The Elixer of Life

December 27th, 2007 popscience

Remember this now because you are young. Tell this to your parents because they can still change.

Cognitive Agility

Cognitive reserve, in this theory, refers to the brain

Mark Tavener (18 Oct 2007)

December 20th, 2007 Obituaries

BBC Obit
BBC Radio 4 Message board
Guardian Obit
Sitcom Guide Obit

He wrote for BBC Radio and was the writer for High Tables, Low Orders, In The Red, In The Chair, In The End, Absolute Power and His Master’s Voice.

Phone Booked

December 16th, 2007 books

Minzhi has this fantastic idea that is too good not to do it.

Preview of MonkeyGTD 3.0

December 14th, 2007 atwork

Lots of good things to like – in particular, the automatic refresh, and the tag section is at the bottom of a new tiddler.
Go on over to take a look. The old one looks like this.

Three Rach twos and two Rach three

December 13th, 2007 music

Fry put it so elegantly: “In each of us exist a chord which we wait for someone to strike”.

Lang Lang’s Rach 2 is absolutely yuck. I think he’s showing off what he can do with all the delicate notes and strong loud notes. There’s a sense of exaggerated romance which makes the piece feel as though watching a bad drama – annoyed and cheap. Worse: when the piano and orchestra are not fighting with each other for my attention, the piano sounds cold and boring.

I’ve got another Ashkenazy and this time with Haitink. There is some difference between this and Ashkenazy/Previn but not the kind you can hear at first go. Took me three goesand the volume all the way up to hear it: slightly sweeter, young girl less drama queen. I prefer the one he did with Previn’s conducting, however. I like the big solemn grandness.

Hough/Litton’s treatment makes it almost like an Audrey Hepburn movie, full of light, beauty and happily-ever-afters. The grand gestures are so restrained you leave the top floating down. The whole time, actually, I kept thinking of one of the scenes in a movie – perhaps it was Roman holiday? – where she was walking in the dappled sunlight next to a river heading for a date.

I’ve read that Argerich’s Rach 3 is a keeper. I can’t say I am mad about it but she caught my attention. She was simply amazing at the fast parts, if I were told she had twenty fingers I would have believed it. Her version it didn’t strike the chord I had hoped it would – I felt she was rough. Out of curiosity and mainly, I liked the way they did #2, I listened to Hough/Litton’s Rach 3. I’m not sure why speed is so important to those who were doing Rach 3 – Ashkenazy took a leisurely pace – but Hough/Litton wasn’t speeding just because they can: it sounded dreamy and just right. The sort of music for a night drive with the windows down, I think.

Hut 33

December 10th, 2007 radio

Mrs Best:Sorry, I normally get a bit of extra from the grocer but he’s gone off to join the catering corp. Now his wife works the shop so that’s the end of the pork belly.
Charles:Mrs Best, I’m on the verge of starvation!
Mrs Best:Tell you what, how about a slap up dinner, Friday?
Charles:Ahhh…yes
Mrs Best:Trouble is, now all the shops are run by women, my coupons aren’t such good currency, if you know what I mean.
Gordon:So do you need my coupons?
Mrs Best:His wife might need to see your whole ration book, if you follow my drift.
Gordon: Aah. (pause) No.
Charles: (Indignant) Mrs Best, are you pimping Gordon for food?

QI S5 Gems

December 8th, 2007 screen

(Stephen) Fry: What are the symptoms of taking ecstasy? Do you know, Clive?
The incomparable (Clive) Anderson: Um, I don’t know. I’ve never taken it myself. I’ve given ecstasy…
(Big groans)

Fry: The surnames that have been most dwindled over the last century are Handcock, not Hancock, Glasscock, Hickenbottom, Shufflebottom and Winterbottom.
Davis: We had a Jimmy Glasscock at school.
Fry: Did you?
Davids: You could always see when he was coming.
(The audience roars.)

Christmas Menu

December 6th, 2007 Uncategorized

I love Christmas. The family has somewhat deviated from the ang-moh style roasts which Ah Po doesn’t enjoy. This year, I’m thinking of building a menu around baby suckling pigs. Hmmmm…..

I have a particularly vivid memory of a childhood Christmas during which my sister would stalk the Christmas tree day after day counting presents. On the final day she made a stack in the middle of the room. On one side were the presents with her name on them and on the other, those with mine. She tallied them up. The number was not to her liking. I can still picture the stunned calm as she counted and counted again. But there was nothing to be done. It was clear that my pile was two presents larger than hers. I think it was the

The Cost of Laziness

December 5th, 2007 Uncategorized

Amercians have an apt phase to describe my feelings now: bummed out. Some months ago, I decided to do the adult thing and put some money away for my old age. Being very lazy, I decided to put my money in Index Tracking funds – specifically Infinity S & P Index and Infinity European Stock Index – thinking that it can’t lose money if it’s following the stock market. Ho, ho, ho, I thought to myself. What a clever girl I am!

A few days ago, playing around with the bloomberg machine, I saw these two pictures. What the hell, I thought to myself.

Infinity European Stock Index

Infinity Index Fund

I wrote to the fund managers to ask about the widening gap – which indicates I’m not getting the returns that I should (note the charts are all in USD). My impression of the operations is that I pass the SGD to the Infinity fund manager. The fund manager passes the money along to Vanguard to invest. Until I sell the funds, my exchange losses are only paper losses. Since the returns are computed in USD based on NAV on the charts, there should not be any significant differences.

The answer I got back is very interesting. I was told that the returns on the SGD fund is USD returns +/- translation differences and to determine the daily pricing, the investment is translated back to SGD therefore a weak USD would result in translation losses from USD to SGD.

I had two questions in my mind.
1. Taking into account the translation differences daily means that I am effectively realising the currency loss or gain into the fund price. Why do the have to do that for?

2. Now ‘weakness’ is a relative term. To me, SGD is stronger because I can get more units of the USD fund for the same amount of SGD.

The answer is obvious yet incredibly odd.

The charts show no gap at 2002 when the fund began and as the I get more SGD for USD, the value of the initial investments deviate from the index. This can only mean that they fixed the fund size at the start of investments and the widening gap is reflecting how much the fund has lost value due to the exchange rate. That is to say it is not as I thought, paying the managers to pass the money along to Vanguard in US, rather, I’m buying the funds they bought in 2002 at 2002 exchange rates but today’s prices. Therefore the exchange rate is at my time of purchase is irrelevant since I’m not able to get any USD units.

Then it becomes very clear that the reason for #1 is necessary because the losses have to be born by customers and not the fund house.

The ‘cost’ of my laziness is the gap between the SGD returns and the USD returns and since the fund managers did not hedge (I asked) against the USD falling or rising at point of launch, other than I’m buggered by these lot, I can’t think what else it can mean.