Blogging revived

It has been a great long while since I last did blogging during my free time. But now, I’m deciding to do it again, if not primarily on this blog. I’ll be soon setting up my own domain, Cy at Work, to contain posts and articles mainly related to my work interests, e.g. operations research, math, technology and graduate study.

I realized that the posts in this current blog got messed up already: alternating between serious articles and personal ramblings. Instead, I’ll just maintain this blog to contain the latter.

Stay tuned for the new blog.

PESO Challenge aftermath

The second year of the Philippine Emerging Startups Open (PESO) was finally over. The finalists presented their sales pitch before venture capitalists, the media and supporters of technology entrepreneurship. And the winners eventually emerged. It was such a great day last Sunday.

Although I do not really have any event organization skills, I decided to volunteer for PESO because I believe in its advocacy: that an important driver of economic growth in this small country will come from home-grown technology startups. I also believe that it’s a good way to combat brain drain, that competent people can choose to stay here and still make good money.

I only contributed little for the event, things like manning the registration desk and fixing the sponsors’ banners. Actually, I think I was the one who benefited from volunteering.

That day, I was fortunate to have met Peter Valdes, one of the founders of Tivoli Software (an IBM subsidiary) and local company Vinta Systems. His latter company is particularly interesting to me, as it uses operations research and artificial intelligence to solve business problems such as media planning and credit evaluation.

This is clearly a company I look forward to working for someday.

Can’t get enough of Bitoy’s humor

After thoroughly enjoying Bitoy’s album, I can’t help but look up more video clips from his gag show, Bubble Gang. Sure, some, if not many, jokes in a typical episode are corny and repetitive (the Diego jokes come to mind). But there’s almost always a gem which makes watching every episode quite worthwhile. Here are just some samples:

• Bitoy’s 100-word essay about his pet Ming-ming
• Spoof of All Star K! (note: this is a bit gross)
• my personal favorite: Bitoy’s declamation, “Sino ang dapat sisihin?”

Enjoy the clips!

Flashes of certainty

There’s so much uncertainty in this world. I can’t escape from it, in fact, I’m fascinated by it… the notions of chance, risk and randomness, I find interesting. But there are brief moments that allow one to have a glimpse of certainty. Those times are rare: I treasure them and follow their signs.

I know I just have to do it.

Modeling vs. Proving

I just finished my first long test in our introductory course in operations research. Assuming that I didn’t fail the test, I think that I barely passed it. I did commit some careless mistakes but the part of the test which took my time my was the modeling / problem formulation part, which is anything but trivial. Still, I find myself liking modeling than proving theorems.

During my undergraduate years, we spent a great deal of time proving theorems here and there. I didn’t know to what extent does pure math courses deal with proofs until I encountered Advanced Calculus, where proofs spanning at least a page are not uncommon. During that semester, I actually found the electromagnetism course in physics more enjoyable than the math classes.

I realized that I like applied topics more than theory. That’s why when I learned about operations research, I naturally migrated to the field (quantitative finance was another major option). Perhaps because it’s more practical — should I ever work for the corporate world, I may be given the task of, say, modeling the supply chain.

More importantly, I find modeling, a key aspect of operations research, to be an art. Although the same thing can be said about pure math, I think that modeling is closer to the traditional meaning of art, i.e. a representation (in terms of mathematical symbols, in this case) of an existing phenomenon.

I did suck on that first long test but it’s not a major issue anyway. It’s still a long way before I become skilled in mathematical modeling, and in particular, optimization modeling.

Interesting name

A childhood acquaintance from the province recently learned about my cell phone number. She sent me a greeting text message with my name on it, albeit an interesting version: Shayrose.

Investing on a UITF

I recently visited a branch of Banco de Oro, one of the largest banks in the Philippines. Scattered all over the place are advertisements of its products and services: savings accounts, home & auto loans, internet banking. But one product is missing, possibly important for its many customers and the point of my visit there: unit investment trust fund (UITF).

UITFs are just like mutual funds, i.e. clients pool money to be invested by professional managers to various asset classes. Based from previous performance of these funds, these are superior to traditional bank products like savings and time deposit. I just have to wonder why they don’t get advertised. I may be wrong but maybe the bank gets more returns from its other products than UITFs.

I’m quite satisfied with the performance of both mutual funds and UITFs for now. But eventually, I’ll invest (gamble?) on what the managers play with: stocks.

My Year 2006 in Review

This is quite possibly my least structured and laziest year, taking only one (!) subject during the first semester and a light load of 3 subjects starting this November.

It was a good break from the crazy pace of things I had to deal with during my previous work. This year was an opportunity to think, and to decide on my path. I discovered and learned many things: blogging, technology entrepreneurship and Mathematica programming to name a few.

But the most important decision was my choice of a master’s degree. The two major candidates were Quantitative Finance and Operations Research, but I also went as far as to consider a graduate degree in Astronomy, being somewhat a neglected childhood interest desiring to resurface. Ultimately, I settled for Operations Research, believing that it’s a field that can contribute something good for the society.

I look forward to this new year. I unexpectedly made some important realizations before the year ended. This next two years are going to be an important link, both in my personal and work life.

Year 2006 left a few events that I’d like to cast in stone:

• discovered blogging as a new hobby
• upgraded from a turtle dial-up to a relatively quantum speed DSL internet. Had I not visited a friend, I wouldn’t have known that DSL is already cost-effective.
• signed up for what everyone else seems to have: a Friendster account (too bad I still don’t have any photos to upload… must buy a digital camera soon)
• found a nearby sanctuary: the La Mesa Ecopark
• had quarterly sessions with my high school beerkada
• left my first work at a startup software company to finally pursue my master’s degree
• discovered the fun of Mathematica programming
• nailed down Operations Research as my field of specialization
• learned about the rising culture of technology entrepreneurship in the Philippines through the Philippine Emerging Startups Open

Buying Bitoy’s album…

One of my few recreational activities is watching comedy shows, mostly local ones. Perhaps the most popular Filipino comedian of this generation is Michael V (a.k.a. Bitoy). In fact, his gag show, Bubble Gang, has been running for 11 years already.

I do not usually buy CDs or DVDs (the last one was a Batman Begins DVD). But Bitoy’s album is simply too good to pass up.

This album consists mostly of spoofs of hit songs. My personal favorite is Mamaw, a parody of Kamikazee’s Narda. Take a look at the video for your own viewing pleasure:

OR application to medicine

…And I previously thought that OR techniques are only useful for business applications. Here’s an example which demonstrates OR’s ubiquity, an OR-based system used to improve cancer therapy. Some quotes from the article:

• system for helping cancer treatment specialists optimize the placement of radioactive seeds used in the brachytherapy process
• from the clinician’s point of view, this will allow physicians to prescribe how they want the radiation to be applied, and the system will produce an optimized plan to do that
• the patented system is based on optimization techniques known as mixed integer programming