22.5.11

The Death of Motion Picture Part 2: 3D

Nowadays, almost 50% of the motion pictures are in 3D. Everybody seems to dig this 3D magic especially after the infamous Avatar which (almost) perfected the technology that started around 60 years ago. Now we even have 3D handheld gaming device called Nintendo 3DS where glasses are history.

However I think 3D will kill motion pictures.

First of all, the glasses. It is unbelievable that after 60 years, we still cannot watch a 3D movie without the stupid 3D glasses that are ridiculously pricey. A good pair of it will cost us more than US$150. Sure we can rent one for 2 hours in the cinema but it is unbelievably uncomfortable. Why can't they design the shape of 3D glasses according to human skull?!

Next, the existence of 3D increase the significance of visual effect and graphical quality in making and watching movie. The viewers demand more on the graphic and the movie makers try to fulfill it. However that's the problem: they concentrate so much on graphic and (usually) ignore the other (more important) aspect of a movie: directing, plot, story, acting, dialogue, audio, character etc.

Furthermore, many viewers can't distinguish between 3D and CG. Take Clash of the Titans for instance. The 3D effect in that movie is superbly crappy and few and far in between. Most action scene in that film is computer-generated graphic and not 3D. However, many people including some movie-reviewing media wrongly considered CG as 3D.

It's actually very easy to distinguish 3D from CG (and i know most of you know). Take off the glasses and if you still can see clearly, it's CG.

With that small amount of 3D effect in most films, the price of ticket increase significantly from their 2D counterpart. Without improvement in other aspects of film mentioned above, slight improvement in graphic department can't offset the increase in ticket price and eventually viewers will lose interest.

Nowadays almost everything is in 3D. Animated movies and action movies in particular. Do we need toy story, Shrekor How to Train a Dragon in 3D? How bout action movie? Clash of the Titan, The Last Airbender, or Piranha 3D. The 3D effect in these movies is added in post production and it's very crappy. Worse, these movies completely ignore other aspect of motion picture making them unbelievably bad.

How bout the amazingly overpriced 3DTV? Few thousand bucks and all we get is a TV with few crappy glasses and few movies? Is this a scam? Nintendo can make a glasses free handheld devices so why we still do not have a glasses free TV?

Yes, it's cool to have 3D movie and Avatar really let us know 3D can be good for movies but until they improve the overall quality of motion picture, 3D will kill the motion picture we love.

17.5.11

What is Going On, PM Najib??


First, I am totally agree that economically, subsidy is inefficient in resources management. It artificially reduce the market price of goods and services and cause inequilibrium. Increasing fiscal spending in subsidy may also caused deficit in government budget and temporarily boost national output and may cause inflation in the long run.

Because of that, our PM policy make perfect sense. However, yesterday, our deputy prime minister announce that government will adjust the wages of certain teachers in Malaysia. These are the senior staff in teaching profession which mostly consist of principles in secondary school. Their wages will increase by RM 2500 to RM3000.

WHAT???

WHY???

First, RM 2500 to RM 3000 is around the average wages of a fresh degree holders in Malaysia. Furthermore, these beneficiaries are all senior staffs in which their wages already at such a high level. Increasing their wages will only causing inefficiency in teaching profession.

Besides, increasing wages of these senior staff will not increase welfare of population as they are minority with incredible level of wages.

Increment in fiscal spending by adjusting wages will have the same effect from macroeconomics point of view as subsidizing petrol. Increase in government spending will cause inflation in the same way.

When we further analyze the situation, more questions surface.

Subsidizing petrol will cause petrol price to stay low and since this is subsidy (and not price ceiling), quantity demanded and quantity supplied will not differ. So inequilibrium may not happen.

Furthermore, maintaining petrol price at low level will have positive effect on supply as cost of production for firms decrease. Increase in production, thus, increase in aggregate supply will cancel off certain portions of demand pull inflation (caused by subsidy) and inflation will be under control.

So, since we know that inflation will be a big macroeconomics problem, subsidy will moderately contributing to inflation while temporarily boost output while wages adjustment will contribute more to inflation and also temporarily boost output. It seems like an easy choice, isn't it?

