Orang Hebat

Sebenarnya di dunia ini banyak orang yang hebat.  Bukan, saya bukan bicara tentang para tokoh ternama yang semua orang juga mengakui kehebatannya, semacam Isaac Newton atau Winston Churchill.  Yang saya maksud adalah orang-orang yang lebih membumi, yang tampak biasa-biasa saja, tapi telah (dan masih) menghasilkan karya yang menyentuh dan bermanfaat bagi banyak orang.  Berikut ini...

A time in life

There is a time in life when you suddenly realize that your parents will die someday.  Of course you know that everyone will die someday.  What I mean is that suddenly you realize that your parents are getting older (with accelerated aging rate), and that ‘someday’ may not be too far from today.  This wake...

How to let your friends know you are successful

Post those photos taken overseas.  Holiday pictures are fine (your friends will know that you earn enough to afford it), but you score higher if you pose in professional attire (your friends will know that you are important enough that people are willing to fly you over to work with you). For PhD students, conference pictures...

Academia vs Industry: the Singapore case

Out of frustration, I started to compile some facts and opinions on academia vs industry.  I believe I’m not alone in this frustration, I believe that many of my fellow PhD graduates have experienced similar path: “yay I’m a PhD” – “I’m not yet competitive enough to be a faculty member in a decent university”...

One would say

One would say, how can such piercing beauty exist in this world? This choral composition is by Morten Lauridsen, an American (!) composer. There goes my hypothesis that all things beautiful come from the Old land. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWXVZlrLa6E The title of this piece is Dirait-on, which means 'one would say'.  It is a part of the...

Cumberbatched

I have difficulty suppressing fangirlish giggles while watching Sherlock.  Considering that I always watched it in my office PC, it is rather disadvantageous to my professional image. I surf those Sherlock-mania tumblr sites practically every day.  The Final Problem gives the highest satisfaction so far. As a result of #2, now I smiled foolishly every...

Screwed up

"We would love to attend, but we will be overseas on that date. So sorry." "Oh, how unfortunate.  I really want you to come." "You should have told us earlier." "I guess so.  But I thought it would be impolite to invite you without a formal invitation ... and I had no idea how much I wanted you...

Would God that I had died for thee!

David, king of Israel, uttered that heart-breaking cry upon learning that his third son had been killed.  O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God that I had died for thee! It occurred to me that many decades after, another parent in the same land might have uttered a similar lament.  As...

Of reputation and fraud

I am really tempted to say that wedding is a fraud.  I do not know about you, but in my culture (oh, let’s not generalize: replace “my culture” with “my family”) wedding is a matter of pride.  We like to say dignity instead of pride, but we know that it is actually about pride.  We...

The Donkey

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, a celebration of Jesus’s entry toJerusalem.  There are many peculiar things about this entry; perhaps the most obvious thing is that he rode a donkey.  The peculiarity of his choice of steed (the Synoptic Gospels noted that he specifically asked for the donkey) may have escaped us, to whom the story...