Picasso

It was Vivian’s birthday. I took a half-day off, and the two of us paid a short visit to the Heritage Museum for the Picasso exhibition.

The place was surprisingly crowded in a weekday afternoon - full of schoolchildren going there for a session of general education. I must say I am not particularly fond of the Spanish giant of modern painting. Nonetheless, it was an impressive experience to see many of his famous paintings and craftworks flesh and blood, in their actual size.

My personal favorite is Minotaur with a Javelin and Woman Hostage - a simple monochrome sketch of four characters. Alas, if it were painted last year, I would believe the Minotaur monster represents the Americans and the room Iraq or Afghanistan.

Somehow it reminds me of his Guernica.

沐浴

Although it might have been somewhat impulsive to plan the assassination of the Qin Emperor, we should not be too critical with Zhang Liang (張良).

For those who have little idea about Chinese philosophy or astrology, the life cycle of everything – from each individual living organism to an organization as a whole – consists of twelve stages, which form a circle of reincarnation. The first few stages are: growth (長生), bath (沐浴), mature (冠帶), honor (臨官), and climax (帝旺).

And, what is bath (沐浴)? It is a stage between growth and becoming mature – a period full of uncertainty and rebellion.  For bath is not bath; in ancient Chinese, it means the steam and vapor that just come out of the water and has not yet become the cloud. It has the potential of rising to a high level, but it is also fragile and unstable. A little hiccough may bring it back to where it originates from.

A necessary stage before one could go far.

PS. The subsequent stages are decline (衰), sickness (病), death (死), tomb (墓), extinction (絕), embryo (胎), and culture (養). Ironically, the extinction of a matter is, by definition, the growth of its mother (or, actually, the predecessor). This is the original meaning of seeing life at extinction (絕處逢生).

留侯論

Just to share with you a classic essay of Su Shi (蘇軾):

古之所謂豪傑之士者，必有過人之節。人情有所不能忍者，匹夫見辱，拔劍而起，挺身而鬥，此不足為勇也。天下有大勇者，卒然臨之而不驚，無故加之而不怒。此其所挾持者甚大，而其志甚遠也。

夫子房受書於圯上之老人也，其事甚怪；然亦安知其非秦之世，有隱君子者，出而試之。觀其所以微見其意者，皆聖賢相與警戒之義；而世不察，以為鬼物，亦已過矣。且其意不在書。

當韓之亡，秦之方盛也，以刀鋸鼎鑊待天下之士。其平居無罪夷滅者，不可勝數。雖有賁育，無所復施。夫持法太急者，其鋒不可犯；而其勢未可乘。子房不忍忿忿之心，以匹夫之力，而逞於一擊之間；當此之時，子房之不死者，其間不能容髮，蓋亦已危矣。千金之子，不死於盜賊。何者？其身之可愛，而盜賊之不足以死也。子房以蓋世之材，不為伊尹、太公之謀，而特出於荊軻、聶政之計，以僥倖於不死，此圯上老人之所為深惜者也。是故倨傲鮮腆而深折之。彼其能有所忍也，然後可以就大事，故曰「孺子可教」也。

PS. Although written in traditional Chinese, I suppose this little essay is simple enough to be understood. A translation to modern Chinese could be found at http://xs3.tcsh.tcc.edu.tw/~fish/chinese/tang_song/su%20shi_liu%20hou%20lun.htm

But, on the other hand, if you think you know what I’m saying, you’ve definitely misunderstood me.

Order

Shortly after the final MB examination, I had another chance to visit Euterpe's kindergarten and do some voluntary work.

It was a rainy day and I arrived slightly early. The school had not yet started. A few dozens of kindergarten girls and their parents were gathering outside the entrance and waiting. I naturally stood aside and pretended to be a piece of wallpaper.

It took probably no more than 10 minutes before we could get in, but we seemed to be waiting forever. The sky was as gloomy as it was apocalypse. There was a small eaves outside the school and, to my amazement, most of the girls were gathering without much noise. A few late comers were grouping themselves in four or five  and shared their umbrellas. When there were more and more people and some began to grumble, a few obviously more senior girls decided to keep the order of the crowd and led the others to sing hymns.

Somehow, a scene in Casablanca, in which Victor Laszlo led the people in Rick's Cafe to sing La Marseillaise, flashed through my mind.

PS. It is not book knowledge. I have no doubt these girls have the best-of-ever form of education.

Advice

(My discussion with VW continued.)

"Szeto, if we have to invest for ourselves, do you have any specific advice?" VW was, as always, humble.

"Alas, I suppose you can get much better advice from Warren?" I smiled.

"I'm afraid it is not always easy to follow Warren's footsteps. Many a time I find his approach rather aggressive..." the professor of hepatology murmured.

"That really depends on your point of view. Although leverage is sometimes used, by and large Warren doesn't trade that much; he just buys at a low price and holds. If you follow the definition of Benjamin Graham, Warren is a true investor - and a daring one, too!"

"How about you?"

"I trade - not very often, but I do buy at one time and sell at another. No item is permanent in my portfolio and everything could be given away when the price is good. By Graham's classification, I am unfortunately a speculator - maybe a conservative one, but a speculator all the same."

Fund

Other than the system of examination, VW and I did have some spare time to discuss other casual issues.

For example, investment.

Don’t be surprised. Even genuine academics like VW need savings and investment in order to prepare for the future. Although our professor of hepatology always claims that he is an idiot of finance and stock market, what he does proves that he is the most intelligent amateur.

“I just put my money on index fund.” He said with some hesitation, “Em… I know you are against putting money on mutual funds.”

“Yes and no,” I smiled, “I am against most forms of mutual fund because the management fee is often high, but not many fund managers do consistently perform better than the reference index. In fact, even if we could find a highly capable fund manager, I’m not sure what we should expect from him. It is not a good idea for him to be hard working and keep managing the fund – if the portfolio is a good one to start with, you don’t need to change it very often; every transaction has a cost. But, if he just sits back and spends an hour on the portfolio every month, why couldn’t I take up the task myself?”

VW nodded, and I went on, “But index fund is a different story. The management fee is much lower, and frequent transaction does not exist. I mean, if one has no time to take care of his own money, index fund is probably the best choice. But, I must say I still believe it is better to invest ourselves. After all, if we care to spend time choosing books for our shelf and dresses for our closet, why shouldn’t we spare a trace of effort and decide where to put our money to prepare for our retirement?”

0.36

The very implication of the fact that we do not live in a one (or two) dimension world may skip your eyes.

To put it simply, if each of us have different preferences on various aspects of a topic, a person with a balanced opinion of all individuals on all aspects of the problem (that is, the center of gravity of the system) does not always have at least 50% of the vote when running against someone with an obviously biased opinion. In fact, that person with a balanced mind could only guarantee himself to be supported by at least approximately 36% of the people. (The exact percentage is actually 1/e, where e equals 2.71828.)

In other words, a simple majority is usually biased; a well-balanced opinion is very often objected in various aspects by the majority of people.

Or, as Bill Cosby said: I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is o try to please everyone.

PS. In the above elaboration, I have done away with all difficult mathematical models and the hypothetical construction of a multi-dimension universe. Interested visitors should refer to Andrew Caplin and Barry Nalebuff’s On 64%-majority rule and Aggregation and social choice: a mean voter theorem, both published in Econometrica.