Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Sexual Harassment
Yesterday I called U. of Ottawa's sexual harassment hotline.
And an answering machine picked up to ask if I wanted to leave a message. Well... NO, I don't wanna leave a fucking message for it to be recorded and be the center of amusement for those retards.
Seriously... If a hotline like that is set up, it is because they want to help people. Already the victims feel harmed, and now they call for help and get an answering machine? How low are they gonna feel now?
Anyways.. back to me.. yeah my door's lock ran out of battery and hence I couldn't get in with the card I usually swipe with. AND THEN A HUGE FAT SWEATY PEDOPHILE WITH PIMPLES CAME FROM BEHIND AND RAPED ME!
But no, not really. I had groceries and I was really pissed at the stupid door failing on me. So I had to call housing services or something. I looked at on the card, and there were a few numbers to dial: Foot patrol, peer support, protection services, UOttawa main line, and sexual harassment. I knew I had to call protection services because that's the one everybody calls for housing problems and stuff. So I tried calling, and the number doesn't even EXIST. Nice... and I called the other numbers one by one and they all failed. Until... Sexual Harassment... STILL nobody answered, but at least they gave me the right number to call Protection Services.
True Story.
$48.02
Math, tennis and swing
A little promotion to start off the post!
Last weekend, Xiao, a friend from Montreal at UW, informed me, quite out of the blue, about a Canadian wide mathematics conference happenning here in Ottawa. Indeed, what a coincidence! It was happenning at University of Carleton from the 8th of July until the 11th. Having responsibilities to keep at Industry Canada (keeping my seat warm), I couldn't go Wednesday and Thursday. So I went on Friday night and Saturday.
The CUMC is a annual event for undergraduate math students, mostly with the goal to broaden up their views about different fields of math. It also offers chances to network with people with similar interests (there was a boat banquet on Friday night, so it gives time to mingle. Not just lectures).
Long and behold, next year's CUMC 2010 will be held at no other than University of Waterloo! So for you who will be close-by, like I was for Carleton, should definitely come. Or maybe even give a short talk!
Here's the website for CUMC 2009: http://cumc.math.ca/2009/home.html
After years of idleness, I played tennis once again yesterday. I remember playing on the court next to my house, when I was.. maybe 12 or so. I was taught by a school friend who played competitively, and got to the point where I could challenge older people on the courts and sometimes beat them. Those were the productive years I guess. Then I stopped playing regularly.
Yesterday, Jeevan pulled me out of my sedentary lifestyle, borrowed me his newly bought racquet (the guy's fucking rich), and whipped his fatass shots at me. It felt great to play again, and to feel sore everywhere the day after (today). I just have to pick up my serves, and I'll be a competitive opponent in no time.
At last, today I decided to go swingdance at some "Saturday Night" swing dance club. Alone. Yeah. I just realized so much time is wasting in front of the computer. People saying they've got no time is mostly just an illusion. Anyways, I went to their introductory class at 8 to refresh my memory after more than a year, and danced away until 11 or so. Although I was part of some swing dance club back in Montreal, I never really picked up the "social" part of swing, which is randomly asking someone to dance, and improvise from there. I only learned the choreographies. But today, I forced myself and now I can manage some simple stuff out of thin air. I'll be going back.
A little show before the intro class. These two were amazing. She's pretty damn hot too.
Peace.
$47.01
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
David Ma
My name is so common. What will happen when I come up with my own theorem? Ma's theorem? meh...
David Ma - Real Estate Agent
David Ma - Assistant Prof. at U of Guelph, Health Science
David Ma - Corporate Lawyer (This guy's pretty hot)
David Ma - Musician (Bass)
David Ma - On the Great Wall (this one is very random)
Apparently, there are 32 David Ma's in California
I have yet to get my version of David Ma online... other than the COMC 2008 results... (brag)
Friday, July 10, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Fall09
I've heard about your horror stories on Fall09 schedules, 7-8 hours of class on MWF and... TTh free...
That's really fucked up.
Here's mine. Not so fucked up.
Notes:
Tutorials don't really need to be included in... one doesn't go to them at least half the time.
AFM101 should be/may be BUS227 or something. Either MW or TTh. Right now, I'm enrolled in the A2 section. But it conflicts with Math249/239...
