You and Me

Why does my heart aches
we used to be you and me
what had happened to us both
to make me feel
that i am me and
you are you

We are all suckers - Can you make money just by clicking?

The ad says: "

How can you earn Thousands of Dollars each day?
Simple - you need a mouse, Internet and $6 and ... YOU COULD BE MAKING THOUSANDS!

All you have to do is ... CLICK!

Yes - it's THAT SIMPLE! Click...$500, Click...$1000 - Easy, right?"

Would you be tempted to find out more? I think a lot of people will. I am not totally immune as well. Even if the possibility is low, and one questions if it's for real, it presents some kind of hope. Like lottery, 4 Ds, totos, lucky draws. It just needs to be real/come true once, just once...

I never win any 4D or totos in my entire life yet, but sometimes, when there's the occasional inspiration, i still do give the lottery a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th....100th.... chance. heehee.

I guess deep down, we are all suckers for anything that promises some kind of hope and possibility, even if remotely possible. :)

My Quote of the Day

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The Black Swan event in her Life

Everyday, we draw inferences and form conclusions from past experiences and data.

At workplaces and many other areas in life, we often hear people making remarks and deductions, "From my experience, this thing won't work." ", "from my experience, this is good for such and such situation", "I came to Singapore 3 times and all these trips, i met friendly people and had a good time. Singapore is a country of very friendly, help and polite people."

It is a helpful and practical way of making sense of the world. Yet, we tend to forget that the fact is, just because something is observed to happen over and over again, and hence will probably happen again the next time, it is not proof that it will happen again.

Consider the famous chicken in Bertrand Russell's Problems of Philosophy. A chicken is fed everyday. The observation that the farmer repeatedly feeds it everyday reinforces the belief that being fed everyday by the farmer has become a general rule of life. So everyday, it looks forward to feeding time. And one day, instead of being fed, the chicken is being taken for slaughtering. Something unexpected happened. The "man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead..."

The chicken learn from observation, like we all do, and its confidence grew as the number of friendly feedings grew. But the truth is, the empirical knowledge of safety it gained tells it nothing of the imminent risk of it being slaughter. In fact, it was viciously misleading.

Which brings me to the cheating man story.

A man is two timing his gf/wife. To cover his cheating behaviour, he continues his normal daily routine (from his gf/wife's perspective). This means maintaining the same routine of fetching her to work, remember to call her at a certain time of the day as part of their daily routine, doing things she expected as loving behavior, going for his routine soccer/ men's outing etc. This maintains the uniformity and observed normal behavior which totally unprepare the gf/wife one fine day, when she unexpectedly caught the man red handed. It became a Black Swan event for the wife.

The fact that the scheming man continues to do what he has always been doing is no proof that the man will not cheat on you. The wife has deduced that because they were together for many years and the man has never cheated, and he was continuing doing things he had always did, to fetch her to work, call her to ask on her day, etc, (behaviours interpreted as loving acts) and everything seem normal, she had no reason to suspect him or to spotcheck him early on. She didn't think he will ever cheat on her.

Precisely because of the immense trust, and the man being her pillar of trust, belief and support, the impact is extremely huge.

And becauses we human like to retrospect and give reasons and explanations for everything that happened, the early signs, the reasons, the explanations, emerges to allow the wife to make sense of why this had happened. To the man, it was not unexpected. To the lady, it was catastrophic at revelation. She had a false sense of normality deduced from the man's behaviour.

What can never happen from what we know and study may just happen. We can never fully know.

We can take this from E.J Smith, captain of RMS Titanic who allegedly was quoted to have made the following statement:

" but in all my experiences, i have never been in any accident...of any sort worth of speaking about...." "...i never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was i ever in any predicament that threatened to end in diasater of any sort."

The ship sank in 1912 and is the most talked about shipwreck in history.

A Happy Customer of Amazon.com

I came home today and was greeted with a pleasant surprise. The book i bought online from amazon.com has arrived! :)

I have chosen the shipment mode via standard international shipping, i.e the cheapest rate and noted that the estimated delivery date will be 5th August. It's a little long but i'm ok to wait. And little did i expect, in less than 2 weeks, July 1st, it has arrived! I'm really happy. There's wisdom in under promising and over delivering. 

This is not the first time i make purchase with amazon and the experience has always been good and i'll be back for more!

Here's the link to the trailer to the book if you are interested in Mind programming. It's a book by Eldon Taylor titled: Mind Programming, From Persuasion and Brainwashing to Self help and Practical Metaphysics.

The Intelligence of the Group

Imagine you were discussing an issue with someone.

The other person has a differing opinion and tried to convince you that you got your facts wrong. You were quite sure of what you knew but the person sounded very confident. You started to have some doubts that perhaps you haven;t actually got your facts right. Otherwise, why would the person speak so confidently and tell you directly that you were wrong. Two other guys started to chip in, agreeing with the guy on what they think were correct. The reconfirming makes their fact suddenly became even more convincing and them more confident of what they think they knew.

Would you feel compelled to agree with what everyone else think should rightly be?

Earlier this week, i found myself in such a situation. I don't feel comfortable disagreeing yet i wasn't convinced . Hence, i went to check on the facts with the relevant department immediately after. It turned out that i was right. And so i went to show this guy the factual details. The guy thanked me after seeing the facts and remarked, " oh i didn't knew about that. "

It makes me wonder.

a) There really do exist people who pretend to know everything when they don't.
b) There really do exist people who can act so confidently about things they don't know and aren't really sure about.
c) Group-thinking is not necessary superior to individual knowledge. The key is the quality of knowledge and logical reasoning. Not the number of people who seems to think so.
d) That in a group situation, the force is really there to make one change his opinion to conform with the group; if everyone else thinks so, why are you insisting?
e) People likes to jump onto the bandwagon. " They all think so, i think i think so too. "


Without being difficult, always keep a critical and independent mind. Sometimes, the group opinion may not be any smarter than your own.

My Pot of Orchids

Went to Orchidville for lunch today and got attracted by the pretty orchids. Bought myself a pot of orchids and some fertilizers to grow my first orchids. Keke. I hope my orchids will survive for a long while.

My Pot of Orchids. :)