"bliss point." elliptical indifference curves about x0,y0, where any x,y > x0,y0 gives disutility but is a normal good where x,y < x0,y0. this is when we had not started bursting.
top picture's a little blur. you can tell when i've been using my handphone camera.
it has been 7-8 months since i blogged about the old man frying char kway teow at st margaret's drive (you can check under august/september 05). never did i think i would find char kway teow for less than 5 pounds in london.
first... the build up. i rushed through labour economics and the economics of time today, being not very interested in them. when i reached welfare econ though i started drawing the boxes and curves properly, following each logical step. it's amazing what actually being interested in a topic does to your pace and quality of revision, and i forgot how much it mattered.
it helped that jonathan was there and was willing to listen and trash out ideas with me. i love discussion and finding out where i went wrong. which is really hard to do when you're just orthogonalizing matrices.
so i got stuck on the last question. well i answered it well enough, but there was a teasing little part at the end of the solution which said (actually, this applies even when A has an absolute advantage in producing both X and Y.) Yes, I'm supposed to know that, isn't that Ricardo's principle of comparative advantage? didn't we all illustrate that in JC with numerical examples? But now we're trying to shift to more formal analysis and it just didn't seem to make sense trying to analyse it the conventional way.
but i skipped, went to macro and halfway through i thought... yes... the trading line is not the one joining the vertices where they specialize (as it is in the simple illustrated case in the lectures). it's at a price favourable to both B and A until B's maximum production after which there is a kink and A then reverts back to it's old opportunity cost ratio. That price will then be determined by smth else (how powerful A or influential B is, stuff we don't need to get worried too much about) Pretty simple, but I did miss it and I was pleased when I did get it. Sorry, you probably didn't get much. But I wanted to note it down as a moment when something actually comes to you in a flash. It does happen!
thinking so much. makes you hungry. girish brought us to find much anticipated singaporean food. took the northern line to zone 4. it's not the furthest i've been on the tube, but it strikes me how little i've explored london. when i was in singapore, and particularly when i could borrow the car to drive, i remember driving all the way to changi village to eat nasi lemak, or going to chong pang, jurong etc... maybe london is bigger. still perhaps it's just being unfamiliar with the suburbs. anyway... it was a bit more "mr bean country" (i.e. expectations of what london is supposed to look like before i come, or "little britain country" for the more hip), with two-storied houses where you could actually see past the next block. then again mr bean was made 20 yrs ago when the uk was still under the conservatives so. but i've been to liverpool where i sort of sense that "british feeling" which you don't get so much in london where it's so cosmopolitan. so where is this mall going to rise out of? well it came sure enough, amidst drive-thru fast food restaurants (aaah, western suburbia!). the mall had a strangely singaporean feel. the food was even more strangely singaporean (actually quite malaysian). it was pretty close to the real thing. but. the char kway teow had no cockles. they had no teh alia. laksa also no cockles. but good enough. i was like wtf, laksa. anyway. we ate so much. i was defeated by my hokkien mee. oh, no stingray, oh jian or carrot cake. give a man some food and he wants a banquet. ok. mai hiam boey pai. singaporean food court food. quite stunning already.
the idea of living in the suburbs is quite enchanting really, considering that we may have our very own 2-storey home for 70 quid a month. maybe it's just my usual self liking wherever i am currently not staying. (actually that's not true bankside is pretty much fine cept for lack of amenities nearby but i love walking over the thames every day and we're in a pretty artsy center with large rooms). maybe i will regret it when i curse the northern line for stalling at golder's green for forever. but i don't know. i like things when they are less claustrophobic sometimes, especially when it comes to living. but. i'm sure it's who you live with that makes one a happy person (or not) at the bottom of it all.
ok. had a few discussions (i vaguely remember alberto fujimori, inflation in singapore etc etc). i tried much talked about mat�, an argentinian drink made from the leaves of the yerba mat� plant. mr mordcovich introduced it in an article in spanish class one day and i was glad to finally try it, thanks to miguel. it confirmed my taste in exotic bitter things (yes, though i much prefer it with sugar) and it tastes likes japanese green tea with a nicer aftertaste. ok. not very readable today.
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