Happy Chinese New Year!

Hmm… got nothing to say about this. There are really no significant days to me since I was born. Nevertheless, good customs should be kept, so…

Forgive me for posting such a short passage!!!

Ciao.

January 22, 2006

Last year I wrote about the new mission of the AC – to approach the Production Possibilities Frontier (PPF) and Sustainability. Looking back at the motto now I feel rather disillusioned, for a number of reasons. However, sometimes when we progress through the course of lives, some things we perceived as wrong suddenly becomes right, maybe due to the different way we look at things. I hope that this is true. As I am not able to think properly within my mind (too many things flood my mind at a single moment), I shall let this passage do it.

To some people capitalism means greed. I may be categorized as such. Why just in a sudden moment, I thought that taking a job is not worth the wage? Well, to speak rationally, an individual always tries to maximize his own profit or utility with a given cost. Obviously, working for others may not fit the criterion – at most you’ll get a few million units of currencies, which value may erode over time, maybe plus some stake of the company which you work with, but never to the point of controlling interest (unless…). Satisfaction? Appreciation? Too remote and abstract for me. Maybe I’m not good enough to work for others, as I have written in an earlier post, or my way is different. Whatever it is, a point is clear: working for others may not be the best alternative.

This kind of thinking may be equated to mercantilism, sell whatever you can give and buy absolutely nothing, while pile up mountains of valuables. After all, if every one think like this, how would the world works? However, if most people do not think like this, there is room where discrimination exists and you can take advantage. I still try to understand this point. It may sounds like common sense but think carefully, it’s not. For the time being, the best solution for my headache is to understand the economics text book, and hopefully, this would help me get the mess out of my head. By now, I just started to learn when to apply principle and when to apply common sense…

A company like AC or Berkshire Hathaway is a fantasy for many. The environment, the people, the strength, the diversity. When I work for it I often felt overwhelmed by all the conventional ideas and common senses. Up to this date the structure of the company has been redrawn 3 times and now I don’t even know whether the businesses should be carried out under commercial or personal name. By now, there are no difference. It doesn’t matter what arrangements are used. The most important thing is the principle on which the businesses are carried out.

Once I was an advocate of utilizing precious metals as reserves. Now a new idea comes into my mind and I intend to refine it. Could innovations be used as reserves instead? To me innovations are not something very abstract (especially those not-so-right ones). Innovation is something intangible, therefore not subject to risk of being robbed, and it can provide a continuing flow of life to the businesses. However there are no such entry as ‘Innovation’ or ‘Amortization of Innovation’ under company accounts. Maybe FASB want to create the rules for it.

I have put enough stress on my brain, so I should rest a while…

I always feel that too many people are acting like Le Corbusier, just thought of efficiency and neglecting aesthetics. Looking back at myself, for much of the time I had no difference either. This really cracks my mind. You certainly felt the surge of greed within myself as you went through second and third passage. However, the surge of greed originates from the greed of others. I classify myself as greedy when the force of the surroundings act on me and I am polarized. I am so unstable that I can’t even manage to keep myself insulated from this. Now I can say this because there are no forces of surroundings acting on me, both extrinsically and intrinsically. When it emerges, I found it hard to control myself against such frustration and anger, as my greed turns into. I started to understand why some ‘sages’ advised me that be a recluse is suicidal. I have to traverse through rough waters, if I am going to stay on the course.

An excellent progress so far, at least to me. So, I should put a stop to this ‘self-enlightenment’. Hopefully, this passage helps to explain why I hadn’t blog for such a long time, besides of the re-emerging of cheapskate character, don’t bother to visit a café…

Something about the residence: as I drew the building I increasing feel that it’s not going to be something, so it was abandoned for the current moment – but I managed to salvage the lobby, extend the dimensions of all directions and converted it into an office building. It was conventional enough, 60 stories for a height of 372.5 meters. The current problem is the site area of 202 500 sq m or 50.03 acres. To get an impression of this size, imagine demolishing an area encircled by Burma Road, Anson Road and Irving Road. Part of Macalister Road and anything between the encircling road would be… (No offence OK, just giving impression…)

One last question: is it good to feel obsessed in the art of Japanese Gardening? As you know that I’m quite phobic with complexity, so the gardening style may suit me well. Or is it the opposite? …

Immortality

Oh my god it’s so noisy with the presence of those so-called natives here in cc! By the way, I’m not talking about the ability to live forever, just something about my shameless face who remain thick despite being hit repeatedly…

Here’s some description of my current drawing, i.e. another big bluff ‘project’… It is about a big (I mean BIG) 4 1/2 stories residence of neoclassical design. Currently the ground floor plan is under drawing, but the area estimation for the west wing is… no less than 217 000 sq ft. That’s just west wing, not including the portal (central structure) and east wing. The west wing is ‘public’ area, that is, for public receptions and hosting functions. A library is also included in the section. The ground floor has a spacious car park, where there is enough room to place a turntable for each of the vehicles. 217 000 sq ft for parking 20 odd vehicles… Not bad indeed.

