A puzzle

So recently, I was thinking about an imaginary puzzle. Obviously simple to some, but I’m dumb , so you have to indulge me.

Say you saw this snazzy guitar on Ebay, autographed by guitar legend Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi fame, and it’s really underpriced. You reckon that you can earn for yourself a tidy little margin by buying it and selling it for a higher price in Singapore. Because this guitar is one of a kind, so it’s subject to demand fluctuations. Fluctuations based on the current popularity of Bon Jovi as a band, because it is currently making a comeback with 3 new singles in their latest album, you should eventually be able to sell the guitar at a reasonably good profit.

(At this point, it is beginning to sound like a math question from secondary school hell. But moving right along…)

Sounds like you’re all set right? Problem is, you have to pay in USD. Now, we know about the instability of the USD in the current tumultuous market right? And remember, your customers are in Singapore, so they will only buy from you in SGD. So how? The currency might turn against you, and the fluctuations might eventually erode away your profits!

Now, being a finance person yourself, you would want to hedge yourself against this fluctuation right? And obviously, the timing of the hedge is of the utmost importance. Hence,

Question 1: When are you exposed, and when should you set up your hedge?
Question 2: When will you close out your position?
Question 3: What instrument will you hedge this fluctuation with, and why? Take into account transaction costs, risk exposure and the ease of closing out your position/transferring your risk.

Sometime between the time you won the auction and the time your guitar arrived, a scandal broke out. It turns out that Richie Sambora slept with Jon Bon Jovi’s wife, and the band is threatening to break up. Notwithstanding the fact that in times like these the price of memorabilia should go UP, you are of the belief that everyone now hates Sambora, and the value of the guitar is falling as we speak.

Question 4: You need to hedge against the declining value of your asset. What do you do? (Ok, this is MCQ)
A) You go on eBay and sell the item right NOW (you set up a forward position)
B) You conditionally sell the guitar to your brother, who is a Sambora fan, and you make him promise that if the price falls below the margin that you are willing to accept as profit for.. ARGH. Ok this is not fun anymore. The analogy stops here. I am really unproductive at work today.

But I think I did a relatively good job at simplifying a problem I'm having at work. Heh heh.

Psalm 73

Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.
But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.
For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong.
They are free from the burdens common to man;
they are not plagued by human ills.

Those who have no regard of God, who did not see it fit to factor God in their lives, who broke every single commandment in the Bible, they are living the dream life! They have good jobs, their relationships with people are excellent, they are smart, they are not lacking financially, or lacking in favour, or lacking in esteem. Their lives are perfect!

Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.
From their callous hearts comes iniquity;
the evil conceits of their minds know no limits.
They scoff, and speak with malice;
in their arrogance they threaten oppression.
Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth.
Therefore their people turn to them
and drink up waters in abundance.
They say, "How can God know?
Does the Most High have knowledge?"
This is what the wicked are like—
always carefree, they increase in wealth.

Look, I'm having a party! Why are you in church? Why do you waste time volunteering when you can live for yourself? It's ok to sleep with someone to get business. It's fine to have a mistress on the side, as long as the wife doesn't know. If you are so pure and innocent, I don't see how you can get into this business.

Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure;
in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.
All day long I have been plagued;
I have been punished every morning.
If I had said, "I will speak thus,"
I would have betrayed your children.
When I tried to understand all this,
it was oppressive to me

It's not difficult to become jaded when all around you, the wicked prosper: The bitchy ones are popular, the arrogant ones get great jobs which make them more proud, the sneaky and conniving ones get away with cheating the system, and here I am, the fool who follows God's commands, who tries to store up for myself treasures in heaven. To what end?

till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny.

It was when I saw God face to face; when I saw His immense glory and His infinite wisdom, that I understood. I understood the grand plan of it all - The plan that we who are so finite are unable to see but for the eyes of wisdom, and the heart that understand God's heart.

Surely you place them on slippery ground;
you cast them down to ruin.
How suddenly are they destroyed,
completely swept away by terrors!
As a dream when one awakes, so when you arise, O Lord,
you will despise them as fantasies.

Life is but a blink of an eye in the light of eternity, and fleeting in the grand scheme of things. And like chaff that is blown away, we are inconsequential. And because there is judgement, there is punishment, there is vindication. And there is reward for those who persevere.

When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered,
I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.
Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.

Forgive me, O Lord, for becoming cynical; for believing that you are impotent and that you would be unjust and blind to my plight. Forgive me for not believing that you would love me, and that what happens to me matters to you.

