Martin Lee's Article on WSJ

Read some online news and threads about the recent Martin Lee incident in HK. If you don't know about it, here is a good summary:
http://zonaeuropa.com/20071026_1.htm

Regardless of whether I support the point of view in Martin's original article (that probably worth another blog post), I am totally disappointed at the response of some of major medias in HK. To incline towards one side is something (I now believe that no newspaper is, or can be, neutral), but to condemn the other side with provoking words and false accusations is something else. I think the western medias can only see this incident as a silly soap opera from some of the news articles.

I am really worried about the future of HK media.

2 Books

Randomly picked up a book which I bought a while ago, 尋訪東西哲學的境界 by 梁燕成. It is surprising not boring (compared to another one I bought together). He went through all the different philosophies in the East and the West, using a lively first person conversation mode which is easy to understand, and ultimately tried to reach the conclusion that Christianity goes beyond all those philosophies and includes the spirits in them. I am only a third way through the book, and can't wait to finish it. Given that I am kind of tired of the endless bible studies and sermons which seem to repeat things unrelated to my life over and over again (largely due to my ignorance perhaps), this book may inspire me to look at Christianity from a different perspective, and start to look for more readings which can broaden my understanding about the religion.

Recently got the Feel 100% #16 from Hong Kong, the final one. I am glad that it has finally ended. I still remember it was published once a year during my highschool days, which was well over 17 years ago. After that it got to the market less and less frequently, and I think I have waited this one for over 2 years. After finishing the finale prompted me to read some of the older issues again. And interestingly, even for a comic book like this, I perceived new things. Most notably, for some of the behavior of characters in the book, I can now see them happening among my friends around. And I can now understand some of those behaviors which I used to think only happens in movies or novels.

A Little Card Arrived by Mail

Finally got my green card after 3 and 1/2 years...and all the document preparation and filing, body checks, fingerprinting, etc...
No more waiting in long lines at immigration after a long 12-hour flight
No more worry to bring several documents with me on trips in order to get back into US
No more need to apply for new H1B visa and pay $$ to get the visa stamp in embassy in HK
No more asking around for the latest news on immigration
No more checking USCIS websites to get the latest progress

And if I got laid off today, I will get paid by the government for 3 months!

If You Laugh At This...

Either you are still in school, or you are really geeky. I really like it though :)

e^x and a constant were walking down the street. Suddenly, the constant notices a differential operator walking along the other side of the street. "Oh, no!" exclaims the constant. "I've got to run away! You've got to hide me! There's a differential operator... he could reduce me to nothing!" "Hmmmph," came the haughty reply. "I'm e^x. He can't do anything to me." So e^x walked across the street and introduced himself. "Hi. How are you doing? I am e^x," he bragged. "Pleased to meet you," replied the differential operator. "I'm d/dy."

Blow Water

Literally. This is classic. What can you do with a bunch of empty beer bottles in a party? Here is how it went after a BBQ at my place the past Sunday. If you don't have time, skip over to the last one:

Tunning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhCrtBpaEe0

Warm up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAc9Kb4qWQg

Rehearsal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al7mnmiYGCo

Concert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmGFqJtc-Mo

Somewhat Related

Tonight I watched the movie 独自等待 again while replying emails. I like this Chinese movie much more than the other 大成本制造 such as 夜宴, 黄金甲, etc. It is more humane and reflects what's happening in China - young girls dating elder guys who have money.

Then I browsed the Next Magazine, and was caught by the headline "新歡細廿二年　黃秋生拋妻棄子". I guess these kind of things are so common in the society. While people are condemning these, some of them undoubtedly would choose to do the same IF given a choice. Sometimes I really wonder what does marriage mean to those people, and whether they can foresee themselves going through these when they first got married.

That reminds me of the "Stumbling on Happiness" book I am reading these days, which explains we may not know ourselves as well as we thought, and what we perceive to make ourselves happy in the future is often not true.

Too much random thoughts. I should go to bed now.

5x5x5

After getting the Rubik's 5x5x5 for about a month, finally I picked up my mind and dedicated 4 hours straight into solving it over the weekend.

