I like to make parallels between the students I take for tuition and Premiership clubs. This is due to my firm belief that as the students' tutor, I make a direct impact on their academic lives, and can therefore be likened to being the manager of this club.
My first student was like Aston Villa Football Club (when they used to be under Martin O'Neill). Not a bad student, but definitely what you wouldn't be calling good as well. They would chase for a top-half finish, and they certainly don't have relegation (= passing) worries.
I went in at a good time, when he was languishing in the bottom half of the Premiership. Like what O'Neill did at Villa, I moved him from scraping relegation to challenging for As.
Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to do an O'Neill on him (ie walk out on the club). The season ended, and so did my contract. There was no renewal - and like the great Business Law student that I am (my other part-time occupation, apart from football manager), I knew I had no case, so I silently left.
My second student was Wigan Football Club. Relegation threats are constant, and the players just don't have the heart to play football. (He didn't feel like studying.)
Until they realise there are only 3 games left in the league.
(Until he realises there are only 3 weeks left to O levels.)
I was called in to do emergency rescue, and he secured a B4 for his O levels. Not the best of results, but there's only so much you can do with Wigan. He moved on to Poly, and as I only wanted to manage Premiership (secondary school) clubs, I had to bid him goodbye.
After these two stints, my agent decided to go one better and sign me up with Chelsea Football Club. This one was a major disaster. I was like Claudio Ranieri dealing with troublesome Chelsea players with an attitude.
See, Chelsea under Ranieri thought they were good - but evidently not THAT good, since they didn't win jack under him. After a while, Chelsea declared themselves independent of a manager. I was fired.
Today I took on my fourth club, and from the title you know it won't be Arsenal or Manchester United.
Well but I'm tired now, so that will be for another time.
Stay tuned.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
How to get rid of bad luck
You know, sometimes the title misleads people into believing that it is descriptive of the content. For instance, did you know that "Spirits Having Flown" by the Bee Gees does not have the word "spirits" in the song at all?
Maybe that's artistic, or maybe that's bullshit.
But I can assure you what I'm going to write next is the latter - so you have been warned.
How to get rid of bad luck.. you can't. You will just have to sit and wait for it to go away. Let me illustrate this with a real-life example: me.
To say I've had a bad week would be funny. It wasn't just bad, it was so bad beyond bad that it had to be bad luck. If your week sucked, some self-reflection might have put the fault with yourself. But if your week REALLY sucked, then you can attribute it to bad luck.
I don't know where to start, but these are the things that happened last week:
I shortlisted 4 stocks and chose to buy one. The other three went up while the one I bought plummeted five cents. Maybe that's my fault.
I was fired by Roman Abramovich aka some smart boy's mother. The smart boy happened to be my student. All right, maybe that was my fault too.
My unit trusts suffered losses. Maybe that's my fault - since I could have chosen not to buy them and let my money accumulate 0.1% interest in the bank. Or was it 0.01%? Can't remember, but you get the drift.
The Euros which I was holding went down as well.
And I have a total of thirty-one new mosquito bites as of last week. This is NOT a joke. So maybe this is also my fault, since I could have slept in FBO (full battle order) and gloves.
And I was half an hour late for lectures because of massive jams that were previously unbeknown to me. Okay so MAYBE that was ALSO my fault because I could have left the house half an hour earlier.
Putting all these situations together, my fault factor is so high that it becomes clear to any ordinary bystander that there must be some other factor involved. No one can be that much at fault. Contrary to popular belief, faults are like mathematics, it can be undefined at times. I'll leave that for another day.
Simply put, it just had to be bad luck. Christians would claim something along the lines that I was being tested - I guess that works as well.
ANYWAY.
Saturday rolled along, and Saturday means Premiership night.
I have a habit of betting on draw matches, as does YL. We have been playing it for a while. I told him that with my abysmal luck, there was no way I was going to win any bets this weekend.
And by extension, since my luck was abysmal, if I wasn't going to bet, the result would turn out exactly to be a draw. (hence making me pissed off that I didn't bet)
YL was going to place the bet. I told him that I would cause him to lose if I did, so I decided to save my money and his.
Later that night, Wigan 1-1 Fulham
Exactly as envisioned.
Moral of the story? If you have bad luck, recognise it and admit you can't do anything about it. It's a bit (actually a lot) like serving National Service really, and they even have a term for it - "suck thumb". Once you've accepted your fate, things become much easier.
