All entries for Friday 15 January 2010

Opportunity Cost

A daily concept that I wanna remind myself all the time. -- Always measure the opportunity cost of my study, my travel, and my life.. :-)

Opportunity cost is the value of the next-best choice available to someone who has picked between several mutually exclusive choices.

Examples:

A person who has $15 can either buy a CD or a shirt. If he buys the shirt the opportunity cost is the CD and if he buys the CD the opportunity cost is the shirt. If there are more choices than two, the opportunity cost is still only one item, never all of them.

An organization that invests $1 million in acquiring a new asset instead of spending that money on maintaining its existing asset portfolio incurs the increased risk of failure of its existing assets. The opportunity cost of the decision to acquire a new asset is the financial security that comes from the organization's spending the money on maintaining its existing asset portfolio.

: 15 Jan 2010 18:07 |  Tags: Random |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Books are poisons

Reading reading reading.... and then started day dreaming about words people say about reading.

My Ancient Chinese Study teacher in college is a person with a lot of characteristics. She's knowledgable, calm, however in a way, indifferent sometimes. She read so many books, knows about all the histories and ancient readings, and what she told us one day was "Books are poisons...You're poisoned right at the moment you open a book." Obviously it shocked everybody, including me. I couldn't forget what she said. And her reasoning was difficult to argue. She said, "Because once you started reading, you started absorbing the knowledge, and you would gradually or even just a bit being influenced by the contents in the book. Maybe you learnt something new, your views are different, your thinkings have changed...etc. But are you sure what's in the book are good for you, or your learning?"

It's so difficult, isn't it? To have the ability to read selectively and critically all the time. You need to have a very strong mind, yet a very open heart to learn new ideas. It's an art, and a wisdom.

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Another saying is more common to our daily lives -- Walking for a thousand miles wins over reading a thousand books. (direct translation) or "He that travels far knows much."

Then I started having ichy feet....... :-)

: 15 Jan 2010 17:22 |  Tags: Random |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem