November Reflections

A collection of thoughts to start the month off.

On the blog - Had a look at the google analytics data. There are about 750 views in total since the blog's inception with a few users clocking in 5-10 minutes per post - so thank you for bumping up the stats if you are a regular reader!

The most popular post...is the SG dashboard. This was a little surprisingly. I thought my thesis or any of the mathy stuff is more interesting but who knows? Maybe I will do a little spring cleaning to update the dashboard over the next few months. The post on mapping Singapore's religious distribution using census data came in second. That's a nice piece that I enjoyed writing too so maybe we will see more of that in the future.

On life - Time flies. It wasn't too long ago where I was stressing over some arcane mathematical spaces and now I am back to dealing with 'real life' problems. New job with the glamorous title of data scientist i.e. the sexiest job of the 21st century. How much of that is marketing fluff vs 'true value'...we shall see over the next few months. Though, to be fair there is tremendous heterogeneity in job requirements even for the same job title. Not to mention title inflation seems to be quite rampant in the job market today.

On cycles - Funny how things change yet remains the same. The void deck cat, the flock of pigeons scurrying for bread crumbs and the dogs walking their owners. Though this time there is a new enemy - the bikes have invaded the park and void deck. Yellow and orange, two wheeled creatures, road hazard and eyesore.

On math - 4 years on and I slowly learning to appreciate the wonders and usefulness of my first year math modules. I am probably reading more about eigenvectors and eigenvalues now compared to my undergraduate years. It's fun when you can speak the language, otherwise it just remains a cryptic code.

On learning - Singapore malls now seem to be the go to place for...tuition centers. I guess it's one of the few existing businesses that are willing to pay for such physical spaces and have the money to do so. It is a little ironic that the popular bookstore in my area has made way for another tuition center. How can I argue with the logic of the market, one dollar one vote, and Singapore parents have decided. What happened to learning as a journey rather than a result? A discovery rather than an information download? A joy rather than a societal norm?