Moving out in the sense that I’m moving out of this space, and into a new one. This blog was started roughly about 15 months ago or so. My situation then is very very different from my situation in life now. I’m a graduate and I’m engaged. So I figured no better time to start afresh, on a new blog on another site. Leave all this moaning, whining and ranting behind, in anticipation of something new and exciting.

So anyway, I’ve never been good at long, drawn out goodbyes. My new blog is at http://chockli.blogspot.com. I don’t think I’ve had any followers, but if I did, please come check out this other site.

*Elvis has left the building*

So it’s been many months since I did just about anything with this site. From the time of my last post to now, a lot of things have happened, all of them centered around one thing – me entering the real world. Finally. Sadly. I did enjoy being a doctoral student, though I didn’t have a lot of money, and went mad at times. Ok, not at times, quite frequently would be more accurate.

The big news is, I got my PhD. Walked on stage, got my diploma, shook the President’s hand and all that. Though surprisingly, after my defense, my advisor walked out and said ‘Congratulations, you’ve passed!’, and I said ‘Thanks’ but inside I was like ‘Hmm…ok, so I’ve passed.’ There wasn’t like fireworks going off in my head or anything. It was almost like a normal day at a conference of some sort. My advisor did tell me that it was natural to feel this way, and if you weren’t feeling this way after the defense, you probably should have waited for a bit longer to defend your dissertation.

Having finished the degree, I packed up and came back home. The sad thing was leaving all my friends behind. Some of them were more like brothers. Hopefully, I’ll get the chance to see them again in the very near future. So finally, I enter the job market. After years of postponing it. And look what happens. The economy tanks! And it doesn’t help that my area of research and specialization is finance (quantitative finance to be exact). So I’m a Dr, with a PhD from a good department and school, and I’m unemployed. It’s only been a month since I graduated. But still, it sucks. Of course, there are other aspects of my life which suck as well, but that’s another story for another day. Suffice to say that my life is currently one big mess. Ah life!

Anyway, I got bored of looking for jobs, so I decided to return to my much neglected blog. Perhaps I should go do another PhD. Bottom line – entering the real world is not fun.

Yes, the title is from the Aerosmith song, but the content of this post has nothing to do with what the song is actually about. 

Ok, first off, it’s been a while (again) since I posted. I don’t think I have any loyal fans out there who come by and check for updates regularly. If I do, can I just say how thrilled I am! And of course, sorry for not updating.

So, since my last post, I’ve come back to the US, settled into my new place. The semester will be starting again, and I really really hope that this will be my last semester. Only time will tell that I guess.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Back in the saddle again. See, I used to be a cross-country runner for my school. I started running much later than all my teammates, so I basically had a very hard time when I first started. But I improved a lot. I mean, seriously, a lot. When I graduated from the school, I went to London to pursue my undergraduate degree, and I stopped running. I always felt guilty about it, and wanted to start running again, but never found the motivation to. I did other things, like play squash, go to the gym and stuff, but running was what I really liked the most.

And of course, I developed certain vices, which aren’t very good for cross-country running. I always felt guilty about that as well, that on top of not running, I was doing all these things that make my running even harder. Finally, at some point in time this year,  decided I was going to start seriously running again. I took my sister’s iPod nano (well, exchanged my iPod for her nano), bought the Nike sports kit for the iPod nano and related stuff, with the aim of starting running again. 

Sadly, I still didn’t. I kept pushing it off. Goes to show you just how lazy I can actually be. I did start to play a lot more squash though. And from playing, I knew my stamina was still mostly intact. I also started to cut back on the vices. I’m happy to report that so far, that’s going well. Anyway, I finally started running 2 days ago. After about 6 games of squash, my friend thought a run in the nearby trails might be nice, and I figured that was the best time to start. 

That first run went to show just how out of shape I was. Distances ad inclines which were nothing to me started to cause me problems. Needless to say, I didn’t cover a great distance that first try. But, I enjoyed it, and that’s the key thing. I used to enjoy running, and I needed to enjoy it again. Plus, the Nike+ thing is just superb, giving me all sorts of details about my run. I went for a run again yesterday, and it was much much better. Greater distance, better pace, smoother run overall. And successive runs should be better, and I’m looking forward to that. I’m still a shadow of my former self as far as running goes, but hopefully, I can get back to that level at some point in time.

Everyone has heard of the seven deadly sins. Ok, so perhaps not everyone, but many people have. From Wikipedia: “The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, are a classification of vices that were originally used in early Christian teachings to educate and instruct followers concerning (immoral) fallen man’s tendency to sin.” In this day and age, these sins have become somewhat commonplace.

The seventh sin is listed as pride. It’s also considered the original and most deadly of the seven. I don’t think pride in itself is such a big sin. Every person has to have some pride in themselves. Pride in yourself leads to self-belief, and a confidence that you can achieve anything you set your heart and mind to. But too much pride leads to arrogance. And arrogance is never a good thing, at least in my opinion.

Now, vanity falls under the classification of pride, taking pride in one’s own appearance. Again, you need to take some pride in your appearance, similar to having pride in yourself. Too much of this pride, and vanity is born. For quite a long time now, I have been quite vain. It’s strange, because to start off with, I took pride in my appearance, but was never vain. Then I started to hear some of the things people were beginning to say about me. And over the years, I developed a certain vanity. Looking back, I wonder at how I could ever have developed this vanity. Truth be told, I don’t have much to be vain about.

But anyway, I’ve known (and been told on a number of occasions) that I am fairly vain. Just how much, I began to realize over the past few days. Faced with a problem that’s not too uncommon, I began to worry excessively, thinking about possible solutions all the time, and generally getting into a depressed state of mind. The thing is, I don’t like being depressed for too long. I began to think about why I was affected this way, started talking openly with a friend and my sis. It’s quite silly, because for starters, the problem could be much worse, and secondly, there are so many other more important things to worry about. And I’m also making the effort to try and reverse the problem. It was then that I realized just how vain I had become. How I was letting a small thing affect me so much.

More than the appearance, what makes up a person is what’s important. I’ve always preached this, but I think I have seldom practiced it. I mean, what gives me the right to judge a person’s appearance. We don’t choose our appearance, though I realize with the advent of plastic surgery this is more and more possible. ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ might be cliche, but it is so so true. Giving too much importance to appearance, both yours and someone else’s, is not worthwhile (in my opinion, of course).

Vanity is going to be around for a long time, for probably as long as man exists, and perhaps longer. I’m not trying to change people. It’s up to the individual to change. I will make the effort to change though. I will slowly try to let go of my vanity. I will not judge a person’s appearance, nor judge them by their appearance. I will, slowly, be humbled.

P.S. And while I’m at it, I might as well try to let go of the other six sins, or whichever of those sins that refer to me!

So yesterday, something bizarre happened with my Macbook. I had left it running, as usual, with a number of windows of different applications, again, as usual, and gone to have dinner. I came back to while away time on the Internet after dinner. I don’t know what happened, but nothing on my Mac seemed to work properly, and suddenly, I am informed that I have to restart the computer. This normally doesn’t happen with a Mac, so when it does, something big is about to happen.

So I held down the power button, let it shut down, and hit the power again to start it up. I got a white screen for a while, then after a long time, the Apple logo appeared, and an indicator was showing that the system was in the process of starting up. This went on for a really really long time, accompanied by the fans spinning like crazy. I should have left it alone, and it might be alright, but I hit the power button again. It turned off, then I turned it on again. Same white screen. But now no Apple logo. There was a strange ticking sound though, like ticks of those 80’s style alarm clocks. After a few minutes, I was faced with a folder having a question mark on it. I had never ever seen or heard about this phenomenon before. Numerous restart attempts did not help at all. Turns out, for some reason, the startup disk can’t be found. Hence, no normal operations of the Macbook.

