Of Math and Calculators

The Beijing gang with Prof Lee.
Serene (Ditsy), my roomie whom I miss!Visha, Serene, Cheng Wei, Darren! Pretty Christmas house!

Yesterday evening, Prof Lee organized a little reunion for the Beijing gang at the Guild House, really nice to see everyone again, all the laughing and teasing, trying to catch up with one another's life. And Prof kept ordering food and asking if anyone needed more rounds of drinks, so generous! We really should have thought of getting him a gift.

The guild house was so nicely decorated, with Christmas trees and all... reminds me that Orchard Road should be dazzling with X'mas lights by now. Seeing the decor at the Guild house reminded me that the time of the year has come, when I can start listening to Christmas songs again! Different versions of Silver Bells has been playing on my laptop ever since... I've always loved the Christmas season, pretty lights, cards, presents, shopping, christmas carols... can't wait for all of that.

Now, math. *jumps right out of the window*

In the past, when I said I'm a math idiot, I really mean, 'I think I can handle Math, but I happen to think it's terribly boring and I hate touching the calculator.' It was (by far) my strongest subject at A Levels after all.

Now, when I say I'm a math idiot, I mean, 'I am really a Math idiot, and I still think it's terribly boring and I'm about to throw my calculator right out of the window.' I think I've said I'm a Math idiot so much that I've really lost all ability in it.

I feel like an idiot when I slog through equations after equations, barely progressing because I either can't understand some formula or my calculator just refuses to show the right answer. And all my modules this semester are so mathematical... All I see in my Econs TB are functions and slopes, alphas, betas. I keep falling asleep over my Management Science notes because they consist of nothing but variables and queueing formulas. And Financial Accounting... my goodness, if I were ever to become an accountant, I'll lead a very miserable life pressing the damn calculator the whole day, scrutinizing at ever single cent, trying to balance Balance Sheet (which of course never happens in my case because I can never calculate anything right), compute ratios... UGH. And Statistics...I don't care if probabilities and probability distributions are supposedly 'applied mathematics', it's all Math to me.

Math is the bane of my existence.

I miss my Literature textbooks. The only Math they had were the number of lines in a sonnet, the alternating stresses of an iambic pentameter, the number of of poems John Donne wrote, the number of Acts in Shakespeare's Othello, the 4 great tragedies of Shakespeare.... and they were all so much more fun.