Moments
Nah, this is not gonna be as sappy as the title sounds. It's actually quite dorky actually, as I can quite associate it with the parameter estimations we do in my Mathematical Statistics module. It's about finding an estimate for the unknown parameter theta using Method of Moments or Maximum Likelihood (I told you it's dorky). Anyway, I never really liked "moments", and the part that I usually just gloss over (because it's too complex for me) is that one about moment-generating functions.
Here goes the semi-sappy part. I've actually been thinking about moments, the non-statistics-related kind. I dunno, maybe it's this sudden surge of emotional activity among the people in the little sphere of people I interact with.
My new friend and fellow basso Joel had a kick-ass birthday celebration for his 19th birthday, with his mom planning the surprise party with his JC-mates on Saturday, and we sang for him (and forced him to sing solo) during choir time. His post in the forum? "I feel loved." Karen is crankier and weird and less "normal" than usual, for some reason. Must be the stress piling up? And yeah, thanks to you for introducing me to "Scrubs"! Scrubs is this comedy TV series about a guy and his life right after finishing med school. I thought it wasn't too appealing at first, because the comedy was a bit, well, too forward, and ugh, hospital environment! After a while, I realized it was cooool and nice and I think I'm gonna get hooked. This guy JD is the lead character, and walau, I think Karen knows I'm a sucker for characters that resemble the nice funny sensitive witty guy (others in this group include The OC's Seth).
Also, my good friend Jacques is undergoing stressful times I hear. He's a senior in my high school, and he's disappointed about screwing up some extempo speech thingy, not getting into the press conference (student journalist competition), and about not getting enough funds to finance a debate competition(that he successfully qualified for) in faraway Manila. All the best to you Jacko. My sister Kai is, well, coping, and I hope you're okay there! :D Kerwin is also not feeling too super lately I read (from his blog), but yeah, hopefully the new and must-watch Family Edition of The Amazing Race (I'm sad that the likable Blacks were eliminated this early), hopefully will buoy his spirits. Mike, who's working in Cebu, got some sort of big break I hear, and he's all giddy about it. Woohoo, congrats.
Carina and Myriel, my two juniors in KR, are also not very well right now too. I hope you both feel better! And Myriel, haha, don't go to Sentosa alone okay? Hehe. But really, it's a bit more serious than I thought, but I'm glad to dispense whatever advice I can give based on my own meandering experience here in Singapore.
This thing about moments amazes me, too, no end. Sometimes, you just need one magical moment to spark something up--a friendship, a dispute, a shouting match, a romance. It has to do with being at the right place at the right time too.. and I guess that's all the more reason to believe in what hopeless romantics call fate or destiny or what the vocal faithful call God's will.
Yeah, sometimes I think of the friends never would've gained if it wasn't for some random yet significant moment--like being in a waiting room of some administrator's office, like turning up for dinner at some precise time, like standing near the person in some big post-mooncake festival gathering, like getting some answer wrong in a tutorial presentation, and some random person simply stepping up to save your ass.
Unfortunately, these magical moments are so heavily disguised that not everyone can notice them. Sometimes, too, they are instantaneous moments that burn up easily, that before they could grow into something of reasonable duration, just vanish.
Thank God for these special moments. We have to watch out for them carefully, as they are lavishly spread out, and we only just need to keep a watchful eye and a listening ear.
It would be great to have some sort of Real-Life Moment-Generating Function though; just plot in the value, and you can derive the first-order, second-order, and higher-order moments.
Come to think of it, life's already like that. We make our own moments; we just have to plot in the right values.
