A Picture From Today's Foray

Manage to capture this while going to KLCC

A Nuclear Malaysia and Missing Jet Engines

I had the fortune to be in a lecture given by the late Pian Sukro, the ex-CEO of TNB and Chairman of Energy Commission in 2005. He was one of the pioneers of Malaysia Institute of Nuclear Technology (MINT).

I remember distinctively what he said about Malaysia having a nuclear power plant. His view was that it would be impossible for Malaysia to have a nuclear power plant since it entails an attentiveness to details beyond what Malaysian are capable off. We are lackadaisical when it comes to maintenance and such attitude will be the "Chernobyl" of Malaysia.

But what seems to be ironic is that we lost 2 jet engines (the size of a car at that!) while going for maintenance. It would seem that not only do we lack attentiveness to details we also lack to wisdom to be extra vigilant in matter of security.

IF and when we have a nuclear power plant, don't be surprised that we might lose the nuclear reactor due to oversight of the janitors.

A Bit About Statistics: Probability

Under the study of probability, which is a subset of the study of statistics, an event is formally known as the subset of the sample space. Where as the sample space is an exhaustive list of all the possible outcomes of an experiment. Probability is useful to predict the possibility of future event happens based on past events.

Take for example the Malaysian football team matches (which would be the experiment), therefore a sample space of Malaysian football team matches, which is usually denoted by the letter S, is S ={Win, Lose, Draw}. When the Malaysian football team winning a match is known as an event.

A repetitive match would produce a set of data that can be possible to be use to analyse the probability of the event happening again. If taking the Malaysian football team matches for the past 5 years as the experiment. We just have to count how many times that the Malaysian team win, lose and draw. Take for instance, IF, the Malaysian football team played in 50 matches in the past 5 years, out of that they won 4 matches, lose 40 matches and draw 6 matches. Then the probability calculations are Win 4/50 (0.08 or 8%), Lose 40/50 (0.8 or 80%) and Draw 6/50 (0.12 0r 12%). Therefore the chance for a next win in a match for Malaysian football team would be 0.08 or 8%.

Next lesson would be time series analysis

My First 2 Cakes

This is a chocolate moist with chocolate ganache as the toppings I made last month. I spread grind cashew nuts and icing sugar.

And here is a chocolate moist topped with fresh whipping cream (the whipping cream took longer that I expected) and chocolate rice which I put later on (sorry I forgot to shoot a picture)

First Shot: 6 month ++

Well here's a picture of the radiant mother to be posing for a shot

COP 15: Will we be able to change the course of history?

Currently the COP 15 is meeting in Copenhagen to agree on a formula to replace the Kyoto Protocol. I sincerely wish that the leaders of the world set a greater GHG reduction target (along with CO2) compared with the KP. We also need a bigger financial commitment from the developed countries to help the least developed and developing countries to achieve this new target.

A major push should be to replant forest in Brazil, West Africa, especially the Sub-Saharan states, China (to hold the Gobi from expending). The developed countries should also invest in countries that keeps the percentage of their forest un-touch.

But the funny thing is, since early this year, countries around the world started seriously planning for this conference and having a public dialog about their national targets for the conference. But here in Malaysia there is not a lot of hype about the COP 15. We don't even know what the Government stands on the matter at all. What are the Government (along with our "excellent" Parliamentarians) doing about it?

Ranking the Taxi Driver

I think we should have a company that give audits, rank and certifies taxi drivers. So if the driver is really good, helpful, comply with rules and regulations, knowledgeable and courteous, he might be given 5 star. He can also present his star on his cab.

We can also certify the drivers for certain skills that he have. Let say the driver have training in first aid and self defence, he might than be certified as competent in emergency situation. We can also certify his knowledge. If the driver is fluent in 3 other languages such as Japanese, Arabic and Spanish, then he can be certified and show that certification on his cab.

With all that certifications, the driver should be given added incentive as a reward for such extra effort. Each star and certification might give you the right to apply for service charge or a different rate.