Someone: i'm having 2nd thoughts abotu Cartwheel School.

Me: haha why why
I never liked Gymnastics School :P

Someone: cos their latest gimmick, the leekongchian scholars programme counts among its inaugural batch - 2 NUS dropouts.

Me: haha
wth

as in transfered from NUS
or dropped, then went to SMU

Someone: decided NUS wasn't the place, quit, hung ard for awhile, went smu

Me: hahahaha
too funky what


My No 1 fan blah blah: i hate to tell u this
but u pose for pictures like a girl....
u really do... the hugging the knees thing
the wee smile at the camera
if i didn't know u, i'd swear u were trying to look demure =x

Me: *choke* [Ed: at the demure bit]

My No 1 fan: pls dun take pictures like that again =p
it's kinda freaky
fiesty non-conformist Gabriel poses like a girly

***

Apple - Jobs - International

"Apple's offices circle the globe, with the largest in Cupertino, CA; Cork, Ireland; Singapore; Les Ulis, France; and London, England. Regional headquarters for business operations, such as Sales and Marketing, for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), are located in Les Ulis and London. Our main European operations are located in Cork. Singapore houses the headquarters for the Asia Pacific region.

While the regions differ from location to location, they all share beautiful campuses located in or near major cities. The Les Ulis office is just outside the historic city of Paris, minutes from gorgeous wooded areas and central Paris alike. Cork, Ireland's second largest city, was recently nominated Europe's Capital of Culture. And the Singapore office lives in the hub of the Silicon Valley of Singapore — the Ang Mo Kio neighborhood." (Emphasis mine)

You learn something new everyday.

***

Offshoring Conflicts with National Interests

"The benefits of offshoring, are justified on a dated 19th century economic concept: "comparative advantage." The benefits often largely accrue to investors and management elites; the costs are increasingly borne by workers and middle class professionals. In the geopolitical realm, a world power that loses it manufacturing capacity no longer is a world power...

Key to the use of the Ricardian theory is the creation of "new and better jobs" to fill the outsourcing void (which isn't clearly happening). This often leads defenders of outsourcing to hit the "R&D Button," or to call for more government funding of research and development. Or it can also lead them to hitting the "Education Button" to encourage more U.S. college students, skeptical about employment prospects, to major in science and engineering in spite the outsourcing risk. Craig Roberts points out, it has been years since the U.S. economy has created any "net new" jobs in export/import-competitive industries. The projected job growth over the next decade, per February 2004 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for seven of the top 10 occupations, lies largely in menial areas that can be learned without a college degree. So the government's own projections suggest the creation of largely low-tech rather than high-tech jobs over the next decade...

The McKinsey Global Institute finds that "Every dollar a U.S. company spends on offshoring to India, the U.S. economy gains $1.12 to $1.14." Really?... The study itself is drawn from case studies done by McKinsey consultants; the data are unavailable for review. Most importantly the study assumes that workers, displaced by offshore outsourcing, will be "redeployed" soon at substantially the same wages. Such redeployment (Exhibit 6 of the MGI study) accounts for about $0.45 of the $1.12 to $1.14. Without re-employment in "new" industries, much of $1.12 to 1.14 benefit for $1.00 cost goes away!"

***

Scissors, paper, stone - a strategic game

"The Maspro Denkoh electronics corporation was selling its $20 million collection of Picassos and Van Goghs, but the director could not decide whether Sotheby's or Christie's should have the privilege of auctioning them.

So he announced that the deal would go to the winner of a single round of scissors, paper, stone - the children's game that relies on quick fire hand gestures, where stone beats scissors, scissors beat paper, and paper beats stone.

Sotheby's reluctantly accepted this as a 50/50 game of chance, but Christie's asked the experts, Flora and Alice, 11-year-old daughters of the company's director of Impressionist and modern art, and aficionados of the game...

Neil Thomson has studied Monopoly mathematically, using probability matrices. It turns out the best properties are the orange ones - Vine Street, Marlborough Street, Bow Street in the London version... Scrabble meanwhile is a matter of fierce international championships, though it hasn't attracted so much interest from computers. Top players agree that one of the keys is learning all those two-letter words that seem to exist solely for the sake of Scrabble - like "aa" (a kind of lava) and "xu" (a monetary unit in Vietnam)."

(via xue, who has finally been agagooga-ed)

***

A graduate school survival guide: "So long, and thanks for the Ph.D!" - "Computer Science majors are not, in general, known for their interpersonal skills. Some of us got into this field because it is easier to understand machines than people. As frustrating as computers can be, they at least behave in a logical manner, while human beings often do not"

Why don't you [Ed: Ben and Jerry's] use oreos any more? - "Well, back in 1990 we switched to a cookie that wasn't made with lard (a kosher no-no) and wasn't connected with the tobacco industry."
Wah. Get me some US Oreos!

Global Gene Project to Trace Humanity's Migrations - "New DNA studies suggest that all humans descended from a single African ancestor who lived some 60,000 years ago. To uncover the paths that lead from him to every living human, the National Geographic Society today launched the Genographic Project at its Washington, D.C., headquarters. The project is a five-year endeavor undertaken as a partnership between IBM and National Geographic. It will combine population genetics and molecular biology to trace the migration of humans from the time we first left Africa, 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, to the places where we live today."

Steve Jobs's Review Of His Biography: Ban It - "No one can accuse Steve Jobs of indifference. In an image-obsessed fit of pique, Apple Computer has banished books published by John Wiley & Sons from the shelves of Apple's 105 retail stores--all because of Wiley's plans to publish an unauthorized biography of Jobs, Apple's chief executive."

Man arrested, cuffed after using $2 bills - "A man trying to pay a fee using $2 bills was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail after clerks at a Best Buy store questioned the currency's legitimacy and called police."