Furthermore, maintaining petrol price will contribute more to the welfare of Malaysian than wages adjustment since only around 400,000 of teachers in Malaysia and of this 400,000 teachers, only around 1228 of them will get wages adjustment. However we have around 19 million vehicle in Malaysia. Assume some of Malaysian own more than 1 car, it is safe to assume we have at least 5 million car owners.

So, there we go. Subsidy vs Wages increment. Subsidy is better in efficiency and equality. It is more efficient in economy and better welfare in economy as well.

16.5.11

Petrol Price Analysis: The case of Malaysia

Petrol price is the headlines of today as our deputy PM mentioned about the rise in subsidy and hint on the hike of oil price. This will be the headline of Malaysia at least until the end of the year. Air Asia also started the oil surcharge a week ago.

However, very few people in Malaysia seems to understand this problem and will just complain about any adjustment in the petrol price especially petrol price hike. Because of that, I will try to analyse the scenario of petrol price in Malaysia and try to justify the subsidy spending of our government.

As of 11.30 AM today (16/5/2011), the WTI crude oil price is trading at US$98.78 / barrel.

So what's that in Malaysia RM/litre petrol price?

Since 1 oil barrel = 158.99 litres and RM / US$ = 3.0385 as of the same time, crude oil price in Malaysia is at:

(98.78 / 158.99) x 3.0385 = RM 1.888 / litre.

Currently the RON 95 petrol is sold at RM 1.90 / litre while the RON 97 is sold at RM 2.90 / litre.

So, what's the problem when crude oil price is below the selling price of RON95 and RON97?

Of course there are processing and refining costs of crude oil but these costs are fixed costs and are minimally affect the actual costs of per litre petrol. The variable costs of labour is also way too small to include in our estimation.

Since Malaysia is a oil producing country, and when crude oil price is below petrol selling price, why do we need a price hike?

The significant costs of petrol firms in Malaysia such as Shell and Caltex are non-operating costs such as marketing costs, advertising costs, etc. They spend way too much on marketing and advertising that caused their total costs and average costs to rise beyond crude oil price. Subsidy therefore will rise as well.

So back to our question: should petro price rise in Malaysia?

No.

Instead of lowering subsidy and increase the petrol price, government should control or eliminate the marketing and advertising costs of oil firms. By doing so, per litre petrol cost will drop significantly and the current petrol price can be maintained.

The fear and threat of inflation has forced Bank Negara Malaysia to have a rate hike of our Overnight Policy Rate by 25 basis point to 3 percent. This is undoubtedly increase the saving rate as return of saving increase.

Since the equilibrium of Macroeconomics is all about Expenditure = Saving or Injection = Leakages, with the increase in saving, the public expenditure (subsidy) will not be a big problem now as compared to inflationary force.

In the end, using economic analysis or simple mathematics calculation, I think petrol price should not be rise and the opportunity cost of increasing petrol price surpass benefit of reducing subsidy.

14.5.11

The Death of Motion Picture

Today, in my opinion, motion pictures, aka movie, is dead.

Not dying but dead.

The reason is simple. People do not watch good movies anymore. They prefer garbage over good movies. As a result, our cinema is flooded with tons and tons of garbage and only handful of good movies.

The main reason this phenomenon happens is because of obsession to action for those who watch movie. For some reason, action is the most important element in a movie and they willing to pay their hard earned money to watch anything with action, crappy or not.

They totally ignore other (more) important aspects of movie, such as acting, directing, pace, dialogue, story, character development, detail linking main plot etc.

As a result, nowadays we are flooded with movies like Transformers (1 and 2), green hornet, 2012, clash of the titans, G. I. Joe and other superbly crappy movie that have nothing but action scenes which I personally do not think they manage to excel at.

A good action movie does not have to be flooded with action scenes. Look at some great action movies such as die hard, star wars or Indiana Jones. The action scene in these movies are few and far between which will create suspense and excitement.

Of course in the last 5 years, we do have several great action movies such as Avatar, The Dark Knight, Inception, kick ass etc. but the ratio of bad action movies and good action movies is at amazingly high level.

Nowadays, the only way a movie can make the box office list is either action movie or animated movie. The rest, although they may receive critical acclaimed, will never get anywhere near the top. Movies such as The Way Back, 127 Hours, The King's Speech and social network did not really shine in the ticketing department.