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

You are sufficient. You overflow. All of You is more than enough for all of me.

Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.

Because You are a just God. A fair God.

But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.

Hallelujah

Something quite funny

Here's a little something funny to cheer us up.

Friend: nice ppl die young
Me: Oh no. My time is almost up then.
Friend: hahah. u have long life
Me: Haha. By saying that, it looks like you won't. Because I will muay thai you the next time I see you.
Friend: at the rate i m bitchin, i might live to 100
Me: Hahah. You better delay it as long as you can. I heard hell very hot.
Friend: install air con lor. i m sure LKY will be there
Friend: LKY will aircon the whole hell

The scene at sea

The mood was sombre. Four small ferries floated in the middle of the Singapore Straits. Some spectators clambered over to the other ferries for a closer look. Across from me, Rafi clutched his head between his hands and looked down, as the monk started laying out his equipment, his bell on the floor before him. Emmanuel's expression of unutterable grief was barely hidden behind his Oakley shades.

A girl from the other ferry passed out some white roses. Daisies and carnations were handed round on the other ferries as well. An aide lighted up a bunch of incense, and the sweet fragrance floated up into the midafternoon sky.

Soon, the activity died down as the monk started chanting his spiel. I looked around at the spectacle before me, as the crowd trained their eyes on the monk. There were Chinese and Malays, Australians, English, Filipinos, French, Singaporeans. Divers of diverse backgrounds and origins, joined together in their love of the sport and the love of a fallen comarade.

Soon, the chanting stopped. Puffy-eyed, the girlfriend paid her last respects to the little red bundle of ashes that were laid before them. Mother, father and sister in turn touched the little bundle of remains before returning to their spot on the ferry. Gathering together the fruit offering, the monk handed these to the mother, who dropped them into the sea. The scarlet bag holding what used to be our friend was slowly peeled open as the red-eyed parents scattered the white ash into the wind and into the sea. As if a signal was given, the spectators tore the petals from the flowers they were holding on to, and threw them into the sea as well.

The last bell was rung. In unison, we nodded our heads as a sign of last respects to the friend who protected us, who shared the good times, who would offer to share the last slice of watermelon with us after recovering from a dive, and who took up our challenge of downing ever larger quantities of booze. A mental picture of Darwin's cheeky grin flashed before my eyes.

I heard a quiet sobbing behind me. Not long after, more sobbing. As our ferry pulled away from the others, I looked back to see the brightly coloured petals bobbing under the clear blue sky.

Life is fragile

Darwin Peh, one of the dive masters who assisted us during our Open Water certification in Tioman, passed away yesterday afternoon at Changi General Hospital. He was wakeboarding with friends when he had seizures and his heart stopped. The doctors could not revive him. Darwin is survived by his parents and a sister.

His ashes would be scattered at sea over the Singapore Strait tomorrow at around 9:30AM. Wai*ki*ki divers and friends would be there to bid farewell to their beloved dive master, comical drinking sometimes non-drinking companion, and true dive buddy whether in or out of the water.

Hopefully, we would all always remember Darwin with warmth and fondness in our hearts. Wherever he may be now in the vast deep blue, he would surely be smiling at us with his boyish grin and giving us the (diver's) A-okay sign as we fin through or drift with the currents of living in this world.

****************

I liked Darwin very much. He was a great guy, responsible dive master and lovely friend. He was only 34 years old. I'm gonna miss the dude.

Charles Spurgeon

I listened to this inspiring sermon about the testimony of Charles Spurgeon, and it filled me with tears.

Charles Spurgeon was saved by the weak and trembling preaching of a man who has been forgotten by history. This was Spurgeon's account of the man's sermon that day.

The man who preached on that snowy day chose Isaiah 45:22 as his text, and the passage said, "Look to Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth." And the man said, "Look, that is not hard work. You need not lift your hand, you do not want to lift your finger. Look, a fool can do it. It does not need a wise man to look. A child can do that. You don't need to be full-grown to use your eyes. Look, a poor man may do that, no need of riches to look. Look, how simple." Then he went on: "Look unto Me. Do not look to yourselves, but look to Me, that is Christ.

"Look unto Me; I am sweating great drops of blood for you; look unto Me, I am scourged and spit upon; I am nailed to the cross, I die, I am buried, I rise and ascend, I am pleading before the Father's throne, and all this is for you.'"