The trick is to reduce the 5x5x5 to a 3x3x3. It is not as hard as I thought, although at certain stages there are steps that definitely need to be memorized, and I simply looked them up online. It was quite fun, but I think I won't do it again...solving the 5x5x5 once is enough. I'll continue to work on my goal of solving a 3x3x3 under a minute.

Geocoding on HK Maps

Finally I am able to locate my HK home on Google Maps!
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=238+king's+road,+hong+kong&ie=UTF8&z=16

Yeah, Chinese works too:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=zh-TW&geocode=&q=%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E8%8B%B1%E7%9A%87%E9%81%93238%E8%99%9F&ie=UTF8

And the driving directions somewhat works...still plenty of work to do.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=238+king's+road,+hong+kong&daddr=mongkok&ie=UTF8

Stumbling on Happiness

Gloria borrowed this book from library today. Like the author said, on first glance I thought it's one of those self-help book. I flipped a couple pages, and it has already caught my attention. Seems it's actually about the study of happiness from a Harvard psychology professor. The mere existence of a quote from Steven Levitt (author of Freakonomics) on the cover makes it worth reading.

Coincidentally, I was just reading 壹週刊 and 李碧華 mentioned this book in her column "有 一 本 書 《 Stumbling on Happiness 》 （ 《 快 樂 為 什 麼 不 幸 福 》 ） ， 由 在 美 國 哈 佛 大 學 任 教 授 的Daniel Gilbert （ 吉 爾 伯 特 ） 所 著 。 「 英 國 皇 家 學 會 科 學 書 籍 獎 」 之 得 獎 作 品 。 內 容 是 以 科 學 角 度 探 索 人 們 如 何 追 求 快 樂 。 還 沒 讀 過 這 本 書 ， 只 是 書 名 吸 引 了 我..."

So it will definitely go on my reading list now.

Sicko

Watched Michael Moore's new movie Sicko about the broken American healthcare system. I can't agree more with this. Gloria visited the hospital and did a couple checkups in December, and we keep getting bills that summed up to a couple hundreds afterwards. We are supposed to be the "well insured" already. A similar treatment in Beijing last year is only one hundred RMB in Beijing, paid in full without insurance. In US every month the company pays almost $1000 for the health insurance for me. Just where does all the money go?

However, I do believe there are some false fact in the movie. Here is a critic:
http://blogs.nypost.com/movies/archives/2007/06/kyle_smith_on_m.html

One of the main criticism is that the entire part of Cuba is false, possibly a propaganda created by the Cuban government. This is totally possible. But still, I don't oppose MM adding this to his movie. Afterall, when you are in a country where 65% doesn't know where London is, and Bush was successfully re-elected, you need something a bit dramatic to stir up a change in people's mind.

You gotta love this video

福佳始终靠你
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j3vh55SSVw

Discussion on 頭條新聞
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXlWG-rQMNw&NR=1

I am glad that Hong Kong people still have the freedom to publish and view something like this (typical Hong Kong style humor). One thing that reminds me Hong Kong still have hope over Mainland China.

Rubik's Cube

After been amazed at someone solving the cube in 2 minutes blind folded when I attended a friend's wedding a while ago, I recently decided to pick up Rubik's Cube. After two days of practices, now I can successfully solve it in about 10 minutes. Still a long way to go...and a lot more to learn. It is definitely fun.

Some interesting facts I found:
- It is invented in 1976 (before I was born!)
- It is said to be the world's best selling toy (but guess what, I cannot find it in Target or Toys R Us)
- The world record for solving a standard cube is 9.7 seconds
- Beyond the 3x3x3 cube, there are names for 4x4x4 (Rubik's Revenge) and 5x5x5 (Rubik's Professor's Cube)
- Someone patented a method to create cubes up to 11x11x11
- There are 4 dimensional cubes and 5 dimensional cubes, and only a handful people reportedly have solved them
- Despite having more than 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 permutations, a cube can be solved in <26 moves.

