After Polytechnic: Reflection

I realise I have been doing quite a bit of self-reflection these days. It suddenly hit me that I have now progressed to the next stage of my life.

With polytechnic life gradually coming to an end with the upcoming MeetingYoungMinds and the 10th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD 2006) Data Mining Competition, I have been deliberating on the next stage, continuing my education.

If only entering local university is as easy as polytechnic admission, I would not have spend countless nights planning on a "what-if" contingency plan.

Spotted a few good books while browsing through at Kinokuniya. One of it is about bad manners, not your usual dose of proper etiquette, but an exploration on the degradation into bad mannerism. Quite engaging after reading the first page.

Perhaps I'll spend the holiday reading books while waiting to be enlisted.

Dilbert's Theory on Salary

Happen to chance upon this interesting theory,

Dilbert's Theorem on Salary states that engineers, programmers and scientists can never earn as much salary as business executives and sales people.

This theorem can be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following three postulates:

Postulate 1: Knowledge = Power (Knowledge is Power)
Postulate 2: Time = Money (Time is Money)
Postulate 3: Power = Work/Time (As every Physics student knows)

Proof therefore follows:

Knowledge = Power (From Postulate 1)
Knowledge = Work / Time (From Postulate 3)

and since Time = Money,
we have: Knowledge = Work / Money (From Postulate 2)

Solving for Money, we get:

Knowledge x Money = (Work / Money) x Money
Money = Work / Knowledge

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of Work done.

Conclusion: The Less you Know, the More you Make.

Sister going on a long business trip again, poor nephew of mine going to miss her badly for this 2 weeks. Saw her itinerary and gosh, she's practically travelling the world in a short period of 2 weeks. Singapore to New York, Buenos Aires from Chicago, Buenos Aires to Frankfurt via Brazil, followed by London and back to Singapore.

After Business Intelligence paper, there's just the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERM) paper the following week and finally a short period bliss before national service enlistment.

In the meantime, I'd better start revising intensively for ERM. Till then.

Last day of Polytechnic

The last day of school today and my mind is telling me that I am going to miss Temasek Polytechnic very much together with the lecturers that I have developed a close bond with.

Why the blame on others when something goes wrong? Looking at the discussion forum for one of my subjects, most of the people seem to blaming the teaching method for the cause of a number of reasons.

It takes two hands to clap, the logic goes for learning. You can't expect to do well for tests or project if you don't put in the effort to attempt the problems or to understand the subject.

While I understand the end of semester test fiasco disadvantaged most of us, but it's not the subject or teaching method that is at fault, so why the wrongly accusation?

With the long vacation ahead before enlistment, it's time for me to make a decision whether to get a job or just enjoy life while I can. Coincidentally, the Commission contacted me recently to ask about my availability. Both choices are equally tempting, but I know once I get comfortable with either option, there's no stopping.