ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

Ten Types of Common Trees In Singapore from Singapore Postage Stamp * all images generated with Fractal Grower software by Joel Castellanos of University of New Mexico: See http://www.cs.unm.edu/~joel/PaperFoldingFractal/paper.html 1. Leaves on a stem 2. Fern 3. Weed 4. Simple tree. This post is on what we often ponder: that what shapes our life as we grow is a combination of our genes, our environment, the decisions we make along the way, and random unforeseeable events which had an impact on the path we were traveling on. I choose to compare our lives with the shape of trees. An Oak is as different from a Coconut Tree as a Fern is different from a bush of Roses. An Oak cannot turn into a Coconut Tree and yet each Oak is different. The analogy with Life is that to a certain extent there is a boundary beyond which your Life cannot cross, yet within this boundary, there is considerable freedom for you to choose the the eventual 'shape' you will become. Let us illustrate this wi...

The New Lucky Claypot Rice stall Rice, Chicken, Pork Sausage, Liver Sausage, and Salted Fish cooked in a claypot Close up of Claypot Chicken Rice Black Chicken Soup with Wolfberries, Red Dates and Dang Qui Herb Braised Chicken Feet and Mushrooms In Dark Soya Sauce Soup of White Fungus and Pork Ribs Soup of Lotus Root, Red Dates and Pork Ribs Chicken Feet and Peanuts Soup Water Cress and Pork Ribs Soup Prices for Claypot Rice: S$10= US$8.00 In a previous post on this Blog, I wrote about the joys of eating out in Singapore: the variety, the quality, the convenience- and how I have not cooked at home for three years: See http://www.fu-lu-shou.net/2010/11/affordable-eating-out-increases.html . This post offers another example of affordable, good food in Singapore. The New Lucky Claypot Rice restaurant is situated in Clementi, one of the suburbs of government-built apartments in the west of the island. Claypot Rice is its specialty, and as you can see from the signboard in the top image, ...

" My Stray Cat" is a linguistic contradiction since stray cats by definition don't belong to anyone. But I have come to regard "Catty" [that's the unimaginative name I gave her] as mine, and we have known each other for more than a year. There she sits every day on the footpath that leads to the bus stop from several blocks of apartments. And that's how I came to be acquainted with her on my way to work in the morning and on my way home in the evening. Catty is not a beautiful cat, unlike Lucy the cat at the marketplace, the feline equivalent of Marilyn Monroe, wearing a collar set with Rhinestones and sexily purring her way into everyone's heart . Nor has she an adorable disposition, like Tom, the cute cat who loves to sit in places with a good view, his head poking out between the iron railings of the staircase and giving you a welcoming meow. Catty, is a dour, morose cat. You never see Catty prancing about, playing with twigs and leaves or even ...

LATEST UPDATE OF CHERNOFF FACES: 31 JAN 2011. According to the Chernoff faces, the DJIA (and by implication the general market, with a bias towards big cap bluechips) remains still much the same. Size of face is proportional to valuation +/- % and if you are looking for undervaluation, look for the small faces. e.g. Alcoa and BAC. But then there are reasons why BAC is undervalued. Alcoa is not so squinty-eyed anymore, due to a combination of improvements in its Expected EPS, volatility and Beta. Chernoff faces of the DJIA as at 31 January 2011 Chernoff faces circa 15 Dec 2010 Above is a Chernoff Face glyphplot of the DJIA stocks. For explanation of Chernoff Faces see my post at http://www.technifundamentals.com/2010/12/merry-xmas-edition-fun-with-statistics.html . The 3D visualizations below are derived from the 30 constituent stocks of the DJIA, and their fundamentals e.g. P/E, Beta, 12-month Return, Earnings Per Share Forecast, Earnings per Share Actual etc - 15 selected variables ...

Giant Freshwater Stingray of the Mekong [Himantura Chaophraya] Chinese like bump-headed Cichlids because it resembles that of the deity that represents Longevity [third deity] in the trio Fu,Lu,Shou. Stingray 1 : I think this one is called Pearl or Black Diamond Stingray 2: How many lucky number '8's can you see? Stingray 3 : Plainer and cheaper Stingray pattern 1 : Numbers '8' enlarged Stingray pattern 2 Some giant catfish Bump-headed Cichlid Elephant-Nose Fish High Fin Pangasius: Most elegant fish I have ever seen Recently, in the Singapore newspapers, the case of a person who was accused of defrauding the Telco he worked for to the amount of S$12 million was mentioned. Readers were not surprised to read about $400000 Porsches, Patek Philip watches and apartments bought with the loot. But many found it strange the the accused paid $200000 for an Amazon Freshwater Stingray. I have kept freshwater stingrays as pets, but that was 30 years ago, and I don't r...

Lunch: Yam Rice Lunch: Pig's Stomach with White Peppercorn Soup Lunch: Fried Fish and some kind of Squash or Gourd Dinner: Malay curried mutton, fried, egg, fish, vegetables with rice and Chili Would you believe that I have not cooked a meal at home in three years, ever since I came back from the United States? Though this sounds strange to Westerners and Americans, it is not uncommon to find working people in Hong Kong and Singapore who eat out for every meal-breakfast, lunch and dinner. One of the reasons is that people here and even more so in Hong Kong work long hours, and there is no time to cook. But the main reason is that eating out in Singapore and Hong Kong is relatively inexpensive. Inexpensive not only in the amount of dollars a meal costs, but inexpensive also in the sense of comparing the $ x time that need to be sacrificed if you need to cook at home. Time, that for some, could be spent earning more money or doing more business. If you don't count tasteless qu...

James Conway's Game Of Life Cellular Automata Stephen Wolframs book: Explaining Life and The Universe with Cellular Automata CLASSICAL http://tones.wolfram.com/id/GRhb3ApzQdwx506wmTMUrhOTtUMNfrnSZgc8JwknCQU HIP HOP http://tones.wolfram.com/id/G1wrGZLZJWIQTDtqI0kUutecFHgjfYgb8NTS1QfeJfwzYj3c JAZZ http://tones.wolfram.com/id/G0Cos4WxMCF1vplzXkauryTRmLuXjCqFnIhMIWM4t4HDkv LATIN http://tones.wolfram.com/id/GRkNlkOzyU33xXTzGtS4oiLxB2hqmjxY4GTSRat2nLJs9RJM Note# If there is no sound when you click on the link and it's Play button, go to Download and email the Midi file to yourself as an attachment, then play it separately on your computer. If you read Stephen Hawking's (and Leonard Mlodinow) latest book " The Grand Design", -New Answers To The Ultimate Questions Of Life [Bantam Press, 2010], in the last Chapter, he uses the example of Cellular Automata to explain how and why Life in this Universe could have come about-without the requirement for a God. It is an at...