A little math would show that only a tiny tiny percentage of those permutations have ever existed on Earth.

Ron Paul 2008

Hillary Clinton used to top my list of presidential candidates for 2008, until recently someone introduced Ron Paul to me. I think there has never been a politician whose views align so perfectly as mine. Here are some major issues he mentioned:

- He supports cutting taxes. I cannot agree with this anymore, with about 40% of my paycheck goes into vacuum last year, with a large portion of it funding the war which I oppose strongly.

- He is totally against the war, and argues that the US' involvement in the middle east directly lead to 9/11. A less aggressive foreign policy can be of great benefit to the US and the rest of the world.

- On immigration, he voiced out what the silent majority of the US had in mind - the illegal immigrants ("Undocumented workers"? Give me a break.) should not enjoy a short cut to getting residency, nor should they be eligible for any welfare.

Too bad I am not eligible to vote.

What a Game

After watching NBA games for 15 years, finally I know what it feels like to support a home team. The Warriors this year is definitely legendary, and everyone in the Bay Area, whether they are fans of basketball, are following the games these days. Tonight's game is awesome, and I think I have never supported a team so wholeheartedly after MJ retired.

Warriors should be able to move at least pass the 2nd round, neither Jazz or Rockets have the energy level to match them. Given the large population of Chinese in this area, I wonder which team they would support if the Rockets get to play here. As for myself, no doubt I will be on the side of the Warriors for the rest of the playoffs. What a season - even towards the middle of the regular games I still had no hope for them. Who would think they could stir up the emotions of the entire area and make the fans in the arena the best fans in NBA.

What Would She Think...

Just read a news that 龔如心's funeral will be an extravagant one.Just the flowers will all be imported from Holland, and cost millions of HKD. Given that she is known for her meanness (allegedly she spent less then 3000 HKD a month), I wonder what her response would be if she learns that the money spent on her funeral is more then what she has ever spent throughout her whole life. So ironic.

Never Spoiled by Food

I think I am spoiled by 5-star hotels. When in Hawaii, the last two days we had to stay in motels far away from Honolulu. The motels were not too bad (well, not the worst ever, nothing can beat the Phoenix motel in Death Valley), but it's enough to affect my mood. I think I would not complain a couple years ago, but recent travels have definitely raised the bar to a no-turning-back point.

On the other hand, despite having the best food in HK and Beijing for the past two weeks, I found myself still happy with "cheap" foods such as an instant noodle + spam + links. I have been having the same things for years, and somehow never got tired of them. And for the late night meal I just had? First fried some bacons and used the oil from the bacons to fry eggs. Yummy.

Too Lazy/Busy to Blog

This pretty much summarized my highlights of the past two weeks, Hawaii trip + the wedding in LA:
http://glorialo.blogspot.com/2007/03/time-for-more-travel.html

I would love to blog about them myself, but given that I am leaving for HK/Beijing in 24 hours, I better pack now. Probably can use the time on the flight to blog.

And I am sure I will have other interesting things to write about when in Asia :)

Japanese again

This time is about the sexual behavior of Japanese people. According to a study by the Family Planning Association of Japan, 39.7% of Japanese people between the age 16 to 49 is living a "sexless" life. Also, 34.6% of married couples claimed they haven't had sex in the recent month. This really surprised me, since I am always under the impression that Japanese would be relatively sexually active given their prosperous adult movies industry as well as night lives.

Or maybe they are correlated. The Internet has a negative impact on people's social skills. People spend more time online, in chatrooms, and online game virtual worlds, rather than spending time talking to real people face to face. Maybe the Japanese people are also spending so much time in the virtual world of adult movies that they lost interest in having sex with real people.

Sorry, we don't speak Japanese

When strolling in Waikiki, we were often mistaken as Japanese. In the malls, the salesperson always opened the conversation in Japanese, and continued to do so even though we were speechless and seem confused. What surprised me is that even the Japanese people make the same mistake. The reason may be that Waikiki is full of Japanese tourists - everywhere we go, more than half of the tourists are Japanese. The tie of Japanese to Hawaii is far more than tourism: actually for a longest time until the recent years, Japanese has been the largest ethic group in Hawaii. Also, during the boom of the 80s, a huge amount of real estates in Hawaii were bought by Japanese (70% of the high end hotels).

