March Towards Life

Before i forget: every reader is invited for the coming Special Sunday at Hope Church London! Hmm.. Since it is something at church, naturally it will have something to do with God and Jesus and their friends and stuff like that but rest assured, special sundays are definitely not abt heavily religious stuff, more like a chance to let pple get to know abit more abt church... The theme this time is 'March Towards Life', which is abt a celebration of the month of March bringing with it promises of spring, warmth and life!

The event starts at 4.15pm at the YMCA near Old Street Tube station. If you're interested to come, let me know and i can arrange to meet you somewhere so you won't get lost trying to find the venue...

Yello!

Hmm... Depending on how you look at it, the good news, or the problem, is that thanks to plenty of rest and the 2 pkts of 'Ho Yan Hor' from Chang Yate, i'm pretty alright and well again... For those of us who did not know, 'Ho Yan Hor' is one of the best kept secrets of Malaysia. It is a miracle drug which in the words of more than one Malaysian friend can "cure anything". Future research may even reveal this herbal tea to be one of the major factors which allowed some 30% of their population to control 70% of the economy (NB: statistics hav no basis watsoever).

Anyway, i'm ok and well, and the only thing that's stopping me from writing a full-length DuhEconomist.com entry is basically the fact that i've quite a lot of things to do, most of which belong in the category of "Quite Important"... So this is just a quick yell to all readers that barring any major blogger's block, more interesting stuff will be coming soon..

Sidenote: i noticed that for the past few days, i've been getting quite a consistent number of visitors to this site although i didn't update anything... However, no one actually left any comments... i've come to 2 possible conclusions: 1) Readers of this site are very quiet pple, 2) My site is being monitored...

Wad happened?

Week 9 of Lent Term and still not lagging too much in my work
+ Many things to do for church and house
+ Eating too many choc biscuits last sun morn cos nothing to eat at home
= Brain and forehead overheating...

Hence, 生病了...

The Salmon of Doubt

i have recently finished reading 'Cambridge Illustrated Guide to the History of Warfare', which is a ridiculously gigantic and thick but thoroughly enjoyable and informative book... After toying with abit of re-reading of my old copy of 'Dune Messiah', i've started on a new book, courtesy of Islington library...

'The Salmon of Doubt' is in actual fact not so much a novel as it is a collection of Douglas Adams' writings, some short, some long, which have been found in his Macintosh after he died.. Compiled by his editor and friends, it offers a peek into his fantastic world and way of thinking and writing, with the writings covering many aspects of life dear to Adams' heart. In fact, the writings are so random & unrelated to each other, that if it were to be published today, it will be called a blog.

Anyway, some of you may be aware that i am a huge fan of Adams', him being the author of my all-time Favourite Book of My Life (Non-Christian category) - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.. The wonder that i am reading this book in Islington, London, where Adams' lived for the bulk of his life, is not lost upon me... Some of you will also be aware of the fact that the style i write/blog is very often extremely dependent on the book i'm reading at that point in time and the only reason why i'm sounding rather serious now is because i've finished reading the numerous introductions and prologues and prefaces written by Adams' many friends... Without any loss of generality, i will be blogging excerpts of good bits of the book, which is a terribly difficult job because it is so hard to do that without putting the whole book online... Today, i shall start with something in the introduction written by Stephen Fry, which hits the nail right on its head in his description of Adams' writings... If you're a fan, or if you've read his books before, i'm sure you will understand.. If not, i hope it encourages you to start... =)

"Douglas has in common with certain rare artists the ability to make the beholder feel that he is addressing them and them alone... When you look at Velazquez, listen to Mozart, read Dickens or laugh at Billy Connolly, ... you are aware that what they do they do for the world and the results are, of course, magnificent. When you look at Blake, listen to Bach, read Douglas Adams or watch Eddie Izzard perform, you feel you are perhaps the only person in the world who really gets them. Just about everyone else admires them, of course, but no one really connects with them in the way you do. I advance this as a theory. Douglas's work is not the high art of Bach or the intense personal cosmos of Blake, it goes without saying, but I believe my view holds nonetheless. It's like falling in love. When an especially peachy Adams turn of phrase or epithet enters the eye and penetrates the brain you want to tap the shoulder of the nearest stranger and share it. The stranger might laugh and seem to enjoy the writing, but you hug yourself to the thought that they didn't quite understand its force and quality the way you do -- just as your friends (thank heavens) don't also fall in love with the person you are going on and on about to them."

And that, is exactly how i feel.

University Education

Many people have commented that university education is often too abstract and theoretical to be useful in real life... In LSE, we always say that we're just here to buy a degree... Today we were taught something so practical and relevant that it shows otherwise...

Dr Kosuke Aoki, arguable the cutest male lecturer in LSE, taught us during the EC321 'Monetary Econs' lecture on the relationship between public expectations and Central Bank policy:

"...but people are not really stupid..."

How to Lose Weight...

In the post-capitalist world we live in today, an accurate guage of the pulse of society will be to look at the amount of advertising generated by a particular trend.

Now, applying economic analysis (this is DuhEconomist.com ok, Economics is very powerful here...) to this issue: Assuming that The Strait's Times is the only newspaper in the world and the front & back cover of the 'Life!' section are the only important pages, one can almost definitively arrive at the conclusion that losing weight is the issue closest to SGrean hearts.

Now, although DuhEconomist.com is not based in SG, nor is its writer currently in SG, nor has its writer even seen a single page of 'Life!' for the past 50million weeks (s.d. 50million weeks), DuhEconomist.com blog is afterall a blog founded on nationalist principles and as such, shall devote a special issue to the issue (of cos the pun was intended) of weight loss...

DuhEconomist.com teaches you...
DUH way to lose weight

Many people often ask me if eating X is healthier than eating Y... No wait, actually only Alicia asks me that but she does it so often that it is easy to mistake the question to be from many people... Anyway, DuhEconomist.com takes a very simple & elegant approach to weight loss, which we shall now call 'What Lawrence Said' becos it was in actual fact, what Lawrence said...

According to WLS, Weight Loss = You use up more energy than you take in

In spite of the simplicity of this theorem, it is clear that many people do not really believe in its truth, as seen in their attempts to lose weight through a variety of ways which do not incorporate WLS at all... To these people, DuhEconomist.com offers a simple & elegant analogy which may help you understand, which we shall call 'What Yanjie Says'. The difference in tense between WYS and WLS is important. While Lawrence has only been heard to utter that theory once, Yanjie is very fond of giving his analogy again & again and will jump at any opportunity to use it in any conversation, regardless of how inapplicable or irrelevant it is...

Anyway, WYS: "Cow eat grass also can grow fat lor"

This basically means that it's not about what you eat but about how much energy you use relative to what you eat. Hence, even if you eat only grass (or cabbage or brocolli or papier-mache), you will still grow fat if all you do all day is eating grass (or cabbage or brocolli or papier-mache). So the key is: exercise more.

However, we all know how ridiculous/obvious (depending on who you are) such a suggestion is. In any case, as always, DuhEconomist.com is committed to providing helpful & practical advice in matters as serious as this. Hence, DuhEconomist.com teaches you the method to lose weight in a safe, efficient & sustainable way. It takes only minutes and the results are definitely so significant that your friends will have trouble recognising you!

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Get a haircut.

Q: How to lose weight in a safe, efficient, sustainable & cheap way?

A: Cut your hair yourself.

Yanjie is staff writer for DuhEconomist.com, mainly becos he is the only writer. He possesses many amazing skills such as cutting his own hair. Unfortunately, none of them are of any help in preventing pictures he takes of the back of his own head from looking completely ridiculous.