The lack of entertainment

Although the writers strike across the Atlantic is over, I am still feeling the pinch of the writers strike. No new episodes of 'House', 'Heroes', 'How i met your mother' etc... how long must i wait??!! Experiencing entertainment meltdown. How can anyone be so irresponsible to decide not to go to work and force your colleagues to do so too! Its horrendous. Don't they know that their strike also affects everyone else on earth? And anyway, i am not just talking about the evil writers guild but also the airport staff, tube staff and every other union that is just too short sighted to be of any good to mankind. As much as i empathise with your so called poor working conditions/pay, can't you do the same for me and everyone else? Going on strike is stupid and an economically unsustainable activity. Its simply shorted sighted, period. First, you disrupt the lives of many others by your childish behaviour, which makes a fool of your employers, reduces your company's productivity and profits, destroys everything you and your traitorous colleagues have been working for and with your company finally going bust, you are out of a job. Well done idiots. One case study would be the british leyland ltd which is now gone. why?? because of hard line trade unions. So use your little brains and learn from their mistake.

Ok, fine, the writers collectively going on holiday probably won't bring down hollywood. But i am still irritated. So excuse my ranting. Just give me my TV programmes back. Lazy asses.

bullbearings.co.uk Part 2

Well, its been three weeks since I started this investment game that i talked about a few blog posts back and nope, i am not yet bankrupt. In fact, I have made £1000. I think its quite good considering that its only been 3 weeks. Extending it to 52 weeks for a year, that would be roughly, £17,000. Just a little short of paying my tuition fees. Haha, money that i could have made had i actually traded in the london stock exchange instead of an on-line simulator game. Anyway, the thousand pounds was made with a starting investment of £100,000 so making 1000 quid ain't a lot. Still, if i actually manage to keep it up; it will yield 17,000 quid for the year which translates to a 17% increment/interest rate. Much better than any bank would offer.

If you think about it, if an economy grows by 5%, then your investment should also yield about 5% interest too. 5% may seem low, but you must remember that economy growth figures usually already have inflation rates factored in. So for example; if the economy grew by about 7% but had an inflation rate of 6.6%. In raw figures, your stock investments will yield about 13.6% increase but only 7% contributes to real growth. Of course, you have to spread out your investments wide enough to reduce your risk. You would definitely be able to get higher returns from equity investment than from fixed deposits or other scheming bank schemes.

Anyway, i dun believe in playing the stock market. Doing so is even more stupid considering the fact that you have to pay commission every time you trade.

Ok, nuff said about money. On to the weather... ... Spring is here!!

Flight Of The Conchords - The Humans Are Dead

School

The second year of university (at least for imperial college) is widely believed to be the toughest year faced by any and all students; where stress levels and drop-out rates are high. But so far, its been quite relaxed. At least when compared to last year (or so i feel). Or maybe, with half a term left to go before the easter break, the terror is yet to come. Let me explain, I now have 4.5 weeks left, and based on my scheduled labs, I will have 5 more lab reports left to do, plus a pump project design/costings report and will probably have to start thinking about the pump project poster. I.e. i will average about 1.5 reports a week??. Haha... looks like things are going to heat up! But so far, life has been good and stress-free. The days are also getting longer and brighter and less gloomy. I can't wait for spring!

About the pump project, well, i am please to say that my group's pump has finished manufacturing!! and with weeks to spare too!! But i can't take any credit for it since the making of the pump was done by two other group members. But still, it feels quite surreal to have designed and made a working water pump as a group. Ok, i am not too sure if it will work since the pump performance testing will be carried out next term, which also means yet another report. There will of course be a trial testing before the actual performance test for us to fix any leaks/problems but i can't remember when it will be. Anyway, this is what engineering is about, creating stuff. And I like it. It makes mech eng so much more fun and relevant.

Crashed a medic lecture, and immediately drowned in a sea of multi-syllable words. With so many medical terms, learning medicine is practically learning a new language, or a few new languages. One of them being latin of course. Haha... i think i will stick to using the greek alphabet and other funny symbols as an engineer. Anyway, the medics really should learn from us engineers by harnessing the power of the computer. Why can't someone do the good work and program a program that inputs symptoms and outputs diseases. I am sure the first one to do it will become filthy rich. Or upload it online as an open-source shareware and render general practitioners around the globe useless. Haha, just joking, i doubt life is that simple anyway. Still, such a program will definitely be a great tool for medicine. Food for thought.

Anyway, i managed to learn a new word"metaplasia" (out of the many) and no, it is not a country. metaplasia is a process where an adult cell experiences an identity crisis and decides to change into another cell type. This occurrence is fairly common and is all well and good, except the fact that it may, but not always, lead to cancerous cell development. Which is bad news. Haha... Just something to enrich your knowledge. Hopefully it will aid in watching the tv series House, which i highly recommend.

Cheers,
Ben

Talking about the weather

Well, i am enjoying the weather nowadays. Its still cold but not that cold, around 5-10 deg C in the day. But its really bright and sunny. Yeah... so you get like nice warm sun rays and cool breeze. Perfect for sitting outside alfresco style. Ok. Happy chinese new year again.

Cheers,
Ben Goh

bullbearings.co.uk

A friend told me about this site that simulates the london stock exchange. Its a fantasy trader site that uses real live LSE stock prices for the game. You are given 100,000 pounds to start with then you can start investing!!... It is of course a game and no money is actually made or lost. The only thing that you earn/lose is pride. A leader board of the top investors are shown, bottom feeders will be deemed too insignificant to display and a waste of server real estate (go cry yourself to sleep).

I am giving it a try. Wonder how it will go... will probably end up bankrupt. haha... good thing its only "monopoly money".

Will give more details soon. Hopefully i get to understand how stuff works around the equity market "the hard way" without its side effects. I believe the SGX will work the same way, hopefully. Thats where i will probably "play the real thing" if i ever do. Anyone out there who is by any chance reading this and itching to invest their 100,000 virtual pounds, go to bullbearings.co.uk. For those who actually have 100,000 quid to spare, please donate to benjamingoh.org.sg. Help me help you make someone happy today!!

I went to watch the musical mama mia on monday and just came back from bristol on a Rolls-Royce tour/trip organised probably by RR and the school. Will go there for a penultimate summer internship maybe? Who knows. Before that was 2 weekends of floorball tournament by imperial sing soc, seeing teams from london sch of econs (LSE) and from as far away as uni of warwick. In the tourny, we topped our group only to lose in the semis. shit! Anyway, thats life.

Oh, and happy CNY to all. Do remember to gain lots of weight and get sick from all that junk food.
To singles: get lots of cash.
To married couples: lose all that cash.
To all the above: Go wild and paint your house red.