Looking ahead, I do not see anyway this scenario will change. Action movies (no matter how crappy they are) will rule the world of motion pictures. With the release of Transformers 3, X-men first class, pirate of the Caribbean 4, and captain America, let just hope that they will not be that bad!!

10.5.11

6 / 2 (1 + 2)

Recently such a mathematics question suddenly becoming a hit on and off the internet. Everybody seems to have the answer and everybody is confident of their answer. Various mathematics experts commented on it and it continues to be a hot topic.

The biggest problem with this question is the answer, 1 or 9. Some say 9 is the answer as:

6 / 2 (3) = 3 (3) = 9

which follows the order of operation, BODMAS which stand for branket, order, division and multiplication, addition and subtraction or PEMDAS which stand for parentheses, exponential, multiplication and division, addition and subtraction.

However, from my point of view, which I am certain I am correct, the answer should be 1.

WHY???

The reason is simple. Let me first tell you why 9 is incorrect. Most people think that since 2 is not in a parenthesis with (1+ 2), then we should do 6/2 first before multiply by 3 in the parenthesis but this is incorrect.

Any number before a parenthesis is called coefficient or parameter. In mathematics, we should solve the parameter first before solving other operation. To better emphasize my point, let's replace the (1 + 2) with (x), so the problem will be:

6 / 2 (x)

Now since 2 is the coefficient of x, so we should solve 2 (x) first which equals to 2x and then solve the rest which is

6 / 2x = 3 / x

Since x = 1 + 2 = 3, so

3 / 3 = 1

8.5.11

Singapore General Election 2011: Good Job Singaporean!!


Finally, after more than 4 decades as a nation, Singapore residents realize and show their government how they feel which is something they did not manage to do for the last 15 times.

Singapore government is not a bad government. There are countless governments that are way worse than them.

However that's not the point. The point is government is inefficient and the smaller the government, the better that nation will be.

We all know that Singapore government is among the biggest government in the world for their nation and the closest to socialism for a democratic government. They control most of the resources of Singapore through their massive state owned firm called Temasek group which hold most of the blue chip firms of that nation. As a result, Singapore government spend around 75% on operating spending and the rest on development spending since 1965 (the last budget, budget of 2011 - 73.8% on operating spending and the rest on development spending).

This scenario can happen primarily of the "amazingly" high wages received by Singapore public servant. As we all known (look at my previous post), Singapore prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, is the highest earning executive political leader in the world with US$3,122,982 ( S$/US$ = 0.807 as of today) which is ridiculous for an economy that only has an annual GDP of US$ 245 Billion (2010). That is especially ridiculous when that data is compared to the wages of other political leader around the world (refer to my earlier post).

Furthermore, Singapore economy are not as well maintained as many people thinks. Refer to the Macroeconomic objectives, we can see why:

1) Stable economy growth.

Singapore economy are growing fast but not stable. Refer to subprime crisis of 2007/8, their economy shrank more than 10% which is an indicator of poor and unstable economy (compare to their nearest economy, Malaysia, which only shrank by 3.5%). This is mainly due to their dependency to international trade and amazingly high labour and capital mobility which may be good during healthy economy scenario but not during crisis.

2) High employment.

Singapore unemployment rate in 2010 was 3.1% which is around the same Malaysia (3.4%) and much lower than unemployment rate of 8.9% for US during the same period.

3) Price stability

Singapore inflation rate in 2010 was 2.8% which is slightly higher than most economies during the same period but not significantly. (Malaysia = 0.6%)

4) External Balance.

Singapore is excellent in international trade. The Balance of Payment of Singapore for 2010 recorded a surplus of around S$57 billion. The current account excel with surplus of more than S$67 billion. This is an indicator that Singapore net export is superbly contributing to their economy.During the same period, balance of payment of Malaysia is around RM80 billion surplus.

Equally distribution of wealth, high productivity, sound currency do not yield excellent result for Singapore too. Singapore is not particularly good with Gini coefficient (indicator of income gap) of 42.5 which is the highest in Asia beside Hong Kong (higher Gini coefficient = higher income gap). Malaysia has Gini of 37.9 which is way better than Singapore. Amazingly 42.5 is even worse than many poor third world nations such as Trinidad and Tobago (40.3), Sri Langka (41.1), and cambodia (40.7).

