Too risky to vote for PR?

Since I started to get more active in politics, many people around me start asking me many questions and one of the most interesting one is this: "isn't it too risky to vote for Pakatan Rakyat (PR) to Putrajaya?" 

Why is it interesting? Because risk, unlike what everyone perceives, is not an adjective to trained engineers like me. When it comes to risk, we want to know how much risk? When it comes to making a decision that associated with risk, we want to know which option offers a lower risk. There is one exercise, like it or not, that engineers always have to do before running any operation called Risk Assessment Analysis. In this assessment, we define and quantify risk. 

 Risk = severity of a particular hazard  x likelihood of this happen

Entering into Politics - The Story Behind

"Why are you involved in politics?" I think this is the question my family members, friends, and many others will ask. 

It's a long story. I am writing this story today to make sure that, if ever, I forget what am I in politics for, it will serve as a reminder. 

投入政坛背后的故事

“为什么你参与政治?”这是家人朋友与其它身边人所问的问题。

说来话长，今天我撰写这故事，也是作为一旦我忘了参政的原因的一个提醒。

Cinque Terre

Last weekend I went to a trip with 7 course-mates and a friend in Cinque Terre, Italy. Actually, I first heard about this place only about 2 months ago when the idea of going for a class trip popped out in one of our class gathering at Anchor (a nice bar situated by the river side). Cinque Terre means 'five lands'. It was given the name because there are five villages around the area. We stayed in one of the villages called Riomaggiore (pronounced as Rio-ma-yo-re), which was a very small town...

This was definitely an unforgettable trip, both for the place and for the ppl whom I went with. I'll definitely miss the Mediterranean sea and the sunshine, the lovely villages, the cheese and wine, the yummy seafood pasta, and of course my amazing course-mates.

Here is a picture of Cinque Terre.... Isn't it beautiful?

Reminder of my favourite book

Well, I am escaping again!! This is yet another long sleepless night.

Google search reminded me yesterday that it was the birthday of the author of my favourite book -> The Little Prince. Since when did I start liking the book? Hmmm, long long long time ago.... the lines and pictures are so simple and yet so inspiring.... I am definitely going to read it again after I submit part of my thesis draft to the supervisor tomorrow!!! thinking of that gives me lots of motivation to continue my work!!

A phrase from the book that I really like is this: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." Although it is very "unengineer" and "unscientist", I believe that it is the heart that defines human being and differentiate us from the animals. (Well, I am definitely not a Darwinian advocate).

But I think I have been having more problem listening to my heart as I grow older. Many a time I've forgotten to ask what is in my heart before I draw a rational formulations to the considerations that I encounter in my life. Antoine de Saint-Exupery's birthday definitely reminded me to go back to my real self, to be simple, to listen more to the heart and to live life as I want it to be.....

Values

ok, u are right, I am trying to escape from my research again..... it's 12:44 midnight and I am waiting for my MATLAB simulations..... it has been quite a productive day, I managed to write 2 pages of programming codes that do work as I want them to be. Thank God!! :) This article has been hidden in my post for many days so I decided to finish it up today.....

I found that human being have difficulties to rationally value many things. For example, how do we justify economic progress vs environmental impact vs social impact vs generation equity vs nationalism and many other things. Another example would be the values of arts. A few weeks ago, I went to Fitzwilliam Museum after sitting for examination to immerse myself into the beauty of arts and history after days of endless calculations and formulation of equations. I saw Picasso's pieces there and it immediately reminded me that one of his drawings was just sold for 100 million++ USD recently. As an engineer, I naturally put them into a very simple calculation. The value for a human being's life is equivalent to about 1 million pound for UK Court. So Picasso's drawing is actually worth 100++ human lives!!!! The last example is the value of Gates Scholarship, the scholarship that I am holding. I remember people told me that when Bill Gates was here last summer, he told the Gates scholars that the money that spend on each of us each year can actually help to vaccinate thousands of lives in Africa and save them from deadly diseases!!!!

While sometimes soft sciences can help answer some of the questions above (such as carbon pricing for environmental impact etc), we as human being depend largely on our gut feelings and experiences in making big decisions, both individually and collectively. That explains why we tend to make the wrong decision(ssssss). Can we change this fact of today into history tomorrow? I doubt so and I hope not. The world will be very dull if every thing can be formulated into a mathematical model and full of engineers and scientists....... I really can't imagine that, can you?

Life Maximization

Optimization is the name of one of the ten modules that I am taking here in Cambridge to get my master degree. Keeping the examination part aside, it was a very interesting subject to read. In short, it is a subject that deals with maximizing or minimizing certain objective function subject to certain constraints. An example for its application in engineering is a manufacturing plant trying to maximize its production subject to the limit in labours, raw materials, machineries etc. The theories are also widely adopted in minimizing the distribution cost of giant retailer like WalMart. All in all, it is a subject that tries to help people to make rational decision(s) with all the information available and of course, some assumptions.

For amusement purposes, I am now trying to put the theory of optimization into pondering about how I should maximize my life time. For me, life maximization consideration is like trying to formulate the objective function that I am trying to optimize with the constraints my life time, energy, ability etc. Mathematically, it can be formulated as below:

Assume that this is a linear programming problem,
Objective function, f(x) = ∑ a(i)x(i)

where ,

coefficients a(i) = {a(1), a(2), a(3)....... a(n)}

variables x(i) = {x(1),x(2), x(3).......x(n)}

f(x) is the overall objective that we would like to maximize and it is supposed to be able to measure the value of my life time. The difficult part is what are the variables that should be included in the objective function and how to determine their respective coefficients? Each x is a concern of life, for example, money, fame, family, environment, society, passion etc, whereas the values of the coefficients are associated with the weight of their respective variables.

What variables and coefficients would you place in your objective function of life? Of course, unlike many engineering solutions, there is no right and wrong answer in this mathematics question......... Also unlike many engineering solutions, there is no turning back, everyone only has one life to maximize.......

Keeping on in Cambridge

so it has been a while since I last updated my blog..... I have always been wanting to write an article in chinese by the title of 我的剑桥梦 (My Cambridge Dream) as this is my childhood dream comes true.... the experience I went through to come here, the hope, anxiety and excitement..... sadly, I've not had the luxury of time..... anyway, I'll try to do that after my sustainable energy paper.... hehe... hopefully i'll not be as busy by then.....

anyway, it's 2 am in the morning now and I am still struggling with my coursework on analysing Virgin Group's strategies and the its business sustainability..... have not been sleeping much.... it's going to be a long march....... how long more to go? not sure..... but what else can be better than this? to learn, learn and learn..... to be drown in the sea of knowledge of no boundaries...

my favourite stanza of the poem 再别康桥 suddenly comes to my mind.....

寻梦撑一支一支长篙
向青草更青处漫溯
满载一船一船星辉

在星辉斑斓里放歌

It's here I fulfil my dream of the pass, and dream dreams of the future. so yeo bee yin, keep on keep on, keep on...... Lord, give me strength.....