Spurgeon says now that simple way of putting the gospel had enlisted my attention, and a ray of light had poured into my heart. Stooping down the gallery, the preacher looked directly to Spurgeon and said, "Young man, you are very miserable."

"So I was, but I was not accustomed to be addressed that way."

"Ah," said he, "and you will continue to be miserable if you don't do as my text tells you, and that is look to Christ." Then raising his voice to its limit, he called out, "Young man, look! In God's name, look! And look now. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but look and live."

And God's Holy Spirit saved Spurgeon on that day. "I did look," he said, "Blessed be God! I know I looked then and there, and the darkness was gone! The cloud rolled away, and in that moment, I saw the sun. I could have risen in that moment and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith that looks alone to Him.

That was probably the most unlearned sermon Charles Spurgeon had ever heard. It might have been the emptiest church he had ever sat in. He was probably as uncomfortable as he had ever been in church, soaked through with melting snow. But a transaction took place between him and Almighty God because Charles did look to Jesus and was taken from the despair of his heart into 'fullness of joy and hope.' He had left home at 10.30 that morning a sinner oppressed by the weight of his sinfulness, and as he walked home less than two hours later his heart was so joyful it wanted to make his legs dance! He must have felt once again like the 15-year-old he was.

Taken jointly from Joshua Harris' sermon Proclaiming Christ Crucified and Gold from Dark Mines, The Journey to Conversion of Six Famous Christians By Irene Howat Published 2005 by Christian Focus Publications Ltd p. 162-165

Of all the sick and twisted things

I came across this article after listening to an interview on BBC. It was pretty gross, but I'll let you judge for yourselves. You can read it here and here.

Father and daughter have a baby together after 30-year separation

A father and daughter confessed on television last night to spending seven years in a sexual relationship and conceiving two children.

Jenny Deaves told how she was reunited with her long-lost father, John, 30 years after he left her mother.

She was 31 when they met again but instead of a normal father-daughter relationship, they fell in love.

As their own marriages failed, they became intimate.

"John and I are in this relationship as consenting adults," Jenny told Australia's 60 Minutes programme last night.

"We are just asking for a little bit of respect and understanding."

They showed their nine-month-old daughter Celeste, who appeared fit and healthy - although their first child died of a congenital disease within days of birth. Jenny, who has two children from a previous relationship, is now 39.

She said that soon after reuniting with John she saw him as a man first and her father second.

"I was looking at him, sort of going, oh, he's not too bad," she said. "Like you might look at a man across the bar at a nightclub."

Mr Deaves 61, who lives with his daughter in the town of Mount Gambier, South Australia, admitted he "initially" thought having sex with her was wrong, but "emotions took over".

"I knew it was illegal, of course I knew, but you know, so what," he said.

Jenny said the physical relationship with her father was like "a sexual relationship with any other man". Mr Deaves said it was "absolutely fantastic".

Last month Jenny and her father were placed on a good behaviour bond for three years by a judge in Mount Gambier after admitting two counts of incest.

A condition of the bond is that the couple do not have sex again. A police spokesman said they "were being monitored".

The father and daughter claimed on air that they have ended the sexual side of their relationship and would find it easy not to sleep together again because of the risk of imprisonment.

"We will continue living as a normal, happy family for years to come," Jenny said.

The investiture and the school

I was going to do this rant about the Student Council Investiture speech made by the Gas of Honour, and although I have not forgiven the beady-eyed bastard for saying the things that he did, I am still not able to conjure up enough bile to lambast him good and proper in a post. Strangely enough though, I had this weird fantasy just now as I was heading home, that I had interrupted his stupid speech and countered each and every point he made and publicly humiliating him. Alas, fantasies are just fantasies.

In short, I think the resident beady-eyed bastard (I wish I had a picture of his ugly mug to post up here for all to see) was trying to discredit his mortal enemy - Andrew - who is also my good friend (or used to be). BEB had the impression that Andrew was trying to turn all the volunteer staff in the hostel against him and the management, and, I believe (and I'm saying "I believe" because I want to avoid a lawsuit here), had been planning from last year to oust him from the hostel. The fact of the matter is that Andrew *is* rather antagonistic, though with good reason. The management has these indescribably stupid and hare-brained ideas that display a complete non-understanding of the workings of the hostel, the welfare of the boarders, and a total disconnect as to what are the important issues that matter to the kids. Obviously this caused a minor uprising in the ranks and we volunteers had been voicing out rather strongly against the incompetent ED's incredibly stupid ideas. Andrew's got a fairly good bullshit detector and being the first line of defence, got the brunt of the management's wrath. So with effect from last month, he was immediately terminated. They called it a "resignation". These ball-less pricks didn't even have the guts to admit that they fired him, but we know better.