Life is a zero sum game. For every loser there is a winner. While you are condemned to being a loser, make sure one of your friends is the one benefitting from it. Although I might sound like I'm trying to claim credit, I believe that I helped YL win his bet this weekend.
Even if I didn't, the idea still remains.
If you know someone is always wrong and makes all the wrong decisions - it automatically follows that going a different path from him would make for a better choice. (assuming two choices)
So even though you can't get rid of bad luck, you can channel good luck elsewhere. Just don't channel it to Singapore Pools, they're the major propagator of bad luck.
Maybe that's artistic, or maybe that's bullshit.
But I can assure you what I'm going to write next is the latter - so you have been warned.
How to get rid of bad luck.. you can't. You will just have to sit and wait for it to go away. Let me illustrate this with a real-life example: me.
To say I've had a bad week would be funny. It wasn't just bad, it was so bad beyond bad that it had to be bad luck. If your week sucked, some self-reflection might have put the fault with yourself. But if your week REALLY sucked, then you can attribute it to bad luck.
I don't know where to start, but these are the things that happened last week:
I shortlisted 4 stocks and chose to buy one. The other three went up while the one I bought plummeted five cents. Maybe that's my fault.
I was fired by Roman Abramovich aka some smart boy's mother. The smart boy happened to be my student. All right, maybe that was my fault too.
My unit trusts suffered losses. Maybe that's my fault - since I could have chosen not to buy them and let my money accumulate 0.1% interest in the bank. Or was it 0.01%? Can't remember, but you get the drift.
The Euros which I was holding went down as well.
And I have a total of thirty-one new mosquito bites as of last week. This is NOT a joke. So maybe this is also my fault, since I could have slept in FBO (full battle order) and gloves.
And I was half an hour late for lectures because of massive jams that were previously unbeknown to me. Okay so MAYBE that was ALSO my fault because I could have left the house half an hour earlier.
Putting all these situations together, my fault factor is so high that it becomes clear to any ordinary bystander that there must be some other factor involved. No one can be that much at fault. Contrary to popular belief, faults are like mathematics, it can be undefined at times. I'll leave that for another day.
Simply put, it just had to be bad luck. Christians would claim something along the lines that I was being tested - I guess that works as well.
ANYWAY.
Saturday rolled along, and Saturday means Premiership night.
I have a habit of betting on draw matches, as does YL. We have been playing it for a while. I told him that with my abysmal luck, there was no way I was going to win any bets this weekend.
And by extension, since my luck was abysmal, if I wasn't going to bet, the result would turn out exactly to be a draw. (hence making me pissed off that I didn't bet)
YL was going to place the bet. I told him that I would cause him to lose if I did, so I decided to save my money and his.
Later that night, Wigan 1-1 Fulham
Exactly as envisioned.
Moral of the story? If you have bad luck, recognise it and admit you can't do anything about it. It's a bit (actually a lot) like serving National Service really, and they even have a term for it - "suck thumb". Once you've accepted your fate, things become much easier.
Life is a zero sum game. For every loser there is a winner. While you are condemned to being a loser, make sure one of your friends is the one benefitting from it. Although I might sound like I'm trying to claim credit, I believe that I helped YL win his bet this weekend.
Even if I didn't, the idea still remains.
If you know someone is always wrong and makes all the wrong decisions - it automatically follows that going a different path from him would make for a better choice. (assuming two choices)
So even though you can't get rid of bad luck, you can channel good luck elsewhere. Just don't channel it to Singapore Pools, they're the major propagator of bad luck.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Profound question of the day
Why are open-top dustbins round in shape? - yj and I
Is it just so that people can miss by throwing it into the gap between the round dustbin and the corner of the wall? Was the first dustbin designed by aliens?
These are all perfectly important questions that must be answered by mankind. Yet, a cursory search of the exact phrase on Google yields no results. Mankind has been asking all the wrong questions.
So it's up to me to put forth my theory.
Maybe, we've all been conditioned to treat open-top round containers as dustbins. Thus, if you leave a round bucket in the middle of a public area, you're likely to get some idiot spitting into it. But if you put a open-top square container there, it might just be treated as an art installation! Hence, the manufacturers make round dustbins so that the dustbins will not be confused for something else, such that they can fulfill their true destinies as dustbins.
