A series of unfortunate tuna

I've been getting skinnier and weaker each day, and I haven't been eating less.
Reasons I think why this is happening:

- Work almost everyday. This generally involves running to get my professor's coffee, walking back and forth through the hallway to deliver stuff between him and his colleague, and carrying stuff to and from his car, apart from reading through his materials and searching for other information he needs

- Stress of the house move

- Stress of the thing that's been on my head for months now

- Occasional loss of appetite and diarhoeea - I think it's a combination of both emotional and physical factors

- Fatigue from not enough sleep

- Having not so pleasant dreams at night

...or really, it could be due ENTIRELY to the fact that I eat a tuna sandwich almost every single day of the week!!!

Professor, I'm getting sick of tuna...

I think this blog will eventually phase out as an economics blog

I am currently writing this entry from my professor's office while he's away doing some other stuff.

I am in desperate need of not being me for the moment - there is one particular thing that is on my mind that kills me whenever I think about it, and I can do nothing about it.

On a separate note, I'm going to soon run out of Calvinists to talk to, which is a problem because I've done a lot of my learning from them.
- A good friend of mine who first introduced that doctrine to me - I have a feeling he's going through something so it's a bit difficult to talk to him as he isn't as active online as he was before
- A friend of his is in another service. We don't see each other much precisely because of the differences in service times, and people might find our sudden friendship across services awkward
- Another friend of his is in another country. While I'm helping him to edit some stuff, we don't know each other well enough to carry on a conversation. We might get to that point one day, just not at the moment
- My beloved housemate, while she definitely holds more towards Calvinistic than Arminian soteriology is still learning, like myself
- A new found friend of ours who actually is not hostile to the soteriology which we hold to is just starting to learn more, and naturally I can't learn from him
- My beloved op513, while they are great people, I do not know them well enough. I don't chat to any of them on msn nor write to them, with the exception of the team leader which I update for the purposes of accountability. But I'm not very close to any of them
- A friend of mine who is going through some leadership issues has a girlfriend and so it's difficult to get time with him to learn
- Oh, and virtually everyone else near to me is either closer to Arminianism, completely ignorant of the doctrines to which they either implicitly or explicitly hold to, or are more Calvinist but have no time to teach me...
- There are a great number of teachers online, but I do need someone to look up to

It is just DIFFICULT. The next big question is this: where are all the female Calvinists!?

An ARBITRARY post: Library reminder

So I got this in my inbox - and I am posting this up as an arbitrary post so that I am updating my blog!

REQUEST NOW AVAILABLE.
The material you requested
is now available for collection
from the listed location. It will
be kept for you for 7 days
from the date on this notice.

AUTHOR: Osborne, Martin J.
TITLE: An introduction to game theory
CALL NO: QA269 .O78 2004
BARCODE: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
LOCATION: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PICKUP AT: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Martin Osborne baby!!! Yeah baby yeah! A famous game theorist.

Why I am Single: An Economic Explanation

The theory and empirical work around human behaviour is generally in the realm of microeconomics (macroeconomics is the aggregation of microeconomics). And so this is the post on microeconomics which I said I would post in the previous post I posted.

Currently, I am in my final year of my undergraduate economics degree, and it is getting increasingly stressful. If I were to be asked why I am not in a relationship, if I want to be in a relationship, or when I want to be in a relationship, I would reply: (i) no time (ii) not at the moment (iii) not anytime soon. These more or less revolve around the concept of the limitations on my time, because of the workload I have to do at uni.

In economics, apart from thinking of time constraints, we can think of utility and cost (or disutility). Utility is sort of analogous to the 'happiness' I get from being in a relationship (utility covers more than happiness). Cost is the cost of being in a relationship.

Now, given my current situation, my cost function is a quadratic function, perhaps an arbitrary
C = 50t - 2.5t^2 where t = the time period, starting from zero. Let us assume that each unit of t represents a semester at university. Hence, t = 1 is the first semester of the first year; t = 2 is the second semester of the first year, and so on.

If I differentiate this equation with respect to t, I derive my marginal cost function, which is:

MC = 50 - 5t

Now, given my current situation, my utility function is also a quadratic function, perhaps an arbitrary

U = 1.5t^2

If I differentiate this equation with respect to t, I derive my marginal utility function, which is:

MU = 3t

Now, to maximise the utility I get from being in a relationship, I need to set MC = MU (this is an economics condition that is used for profit maximisation in firms).

Hence,
MC = MU
50 - 5t = 3t
8t = 50
t = 6.125

Hence, I would maximise my utility from being in a relationship after I graduate! Remember that each t represents a semester. There are 6 semesters in an undergraduate degree, and so a t of 6.125 implies that it would be most profitable for me to enter into a relationship after I graduate, perhaps a month or 2 after I graduate. Prior to t = 6.125, the marginal cost (disutility) of being in a relationship exceeds the marginal utility, or phrased differently, the cost of being in a relationship exceeds the benefit.

And this explains why I am still single!

Failed Experiment!

Okay, so like none of the other people with the same name as me responded... but nevertheless, that's okay!

My next post will be an interesting topic... with microeconomic foundations!

How many of you are there out there, and how similar are they to you?

Yes a rather odd question for a title. Basically, one night (tonight, in fact), I decided to Google my name to see what turns up. I'm doing this not for pride's sake, but rather that there is an increasing trend for employers to want to Google potential employees to see what they're like - this involves visiting their MySpaces (I have none), blogs (only this one), Facebook (which I have, but hardly use because I spend most of my time with either uni work or research work), Friendster (which I had a looong time ago but which I will delete... soon... if I remember!). Of course, any pictures or comments or videos that you post is visible to the public (depending on your settings), not that I post anything offensive, but just be aware that employers might have a look around.

To those I have written to on their blogs: Hello! I wrote hello note(s) on your pages just to say hello and am wondering if we share anything in common. I initiated contact for the sole purpose of getting to know other people who have the same name as me, nothing else, but pure friendship. To those who got the mail, feel free to leave a comment to this post if you wish :-)

Game Theory: WHY!?

How ironic that since last semester, I thought, oooh yes I would LOVE to do game theory. I understood that it involved quite a fair bit of mathematics, but I thought that I could possibly manage. The first week of class was easy - just a revision of some common games, including the infamous Prisoner's Dilemma. But then the second week came, and that was a killer because I realized one important thing... math is INsufficient (what a shock, I know!) for game theory; one also needs to have strong skills in figuring diagrams out when the explanations somehow don't do the work... and I have read the prescribed chapter of the book, and I think if I were to read it twice, it wouldn't help get me from understanding nothing to understanding something! What a shock this class has turned out to be, but I, determined to be some sort of a future microeconomist, have to hold on I suppose. If this is only week 2, I am dreading week 3!

This brings me to a question I really should ask myself: Do I REALLY want to become a game theorist, or a microeconomist for that matter?!