surely be as sweet as honey.'
No, I have not reversed the idiom. The friendship between two good honourable people is understated. Each will help the other when help is needed even before a request for help is issued. And when one offers to help, the other would accept without feeling any obligation to return the favour.
The 'friendship' between two petty people, on the other hand, is as cloying as honey. When one offers to help, the other would feel that at some point the favour would have to be returned.
The simplest analogy for this saying is as follows: Between honourable friends, there is no account of how many favours I owe that friend and vice versa. The relationship between petty people, on the other hand, requires an accurate account, since for every favour accepted, a return favour would be expected. As far as I can help it, I avoid such friendships.
I am not in the habit of making New Year resolutions. We should change our undesirable behaviour and mend our ways as soon as we discover that our behaviour is less than honourable; there is no need to wait for the New Year to resolve to do so.
2009 has given me both suffering and happiness. I expect the same of 2010. But to all readers who feel a New Year represents a new chapter in life, I wish you a Happy New Year, filled with true friendship and good deeds. And may 2010 be a better year than 2009.
_______________________________________
A good friend is someone who will always offer you help even before you request for it.
A good friend is someone who doesn't count favours owed or being owed.
And I'm pretty glad that there are a lot of such good friends around, while bearing in mind my own principles of friendships, let's hope 2010 be a year of good friendship and happyness!
thank you for bringing me memories...
Sunday, January 10, 2010 @ 9:10 PM:
那是我们都回不去的从前
but I'm already thankful for the current state as it is.
Things could have been much worse.
Meanwhile it is time to look forward.
The damage was done, and was probably irreversible.
我晓得时间如雪 有时候会覆盖一切
And things might have been really different,
As how things could become different.
I always believe in it, do you?
thank you for bringing me memories...
Thursday, January 07, 2010 @ 7:41 PM: Singapore's Education System
I was reading the article on how one kid ended up in a Malaysian University at the age of 10 with the family hitting dead ends to try suitable education system for him. And somehow an article that makes us ponder about our education system. Was it too rigid? Catered more to the majority and less to the minority (those who are too smart in this case)? Too many red tapes in the ministry?
It has been known that Singapore has a very good education system (or at least according to Singapore press) which produces top results at mathematical competitions or examinations. Even some US schools are using Singapore maths textbook as curriculum material and it isn't hard to see why with all the drilling and foundation well established. For those who aren't academically smart, they could be further nurtured in the likes of ITEs; while for those who are supposedly the cream of the crop (top 1%), there is the Gifted Education System.
However, an education system could never be perfect.
With such generalised tests to determine how good a student performs, it might be easy to bury the talents of a potential literary great or a promising scientist to come. Especially when you consider the GEP tests to be a test of linguistic and logical thinking (which I failed quite badly at reading those long paragraphs in English at a tender age when I do not normally speak English at home), a literary great might not do that well at logical thinking, and vice versa for a potential mathematician or scientist who does not need much linguistic skills to excel. PSLEs and O Levels take into account of a broad spectrum of subjects where all-rounders (or rather Jack of all trades) would perform much better than those who might be really good in some subs and bad at some others (esp Chinese, no lack of examples of that). As such, programmes like Integrated Programmes and schools specialising in some subs (like NUS High) have been fantastic in removing some of these barriers, but one of course has to do sufficiently well in primary school and survive the "boredom" years as stated in this case in order to get to the choices that would best fit them. Also, not allowing students to jump years might be better in terms of administration and making sure they have learnt everything before they proceed, but ultimately it might starve off the enthusiasm from the start.
Comparatively an US system is more individualised and caters more to the individual talents of each kid, and of course this has its own demerits as well. However, perhaps it is time for Singapore to relook at the primary school structure to see whether they could allow individual talents not to be overlooked and special cases be catered for. And as one friend says a policy change is good if it could improve at least 10% of the cohort, no policies would be for everyone...
Then again, what I found really interesting are the comments posted after the article: http://comment.straitstimes.com/showthread.php?t=28801... I found this particular comment really laughable: "Just excelling in one subject, science, does not make a boy gifted child. Probably his brain cells have favourable elements for science. What about maths, language, history? it is improper for the parent to seek special priviliges." Perhaps he is saying pple like Albert Einstein isn't smart enough....
thank you for bringing me memories...