However, why do we treat open-top containers as dustbins in the first place? It is highly possible that it was mentioned somewhere in the Bible. It is also possible that the first dustbin was a gift from a higher being. For purely rational reasons, I prefer the second explanation.
It goes like this. The world was once clean and dust-free. Then, a higher being bequeathed to mankind two things: Dust and a open-top round dustbin (to hold the dust of course). The higher being must have done this because he was bored. Blogging probably didn't exist then. Well, dust in those days was one big vast mass that was round in shape. The higher being said, "Do not touch this mass of dust. If you touch it, it will disintegrate and drift all over the earth". That also happened to be the moment reverse psychology was invented. To cut a long story short, some asshole decided to touch it, and in so doing became the first terrorist. The dust drifted all over the world, and we have been manufacturing round open-top dustbins to contain the dust ever since.
Is it just so that people can miss by throwing it into the gap between the round dustbin and the corner of the wall? Was the first dustbin designed by aliens?
These are all perfectly important questions that must be answered by mankind. Yet, a cursory search of the exact phrase on Google yields no results. Mankind has been asking all the wrong questions.
So it's up to me to put forth my theory.
Maybe, we've all been conditioned to treat open-top round containers as dustbins. Thus, if you leave a round bucket in the middle of a public area, you're likely to get some idiot spitting into it. But if you put a open-top square container there, it might just be treated as an art installation! Hence, the manufacturers make round dustbins so that the dustbins will not be confused for something else, such that they can fulfill their true destinies as dustbins.
However, why do we treat open-top containers as dustbins in the first place? It is highly possible that it was mentioned somewhere in the Bible. It is also possible that the first dustbin was a gift from a higher being. For purely rational reasons, I prefer the second explanation.
It goes like this. The world was once clean and dust-free. Then, a higher being bequeathed to mankind two things: Dust and a open-top round dustbin (to hold the dust of course). The higher being must have done this because he was bored. Blogging probably didn't exist then. Well, dust in those days was one big vast mass that was round in shape. The higher being said, "Do not touch this mass of dust. If you touch it, it will disintegrate and drift all over the earth". That also happened to be the moment reverse psychology was invented. To cut a long story short, some asshole decided to touch it, and in so doing became the first terrorist. The dust drifted all over the world, and we have been manufacturing round open-top dustbins to contain the dust ever since.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Quote of the day
"If I don't make myself happy, nobody's going to do it for me" - I think yj mentioned it, but it just popped into my head again.
It's probably true for both those with friends and those without. You can't be a miserable blackhole where happiness goes to die everyday, else your friends will find that you're just not friendly. The nicest of friends will have trouble cheering up someone who just wants to be down. After all, gravity is everywhere.
Q: What would Marilyn Monroe be doing if she were alive today?
A: Scratching at the lid of her coffin.
Another one that just popped up. I think it's from the Fight Club book.
It's probably true for both those with friends and those without. You can't be a miserable blackhole where happiness goes to die everyday, else your friends will find that you're just not friendly. The nicest of friends will have trouble cheering up someone who just wants to be down. After all, gravity is everywhere.
Q: What would Marilyn Monroe be doing if she were alive today?
A: Scratching at the lid of her coffin.
Another one that just popped up. I think it's from the Fight Club book.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
This is so awesome!
Talkcocksummit has more than 100k pageviews! Omg champagne freeflow jizz in my pantsss! Although I have to admit that those last 10k or so pageviews were akin to a fat and saggy marathoner crawling towards the finishing line and the Milo van.
But of course, it's not the pageviews that actually matter. It's that you're still reading this, and that is truly heartwarming. There is absolutely nothing better than this on a cold winter night, and Singapore is rather cold right now, what with rain every single day. I shall carry this fuzzy feeling with me as I embark on my latest intellectual adventures.
But of course, it's not the pageviews that actually matter. It's that you're still reading this, and that is truly heartwarming. There is absolutely nothing better than this on a cold winter night, and Singapore is rather cold right now, what with rain every single day. I shall carry this fuzzy feeling with me as I embark on my latest intellectual adventures.
Random Quotes
"Faith is seeing what can't be seen" - from the Christian book that the dude beside me on the train was reading. I kid you not.
Right up there with "What is the colour of the white horse?"
Right up there with "What is the colour of the white horse?"
Monday, January 10, 2011
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