I personally don't mind being mistaken as Japanese - on the contrary, it may be a proof of our "proper" behavior as tourists :) No long ago the Chinese government issued a guideline for citizen traveling aboard, and you can image how bad the reputation of Chinese tourists is. We visited the Honolulu city center, and there was this statue of a king standing on the grass. Even there is a big sign "Please don't step on the grass" right in front of the statue, we see people standing on the grass, posting to take pictures. Needless to say, they were speaking Mandarin. After those people left came another group, apparently from Japan, and yes, they can read. This was one of the moments I felt shamed being Chinese.

So next time when you are traveling aboard and people talk to you in Japanese, you can be proud of yourself.

Congratulations to Joni and Chung!

Made a stupid movie with some friends for Joni and Chung's Wedding :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn7iRnP7sCQ

I really shouldn't have got married

...if it's because of the tax rate. Apparently, there are three ways tax rates are calculated:
- Single
- Married, filing jointly
- Married, separately
I can either choose filing jointly or separately, but either way, the final amount of taxes we need to pay as a couple is *more* than if we file separately as singles. Yes, it's not always true when conventional wisdom says marriage can save you taxes. Here are the tax rates: as you can see, at lower tax brackets, filing jointly translates to savings. But towards the high brackets, filing as a couple actually have the same rate as a single (which doesn't make any sense to me). And there is no way to go back, married filing separately only means both of us will be using half the bracket of filing jointly.

So it looks like the US government is encouraging poor people to get married, and rich people to remain single.

Mind Games

Have spent most of the free time in the past week reading Death Notes. Just finished all tonight, and feeling very exhausted now. It all started a week ago when I watched the movie at a friend's place, after that curiosity makes me read the first half online, until I get the rest yesterday. It's definitely one of the best comics I have read. A lot of mind games, and reading and understanding all the tactics going on is like a brain teaser. Sometimes I really wonder who can actually come up with those ideas to write a book...that person must be crazy in some way. Looking forward to the remake of the movie by Hollywood. I am sure it will happen, the question is when.

Politics, China and Taiwan

I tried not to get too involved in any politics in general, but it looks like it is inevitable given that an article on a technology blog can grow into a heated political discussion.

I was a friend's place last Friday when I picked up a book 請用文明來說服我 which is a collection of essays by 龍應台. The essays were all based on discussions about Taiwan, China and democracy, started by an open letter published by the author directed to the leader of PRC, after the magazine 冰點 was temporarily suspended by the government. The author also published some articles which were both criticized by people in Taiwan and people in Mainland China. Those who favored Taiwan independence accused her of not considering feelings of native Taiwanese, while those in Mainland China considered her as a supported of the independence movement.

This inspired me to consider my position on this issue. Personally I oppose Taiwan independence, but I respect Taiwanese people's right on this. What is considered a nation anyways? The concept of border blurs day by day with the globalization and flattening of the world. Just take continental Europe as an example, people can travel freely and live or work anywhere. Same with the race. Cross racial marriage is more and more common, and I believe after a couple generations a lot of people will forget where their "ancestors" are originally from. This is common among the second or third generations of immigrants in US. As for language and history, it is clear that people from both regions share the same traditions and culture. So what exactly is standing in the way between Taiwan and Mainland China? I think one of the article in the book gives a very good point, "The major force against unification among Taiwanese people today is the difference in government system".

With optimism, I believe the line between the two different governments will eventually go away, with China fully embrace the democratic system. Maybe 10 years, maybe 20, maybe 50. When that day comes, people will find it absurd when they look back at the heated discussions in this era.

Religions

Inspired by the never ending news about attacks in Iraq, I decided to look up Shia and Sunni, and find out what are the differences, and what caused them.