Apparently, you could use the Disk Utility software that came in the original CDs. I, however, left all these important CDs back in the US. Lucky Apple support is so wonderful! Though they couldn’t help me fix it, they set up a case ID and sent me to an authorized service provider in Singapore. The hard drive has to be replaced unfortunately. There goes everything on the disk. Luckily, Time Machine had backups from like 2 weeks ago, whicih is good enough for me. Will need to download quite a few papers again though. And since I got Applecare 2 years ago when I bought the Macbook, I don’t have to pay for the new hard drive. Not sure about labour though. Oh, plus, they will install the Mac OS for me, which is good, since I don’t have the CDs here, and won’t be back in the States for another 2 weeks.

It’s going to be strange not having my own laptop for almost a week. I’m sharing with mum now. Happens to be Vista, but beggars can’t be choosers I’m looking forward to getting my Mac back!

I stumbled onto this song while searching for something on YouTube. And it happens to be my all time favourite, so I just had to put it up here. The film is quite old, released in 1965. The song is about a singer’s arrogance being humbled by none other than Lord Shiva himself, but of course, not in his natural form. The music and lyrics are just divine. Sivaji Ganesan did a fantastic job portraying Lord Shiva, and in this song, a woodcutter who has the ability to literally stop the world with his song. This might not make much sense now, but see the video, and you’ll get it. Enjoy!

This is a clip from the Tamil film ‘Pirivom Santhipom’, depicting very accurately wedding ceremonies that take place in our community. I must say, I was very surprised to see how accurate it was. Oh, and one of my relatives appeared somewhere in the film just a short while after this clip. A movie star in the family!

Finally, updated my about me section to something a bit more substantial.

Ok, I realize my recent posts have been quite bleagh. You know, all angsty and depressing etc. And frankly, I’m getting quite bored writing like that. So, for a change, something useful! Well, perhaps.

So, many a time, when someone asks me what I’ve studied, or what I’m going to work as, I am greeted by a blank stare. I tell them I’m going to work as an actuary, and they just look back at me wondering if I’ve just made up a profession. Very few people I have talked to actually know who the hell an actuary is.

An actuary is someone who basically manages risk. Now this is putting it very very lightly. Actuaries use mathematics, probability, statistics, economics etc to evaluate the likelihood of crappy situations occurring, devising ways to reduce the chances of said crappy occurrences from happening, and reducing the crapiness of these events in case they occur. Actuaries predominantly found work in the insurance and pensions industry, but now they’re pretty much all over the place, like investments, healthcare, management etc. Many actuaries actually end up in management, since they have so many useful tools at their disposal.

To become an actuary is not such an easy thing. You have to love mathematics, and be good at it. There just is no other way, since mathematics is central to actuarial science (which incidentally is the name of the discipline). You have to be able to express yourself clearly and communicate well, since a lot of actuarial work tends to revolve around other people, like clients, team members. And the job can get complex, depending on your role. If you like these kinds of things, and you like challenges, you would probably find working as an actuary quite satisfying. The profession has societies around the world, just like accountants do as well. But actuaries are no where like accountants (you might be hit with a stapler if you call one the other)! In the UK, you have the Institute of Actuaries. They have a bunch of exams which you have to pass in a certain number of sittings. You also have to get some work experience in an actuarial firm. Normally, you do both at the same time. You complete both these requirements, you qualify as an actuary. You can then add FIA to your name! You are then a qualified actuary, and can start earning big bucks (Note: this really depends on you).

Actuaries handle things like insurance premium calculations, pension fund valuations, investment strategies and similar things. I’ve been in the pensions industry for a while, so all I know about mainly are the investment and pensions aspect of the field. Incidentally, I hope to get back into the pensions field, but in an investment capacity.

I’ve tried to give a brief description of an actuary what he/she does. This is a very light introduction. Really, if you’re interested in the field, look at other more qualified sites. There are tonnes out there, and you can find them by searching on Google or something. An example of a good site is Be an Actuary. Alright, now I’m bored writing about this stuff.

And when that someone comes along
I’ll learn to make space for her
Who knows, perhaps, I might learn to love her
And she might do the same for me.