Wilfred Segovia look alike, maybe in 10 years

He's an expat too!

http://news.inq7.net/entertainment/index.php?index=1&story_id=13213

Those who actually read this blog, get the reward of seeing the photo. :)

I haven't told Wil yet either.

i spent most of the day editing a chapter of this macro book. ended up learning a bit about Excel. Lots of the lessons in this book are Excel based, so try learning Macro that way, where u can really muck around with the data. It's a good alternative approach I think. Book doesn't focus too much on flexible or sticky prices, rather it's more of a constrained or unconstrained equilibrium (well, isn't a sticky price a constraint? )

climb this weekend is shaping up. Must study tonight.

I recited with all three of my professors today, Clarete-Canlas-Reside. That actually means something. I don't recite often. Yeah, me! I don't. I just want to take the notes and get out of there -- go back to read basic econ books coz those I know. Today, I just had something to say, for some reason. Maybe the extra reading I've been doing is paying off.

I was in an academic mood. I even inquired about the Ph.D program and attended the Friday seminar (today's topic, Exchange and Institutions care of Dr. de Dios, more bits on the New Institutional Economics field). At the end of the presentation, Dr. de dios flashed pictures of graves of famous economists. That's his new hobby. Collecting these things from the internet. Adam Smith in Edinburgh. Marx in London. Hayek somewhere in Germany.

Who knew that John Stuart Mill was buried in Avignon? I would have checked it out, had I known.

there are days when i wonder why i am in the field that i am in. economics.

the amount of knowledge that professors and textbooks take for granted that you should know. . .grates on me. sometimes i just want to raise my hand in class and say, "Explain it from the top! I don't even know why the graph looks that way, so don't draw any more lines on the board til I get it."

They should sign-post the math skills required for the next lesson, the week before.

E.g. For next week's lecture on monetary policy shocks, please review auto-regression, identification, and determinants.

So, I'm always catching up, catching up, catching up. I hate it. I want to strangle myself.

There are times that i think that i want to ditch graduate studies and just do something else

But then there are the other moments, the saving graces that let one stick at it. Like today's lecture on the import quotas and voluntary export restraints by Dr. Punchy was cool. Maybe it's coz I actually got 60% of the lecture.

Paraphrasing McLuhan: Everytime people are searching for their identity, or trying to preserve their identity, violence in some form is inevitable.

had a 10k run this morning at the Fort, not my favorite place to run. I like boring flat tracks in the outdors, like Camp Aguinaldo. I don't like concrete or even asphalt. I need new shoes.

Finished up by Basic Life Support course today, the complement to the First Aid one I took about three weeks ago. One less requirement I need accomplished to become a full fledged AMCI member. Only thing left now is the 15K run, skills tests, a 3 day climb at Mt. Ugu and a 4-5 day one at Mt. Halcon (for the induction).

suddenly people like Wil, Bob and Maf have a blog.

Today, I woke up early again. That meant, that I dropped my sis off in her school. I wished her a good day, and then drove to my own place: the school. I've been sleeping in the Revo lately. It's warm. It's dry. It's especially nice to sleep inside it when its cold and rainy outside. So I've taken to having morning naps in the Revo. Naps in the Library or in the teaching fellow office suck. I sleep in til 10 mins before class starts. Midway through my nap, I get an SMS from Sarah: Dr. Clarete won't be coming in today, because he's ill. He gets ill quite a bit. I think it's due to intellectual disquiet. He's got this research project that is just gnawing in his head. . .so with the 90 mins free, I go off to the Rizal library, and decided to read about flow of funds evidence in monetary policy shocks. i'm humming along nicely. i'm learning all about assumptions and why certain vectors have to be orthogonal to each other. one day, this will all make sense. i head back for my 1-4 pm class. first period we learn a model on exchange rate determintation. Thank you, Dr. Canlas. later, we hear from Dr. Reside why the Philippines is NOT like Argentina. Lots of similarities, but there are a few differences. 4 PM. I go off to the auditorium. Cong. Joey Salceda to talk about this same issue. He's a riot. He makes lots of good points. I learned a few things.

Picked up sis. Got home. Had dinner with Mom, freshly flew in from BKK for a doctor's appointment. Crossing my fingers that there's nothing wrong. We drank bad pink champagne tonight, along with the curry she brought over.