And I read more about Islam, apparently the Muslims also believe in Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus (though they believe Jesus is a prophet, instead of God). Also I learned that 3 out of the first 4 Caliphs (head of the government in Muslim world) following Muhammad was assassinated, by fellow Muslims. Given that the Muslims, Christians, and Jews all believe in the same God, I wonder what happens when the judgment day comes and God would say about the history. All the killings between Muslims and Christians, Muslims and Muslims, Protestants and Catholics, Christians and Jews, are all done in God's name, the same God, in addition to the fact that all the teachings in Christianity and Islam condemn killing, especially killing between the "brothers" (same believers).

While I am on this topic, it reminds me of a previous episode on South Park when it mocks the Mormons by making fun of the story in which Joseph Smith, who believed to possess the golden plate from God that no one else have seen, translates it by putting it in a hat. When asked to translate it again (to verify the truthfulness), he gave a totally different "translation", claiming that God gave him another set. Yet this is something all the Mormons believe to be the root of their religion.

Obviously this story is hard to believe for the outsiders. But I think this is what "believe" or "faith" is. Maybe others will think the same of Christians? Faith is to believe in something that cannot be proved, if one believes because of the facts laid out clearly, or proved by logic, it will be "knowledge" instead of "faith". Being a Christian myself, there are a lot of scriptures in the Bible I don't fully understand, yet I believe them to be true and come from God. Afterall, to "not believe" in God is also a "belief" itself. Why do you believe in evolution instead of creation? Even if scientific evidence points to the fact that humans evolved from monkey, monkey from fish, fish from bacteria, bacteria from a single cell, it still takes a step of faith to believe whether the cell is generated randomly by nature, or by design from a higher power.

In the end, it all boils down to the matter of choice.

TV Day

I rarely watch TV, but occasionally it's not bad spending a day in front of it, and surprisingly I can learn a lot. This weekend I was resting at home because of a soar throat, and here are some programs I watched:

- 2 NFL playoff games. Usually I only watch one football game a year, the Super Bowl. This gives me more incentive since I can pick a team and follow it through. I also learned that the largest comeback in NFL history is the 32-point made by Buffalo vs Houston in 1993.

- How a Japanese scientist made the first ever successful attempt to photograph a giant squid, on Discovery Channel. Apparently these monsters can grow up to 40 feet long, and live 3000ft down the sea, and none have ever being caught.

- Giant panda's trip to DC on Animal Planet.

- The 10 must see sceneries in Egypt, the tombs and the pyramids, on the Travel Channel.

- World Series of Poker. There is this guy Johny Chan who broke the record by winning 10 championships in 20 years. Also the first time I watched this with Gloria.

- The movie Truman Show. One of my favorite movies. Too bad I missed the first half. Um, should find a DVD.

- And finally the Walking the Bible DVD we bought. It is a bit lower than expectation so far, but the filming was great. I didn't expect the Middle East to be so pretty.

Gift Cards, Wedding GIfts

Freakonomics column in NY Times has an article about efficiency of gift cards . Basically the author argues that a large percentage of gift cards are never redeemed. In fact, Best Buy pocketed 16M last year on gift cards, all cash with zero cost!

Personally, I also received a lot of gift cards for my wedding, partly due to I specifically ask for "cash gifts" in the invitation. Nevertheless, a majority of them is still sitting in my drawer. But I cannot imagine if I receive gifts instead of gift cards, multiple sets of frames, wine glasses, etc. sitting in my storage room. Probably the best way is to always give pure cash, or, I propose, changing the tradition to have no gift at all. Think about this: you invite N guests to your wedding, and on average you will attend N/2 weddings in your life. The amount you give should equal the amount you receive. There is also the extra trouble of calculating how much you should give, not too much, not too little, and remembering how much you received from X so that you can give him/her back the same amount in return on his/her wedding. All these troubles and inefficiencies can be saved with NO GIFT AT ALL. I am referring to the gift you give for the sake of giving, not small gifts which has sentimental values. Those are the ones I would love to get from my close friends.

Of course, there are people who would argue that more gifts means boost to our economy. But that's a separate story.