.:: Arctos' Corner ::.

This month's review is for fiction book Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult, which makes it the second book by the author I read, with the first being My Sister's Keeper . I picked it up at the Ng Teng Fong Hospital branch of Dignity Mama Stall on the cheap. ( Dignity Mama Stall is an initiative for youths with special needs to equip them with skills to run and manage a stall. Do consider supporting them through book donations or purchasing titles from them in person or through their online store.) Perfect Match is gripping from start to end and in Picoult's usual style, makes one wonder how far can one keep to one's moral compass when events are not happening to someone else but yourself. The story is especially poignant for me as the questions Nina had to ask herself were questions I find myself wondering too in my current line of work. Having dedicated herself to her work as a public attorney and asking her clients to have faith in the law as she worked to place crimi...

This month's review is on The Little Book That Still Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt. I borrowed the ebook copy from the local library and was surprised to find it available. The Little Book That Beats the Market and its revised edition, The Little Book That Still Beats the Market, are among recommended titles for those starting out on their investment journey. The book contains thirteen chapters, with each chapter between four to eight pages long. This made for much more manageable reading compared to thicker volumes. Joel's witty humour is also made reading fun and I breezed through the book in a little under five hours. While I am not a savvy enough investor to know whether the method Joel preaches has a good chance of beating the market, it does shed light on an easy to follow and plausible way for picking stocks for novices. That said, one should still tread carefully when investing with one's monies and not blindly follow any book or method without furthe...

Took me a little long but I finally managed to finish reading Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends & Influence People". Most reviews would state it as a "must-read", or "timeless classic", but those reviews are probably overly exaggerated. Unless one has been living under a rock or alone on a island, most of the principles should come across as common sense, which unfortunately is not all that common. That said, the book is still a recommended read in my opinion for even when we intuitively understand certain principles, it is very different from having it put into words for understanding and application. Much as the principles covered are common sense, it was hard to put them into practice in daily life as one's natural instinct is to react defensively when placed in a confrontational situation. In addition, the way one applies the principles would play a large part in how successful it is as most of the examples quoted throughout the b...

Posting more for self reference but hopefully it'll be useful for others too. :) Left-pad string with character 'c': String.prototype.padZero= function(len, c){ var s= this, c= c || '0'; while(s.length< len) s= c+ s; return s; } (Credit: kennebec from stackoverflow: convert '1' to '0001' in JavaScript .) Convert numbers between different bases (built in Javascript function): parseInt(<number>, <baseFrom>).toString(<baseTo>) Examples: parseInt("12", 10).toString(16); // returns "c" parseInt("1011", 2).toString(10); // returns 11 (Credit: faisalman from GitHubGist: baseConverter.js .)

So recently I have been (unhealthily) hooked on mobile game Mobile Legends: Bang bang  (MLBB). It is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) that harks back to my days of playing Defense of the Ancients (DotA), even though it is more commonly compared to the newer League of Legends (LoL) on PC. Since I've never played LoL, my review will be mainly based on comparison with my limited exposure to DotA. Generally for MOBA games like DotA, players had to memorize the items' effect as well as the recipe as you do not have the luxury of time to browse and read the individual item descriptions while in the game. In addition, advanced techniques such as last hitting, denying, and animation cancelling all have a strong impact on the outcome of the game, which makes it not so friendly for a noob like me. :p What I love about MLBB is that players can customize the recommended items for each hero ahead of battle so I can take my time to read and optimize the items and sequence o...

Economics 101 by Alfred Mill is an introduction to the study of economics without the heavy jargon and confusing terminology of traditional economics textbooks. I had tried multiple times before to gain an understanding of economics such as demand and supply, and how monetary policies affects the economy but could never get past the first two or three chapters. Economics 101 caught my eye at the local library with its promise to "cut out the boring explanations" and help the reader "master the major principles of finance". I am glad to say that it delivered on its promise, at least in my opinion. Alfred Mill wrote Economics 101 in a friendly and personal way, with many applicable examples to illustrate economics concepts. For example, Alfred provides the following example to show how free trade creates wealth in the opening for the chapter on International Trade and Trade Barriers: "Wealth is nothing more than the collective value of all you own. In an...

Re-posting from Huffington Post:  Get Off The Computer And Complete This Italian Teacher’s Summer Assignment. You Won’t Regret It. As spring draws to an end and summer rolls around (along with summer breaks for those lucky and young enough to still be in school), why not try out some or even all of these assignments Cesare Catà of Don Bosco High School in Fermo set for his students this summer? Sometimes, in the morning, go take a walk along the seashore completely alone : look at the way sunlight is reflected on the water and think about the things you love the most in your life; be happy. Try to use some of the new words we learned together this year : the more things you manage to say, the more things you’ll manage to think; and the more things you think, the freer you’ll be. Read as much as you possibly can. But not because you have to. Read because summers inspire adventures and dreams, and when you read you’ll feel like swallows in flight. Read because it’s the best fo...

Synopsis: Singapore got sexy and the country’s best-selling author got jealous. After five years chasing echidnas and platypuses in Australia, Neil Humphreys returns to Singapore to see if the rumours are true about the island’s newfound sexiness. This is the first time I read a book written by Neil Humphreys but I had enjoyed his witty, and often tongue-in-cheek, weekly commentaries in Today. Thus when I chanced upon his book in the library, I hesitated no further in checking it out. Written in his trademark style which many in Singapore had come to love this "ang-moh" for, Neil covers the new aspects of Singapore which did not exist when he left this island for the bigger pastures of Australia. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud on a crowded morning MRT commute on his experience at Chek Jawa, and seething at the social inequality of the Singapore Freeport. Neil managed to cover more of new Singapore in a single book than I did in 30 years in Singapore. High...

The much anticipated live-action movie remake of Disney's  Beauty and the Beast  is finally released and it certainly lived up to its hype in my opinion. The remake felt like a movie version of a musical adaption and Emma Watson turned in a credible performance as a modern  Belle. The movie kept true to most of the classic songs and included some new ones as well which I felt added to the storyline. However the scenes for "Be Our Guest" was a little disappointing in my opinion, which did not feel as grand as the animated version. The dialogue was kept close to the original, with changes made to good effect, earning a few good laughs from the audience. LeFou (played by Josh Gad) as the sidekick neglected by the object of his affections almost had me rooting for him as he struggled between his morals and standing by his best friend. Overall a great adaption of an old classic and well worth watching for old and new fans alike.

" There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless. So I commend the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun. " Ecclesiastes 8:14-15

"The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing" by Marie Kondo is at a first glance, yet another self-help book on tidying up and decluttering your space. However Kondo advocates an unconventional 'spark joy' method of deciding what to keep, rather than deciding what to throw. There are no hard and fast rules of "keep only five shirts" or "buy one item and throw two" in order to reduce one's belongings and this surprisingly helps to prevent rebounds in cluttering of one's space, according to her client's testimonies. While I have not personally attended any of her seminars, tidying my wardrobe following the KonMari method did indeed bring about a positive effect. Just note that decluttering has to be done away from one's family members, especially mothers, as cautioned by Kondo, otherwise they would tend to pick up discarded items for keeping. Here's a video of Marie Kondo's work...