Featured is the optical design of the structure. The building will use a lot of optical mechanisms, including prism and… diffraction grating. Yes it’s the grating! It’s used to create a continuous spectrum of sunlights dispersed along corridors and walkways, so as to create the effect that you walk on rainbow. There will also be a nearly 800 ft tall kaleidoscope on the protal, maybe the largest in the world. A shadow-eliminating lighting system is incorporated in the building.

The portal is a tower measuring 943 ft (around 287 m) in height. The kaleidoscope is housed in the structure. On the top of the structure is an observation deck. From the deck, the huge roof of the entire building can be observed – however the roof area has not been calculated as I’ve not draw the section yet. Based on the past design, it is very certain that this one will have a very, very large roof area.

OK I’m not going to continue my writing in this deafening environment, so forgive me if it seems nonsensical or if there’s a lot of spelling mistake. Will write more next time. Signing off…

Functional Group

Spoiler: This is a crazy idea, so please do not proceed if you are not comfortable with insanity.

Talking about currency arbitrage business, one problem arises if the deal is to be performed in cash. Maybe this kind of deal is rare, it may be good too to realize the danger of transporting huge amount of paper notes across vast territories. Besides, nowadays it’s really easy to print counterfeits that closely resemble the real and no one will notice the difference.

The new idea is that to add a ‘functional group’ to the notes. The functional group may be a microfiche, a reduce-sized chip, or something similar. The functional group should be small (tiny would be better), robust, and above all not easily faked. Some radioactive material should be added to the functional group so that it could be easily located if lost or stolen.

The functional group is attached to the paper notes. The note itself is printed on recyclable paper. If the money is to be transported to other places, the functional group is removed from the note and the note is subsequently destroyed. Another alternative is to keep the note for future use, in case another batch of money arrives later. Only the functional group is transported. You may want to ask, since the functional group is so mobile in nature, isn’t it an easy prey for robbers?

This is not a problem for the proposed system. As for the notes in circulation now the functional group is numbered. The beauty of the system is that the central bank maintains a database of the current status and location of the functional group. As soon as the functional group is reported lost, the group of group bearing the particular serial number is invalidated and if used, the receiving machine (e.g. cash deposit machine, automated teller machine, automated terminal, etc.) will lodge a report to the authorities and actions will be taken instantly.
Such companies as Siemens-Nixdorf and De La Rue may thank me for selflessly shared the idea over the vastness of the Internet. However with the popularization of e-banking, isn’t this idea useless as money also become paperless? Sigh…

Doubt

This is my first weblog for the year 2006 AD but I feel nothing excited, just as that for Christmas Day. In fact, I feel sorrow now. Calamity approaching? I don’t know…

Just an analogy: now I’m in the exact situation as Jiang Shang who failed everything (thanks to June who reminded me of this story). At least I was relieved to know that Jiang Shang became a powerful figure later. However as I was in a state of complacency suddenly something hit me hard… Really hard…

Recall the moment when I suddenly lost trust on people I’ve trusted for years. Now I am experiencing the same sensation again. A question: there’s someone who is really good in cooking. You found a ‘formula’ to make roti canai, and it tastes great. Soon after you discovered that the expert strongly resented your formula, saying that his way is better. What should I do then? I know what common sense suggests, but I still need to think it over. If I departed on my own path, that means, I’d have to be my own teacher, since the principle devised by the expert has been rendered ineffective under my principle. Huh, first question of the year…

Boldness is easier to be said than done. Years before I was bold enough to go to Muka Head alone although I have no idea of the route, not even seen the map before, instead relying on just intuition and sense of direction. And more unbelievably, I went there by just wearing slipper and bouldering bare-footed. However I made my way there. If you ask me to do this kind of thing now, I will hesitate. Is that suppose to mean that experience erodes boldness, just as familiarity breeds contempt? If so, how do I ‘withdraw’ some of my experience in exchange for extra boldness? …

Sometimes it’s really tiring arguing over this kind of matter. Most people would advise me to take things as it is. However I desperately need something new. I just can’t feel comfortable with things going on like it is. The things I’m trying to do has never been attempted before, or attempted but failed (if it succeeded, the world should not look like this now). No wonder I was crowned that kind of people (see my Friendster’s earlier testimonial). What kind? I’m not going to ‘pollute’ my blog, so please don’t ask me OK?

I guess that’s enough growling and blaming for me to make me feel better. Now I should clean up myself and ‘do my own way’. So many things happened during the New Year’s Day. Of course, there are many things happening everyday, but the convention nowadays is so bad that it is virtually understood that the ‘things’ in ‘things happened’ means bad things. Can this convention be reversed? If so, how? Second question of the year…

It’s interesting to discover that my spending pattern has closely mimicked two of our country’s most recent leaders. From earlier expansionary way to the recent resilient way. Whereas, the mix created a lot of opportunities for our country, it does more harm than good for me. Haih…