Math249 will probably be Math239. 6 classes, of which 2 advanced, and a CS241? I don't think so... I'm not godlike enough.
I'll keep this post less verbose. It's been a while since I first started posting, and my entries are getting longer.
PAYCE
$46.40
Thursday, June 25, 2009
WTFMJ
Micheal Jackson left us today. He has given a lot to us.
I first learned about this 6-7 hours ago, on Tracy's Facebook status... that's really not paying respect to MJ learning this over Facebook...
Anyways, I'll have to tell my future kids that before they were born, there were a place called Neverland, a place where nobody grew old.
I finally decided to write something on this blog again. Not having this event would be an insult to MJ.
Back to my life now...
Since two weeks or so, my job became much more interesting. Here's how it happenned.
As a Junior Economist at Industry Canada, you don't typically do much. You make some charts out of data, and... hmm... I don't even have a second task to make a list. It gets so boring that I started to take daily naps around 10:30 am. I also spend a lot of time solving www.hacker.org challenges. More on that maybe another time. On Thursdays, I do my DE course homework.
I'm glad to be a mathie. I believe it was Friday the 12th this month.
I was walking to my cubicle, a few minutes late of 9:00am, as usual. It's not like I have anything urgent to be completed. In the governement, not many things are urgent. At least not as I have seen. Except maybe for making PowerPoints for incredibly high ranked people (The PCO Clerk, yeah I made charts for Kevin G. Lynch). I sat down and typed my password under the username MAD. The everyday morning ritual started, and I opened Outlook, checked for e-mails, opened Google Chrome, ebuddy, and that time I was swifting through the Wikipedia page of Himmler, a German SS during WW2. I was looking through his childhood to see how he was a loser and how that affected his becoming.
Then suddenly, my boss' boss, the "Director", knocked on the metallic edge of my cubicle where a door usually would stand in an office. I don't think he has ever talked or noticed my presence beforehand, in contrast to me sitting right next to his office door, and hearing everything he says with other people. He asked me: "You're a math student right?" I had a freaking page of Himmler on my screen. "Ya" I said, slightly scrolling down to a part with no pictures. Changing the page would have been too obvious. Not doing anything would be weird. "I have a problem, are you interested? [...] A fresh pair of eyes may help." Wow... this is one heck of an opportunity he gave me.
He explains to me the situation on "Productivity Gains Decompostions" and shows me a paper by Griliches & Regev. The problem he had was with a doubtful equality. At first sight, it really seemed more like a sloppy economist approximation written with an equal sign instead of the wiggly equal. In fact, even I was supporting his doubts on the paper at first, saying the paper was wrong. (He showed other papers too, which actually contained errors and sloppiness. Internally published papers are not comparable to peer-reviewed stuff.) I took the paper back to my desk, and after ten-fifteen minutes, I had luckily realized the funky algebra trick G&R employed to get this equality. I quickly told Marc. Impressed, he had apparently spent over an hour the day before, trying. He then gives me some papers for me to read around, and play with in the meantime.
By the end of the day, with two introductory economics class knowledge in my bag, stating that my understanding of those papers was fuzzy would be an overstatement of my accomplishments. I then made a choice, walked into his office to discuss more on this topic of Productivity Gains Decomposition. As he taught me stuff, I like to believe now that I also brought insights to him as well with the exchanges, I understood more about the subject myself, and came up with the "path-dependency" of that decomposition. I think that's the part I contributed. Pleased, he wanted me to write up the still unripe fruit of the discussion. He had just offered me the possibility to publish a paper. I now know that confidence in yourself, and contradicting your superiors when you feel so (even if you might be wrong) is a productive activity. At that time, it was almost six o'clock. We usually leave before five. But during that small interval of time, I learned more than the whole time I was at Industry Canada.
The next week, I had coffee with Marc, he lectured me a bit more and gave me green light to start.
So these past few days, I have been working, writing, learning, discovering stuff would be a long-shot, and hitting my computer (quickly picking up LaTeX). Still napping a little, but much less.
I hope I can post the paper I will have collaborated on in the near (a few months) future.
Keep reading.
$45.58
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