Anyway, back to my main point: The SC Investiture speech. In it, the beady-eyed bastard (whose massive ego would not fit through the main entrance if it were an actual, tangible, material thing) criticised the SC in a public speech with many invited guests from MOE, other hostels and schools. Being trained in diplomacy (the idiot is a failed diplomat with ambitions to ambassadorship but never quite made it, and relegated himself to simply bossing around foreign students in a hostel), airing dirty laundry is a definite no-no (not that the laundry was actually "dirty"; many of the points were flawed and could easily be refuted by people who were actually involved in the SC, and not some distant non-person who managed by email), and for him to publicly do this was a clear and calculated move to discredit Andrew before the guests and especially the students, who loved Andrew like a father. So anyway, rather than to go into the details of the speech, which would really emotionally exhaust me, and clearly, the work of the councillors will vindicate them, I would rather dwell on the many wonderful memories I have of the beloved place in which I spent 5 memorable years.

So let me present to you.. That-hostel-within-the-campus-for-pretentious-young-boys!

This is the driveway along which I used to walk every morning to get to work, and every evening when I would chug exhaustedly up the slope. You can actually see my room from the front driveway. It's the second highest floor, the first 2 windows from the centre block. The first window is where my bed was, and the second was right in front of my computer, from which I had typed many of my blog entries.

Here it is again, up close. You can see the main glass door from here. Many a delinquent student who stay out past midnight had loitered around this area, while frenetically calling their AHMs who would (depending on their mood), wake up sleepily to open the door for them in the wee hours of the morning.

I had spent more than one memorable evening just sitting in the school premises either having conversations with close friends or journalling. It was here that I poured my heart out to a friend, and received insight about myself, encouragement about my spiritual walk and even some rebuke for some of the choices that I had made. It's probably safe to say that part of the decision that I had made to get right with God came from a conversation I had right here in the school campus. I know it's strange, but there's something about the stillness of the campus in the middle of the night, the cool breeze that blows through the silent compound that makes you feel so attuned to the spiritual things.

Ah the pool. I loved coming here to swim, though not as often as I would have liked. The obnoxious ACS boys tend to hog them a lot. Especially the poseur obnoxious ACS swimmer boys.

Evil? Moi?

One of the broking houses had a party last night, and I was obliged to go. Twas quite fun, and my best friend Johnny (Walker) was there. So this morning, Mr. Guy-whose-business-card-I-burned messaged me.

CY: u alive?
Me: Yoho! Never better.
Me: How? They got make you drunk and rape you anot?
CY: u hv sicks tots young girl
Me: Haha. These oil people are scary lah. Lucky thing you're a guy!
CY: beneath the girlish appearance is a devil
Me: Hehe. Canny, but pure. It says in the bible (and I quote) Be cunning as a serpant but pure as a dove.
CY: Hahah
Me: Stop laffing. I smack you!
CY: ai yo.. talk abt drunk, rape, smack... u r worse than those other oil people
Me: Haha. Moi?
Me: I pure lah..
CY: pure evil
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Steve

Bro: i am bored. talk to me
Bro: i am very happy today...
Me: Haha. Who are you? Where's my brother? [My brother's a cynical melancholic]
Bro: he is probably in hell somewhere [Ah that's more like it]
Me: From ill treating his sister issit?
Bro: wa i didnt know giving u mars bars is ill treating u. i think i better stop torturing u
Me: Unceremoniously kicking me out of your room is.
Bro: i will kick u out ceremoniously nxt time

He asked me to get a book for him from the library. He sent me a link and asked me to choose the best book. The lazy bastard.

Me: That's a lot of books! Which one you want?
Bro: i mean what are the gd ones? i really dunno!!!!
Bro: cmon time to work steve [Steve is *supposed* to be my imaginary solitary brain cell - It's an old joke]
Bro: he is getting fat sitting on the mind-couch
Me: Haha. Yeah man time to work Steve. You should stop feeding him chips and mars bars.
Bro: steve is yours... i can keep him off the mars bars but the twisties is your jurisdiction
Me: Haha. Mine is like Nemo's dad's offspring, before they got eaten by the shark. Yours is Steve.

My brother's funny. The problem is that nobody seems to appreciate his sense of humour because nobody gets it.