High productivity of labour also does not shine for Singapore as one third of Singapore population are foreigners and majority of that are from Malaysia. As a result, productivity of labour in Singapore is insignificant.

Sound currency. Singapore dollar is a resilient currency against major currencies in the world including USD, Euro and Pound but it is not particularly brilliant compared to major asia currencies such as Ringgit, Rupiah and Baht. From January 2006 until May 2011, SGD appreciates between 0-6 percent against China RMB, Malaysia Ringgit, Cambodia Riel, Indonesia Rupiah and Thai Baht.

So, Singapore economy are not particularly and significant better than their neighbour such as Malaysia but yet the Prime minister of Singapore receives 40,700 percent higher wages than Malaysia prime minister (US$ 7640). This is clearly the sign of socialism or communism where Government control majority of resources and private sectors are discriminated.

TO CONCLUDE, WELL DONE SINGAPOREAN IN THE LAST GENERAL ELECTION. WHETHER YOU DECREASE THE MAJORITY OF THE RULING PARTY BECAUSE YOU SEE THE PROBLEM FACED BY SINGAPORE IS NOT IMPORTANT. THE POINT IS PAP NOW KNOW THAT SINGAPOREAN STARTED TO CHANGE. THE PROCESS MAY TAKE TIME BUT EVENTUALLY THE RULING PARTY WILL NOT ACT AS A SOCIALISM GOVERNMENT AND THIS WILL SURELY BE A POSITIVE CHANGE FOR SINGAPORE

5.5.11

Malaysia & Hong Kong(or probably world)'s Highway Drivers!!



I am terribly dissapointed with the drivers on highway of Malaysia and Hong Kong (since I used these 2 only). Their on the road attitutes are unforgiving and downright crazy. They complain all the time about collisions are caused by external factors (such as road condition, weather etc.) but in reality, majority of the collisions are caused by drivers themselves. Since I used the services of highway all the time, here are the top 5 reasons why collisions happens.

Number 5: headlight off during rain.

From my observation, majority of drivers on highway do not turn on their headlight even when we have heavy rain and darken environment. Even worse is when they turn on their dashboard light and not the headlight. What's the point? saving electricity? or just too plain stupid to notice that other cars (especially cars in front of you) may not be able to see you clearly?

Number 4: reckless heavy vehicle drivers.


This one is directed to heavy vehicle drivers such as lorry drivers. Do you know you are relatively slower and bigger than everything else on the highway so can you stay on the left all the time? What's the reason to overtake? Save few minutes? Besides, for bus drivers, do you know that buses are considered as heavy vehicle as well? can you do what lorry drivers should do?


Number 3: Signals lights

It's ok to overtake when the situation is safe but can you give some signals to other vehicle by flashing you signal lights. How hard is it to push the black cylinder on the back of your steering wheel? Based of my observation, more than 95% of overtake in highway of Malaysia and Hong Kong do not flash their signal lights when they are overtaking.

Number 2: Overtaking

It's not ok to overtake when the situation is not safe (safe to overtake = no vehicle is 2 seconds in front or behind of you on the right/outside lane). It's not ok to overtake from the left. It's not ok to overtake and block ambulances. However, highway drivers do it all the time. How much time can be safe by overtaking a car? How sure are you that you can overtake safely? Why gamble lifes of you, your love one and other drivers simply to save 5 minutes?

Number 1: Speed

Everybody knows higher speed = lower reaction time = more likely to have collision = more likely to have more severe collision. You may think that your reaction time is fast and relatively safer when drive fast but you can always do better if drive slowly. Which one is more important, save 5 minutes or safe arrival? altough the chance of collision may be small but why take the chance? the opportunity cost of driving fast is too high that probably only stupid people will choose to do it.

Of course other attitute problems not mentioned here can also cause collision but these are the 5 that happens most often from my observation. The biggest problem for highway safety is attitute problem can be on everyone regardless of their race, religion, education background, work, gender etc.

So did you do any of those actions and if you do, ask yourself, it is worthy?