That was really odd

You may have all just been spared of my ceaseless ranting by a weird error that prevented my accessing all blogger-hosted sites. (And this affected only me.) I tried everything, and now have mozilla as a result so at least it wasn't a total loss.

--C.

Update: Go here for the story of what happened.

Ah, Stanford

I'm just about to go to bed, when all these people come online. Only in college does prime chat and hang out and be awake time happen to START at 11 PM.

I'm making a list here of things I wanted to blog about but didn't. If I remember I'll type stuff up tomorrow.

Stanford in the Winter
Existentialism
Politics (ack, not again?) and alerts

A wave out to the world, and have a great new year.

--C.

I'm a blue fish!

More things culled from other people's blogs yeilds a pointless quiz that tells me:


What Finding Nemo Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I'm a dork.

--C.

Or, I should clarify, I meant that I was a letter shy of a dork

Yum!

I love cooking for myself. Right now the fact that I live in the apartment of people who obviously don't share (or at least have time for) this passions is obvious. There's a lot of ramen and a serious lack of decent sized mixing bowls. All the same, I braved the rain, went to Andronicos and tossed a salad, baked fresh garlic croutons and warmed some cream of broccoli. All in all delicious (and surprisingly quick).

--C.

Rain

There's something about being soaked to the skin biking in the rain that makes you feel better. (At least I don't feel sick anymore.)

--C.

Guilty Pleasures

I've arrived at Mark's place in EV. And sad as it is, I must admit that I spent the last half hour updating the blog, reading other people's blogs (see links, right) and catching up on e-mail. I should have been doing more important things like unpacking and showering.

I'm a dork.

--C.

As we decend

In about an hour, we'll be landing in San Francisco international airport, I don't know why I'm as excited as I am; I've flown into SF a dozen times already. However, there's something to be said for leaving Hong Kong at midday and landing, the same day you arrived, at 8 in the morning. With a whole long day ahead that I'm probably going to be very tired through.

It'll be a few days yet before I can see my room again, and see if any damage happened during the Pasa Robles earthquake. I didn't exactly leave my room in an earthquake friendly position, with stemware and bottles neatly stacked on a narrow shelf.

This flight, to answer the traditional question of "How was your trip?" was pretty miserable, although it would have been much worse had I not had my laptop. I always hate travelling when I'm sick, and since I'm getting over a headcold, I've had an awful time trying to sleep through a dull headache and an uneven ear pressure. Plane flights always seem to exacerbate sickness, as you may or may not know. United, in its infinite wisdom, decided not to provide the in-seat entertainment screens now ubiquitous on long-haul flights with other carriers and thus my only source of entertainment has been this laptop and a well-worn copy of The Stranger.

My cold has prevented any real thinking (hence, only political rants) but I may, when I get better, do a closer analysis of that live-in-the-moment philosophy known as Existentialism. I've never really understood it myself, in spite of being very interested in the works of Sartre and Kierkegaard and having written a rather long essay in high school on the subject. I was all for it upon finishing the essay and for a little while hence, but it's surprisingly difficult to live in the moment thusly, and while I was enamoured of the idea of living an existential life, the reality of doing so proved to defeat me. My current philosophy now falls under the generalized category of "No damn clue", where it's sure to stay for a few more months, if not years.

Philosophical musings quickly dispatched, I'm left pondering, as I glance at the tiny blue screen telling me that we're at 37000 feet and have yet to begin our decent, just how much longer it'll be before I'm on the familiar campus again. And whether the Margarite is running. . . little prosaic things like that.

Well there's the call to put away electronics, expect another post today.

--C.

Mile High Blog

There are certain conviniences to having a laptop, one of which is the ability to blog while at 35000 feet. Yes, I am a dork. My cramped middle seat in Economy class doesn't allow me enough room to maneuver a mouse to play Warcraft and I don't have enough charge left to watch a movie, so blogging it is.

I again have nothing to say, nothing much having changed from a few hours ago. I'm actually pleasently surprised at airport security, or the lack thereof, that I encountered (or failed to do so) on my way to the airport. I'm not saying that Hong Kong has lax security, by any means. Nor am I saying that it should be placed on the priviledged list of airports from which flights are banned. However, I was expecting, in light of recent developments, that there would be extra security for my flight to the US relative to the other ones. Last year, they inspected checked suitcases of people going to the US, and yet this year, with the terrorist alert level upped a notch, they didn't inspect mine. As such, I was breezed through security, after handing them a clean health declaration that I was free of SARS. I am on a United flight, so I'm saved from some of the extra scrutiny that accompanies international carriers.

In some respects, and here I'm borrowing ideas developed at the dinner table (thanks Mom), the US is setting itself up perfectly for a fall. It's getting harder and harder, what with homeland security, to travel and do business in the US. Everywhere, everyone is being examined microscopically. At the same time, these extra precautions are costing the US government billions. With a tax cut having reversed the already slim budget surplus, I haven't a clue how any of this is being paid for save with more borrowed money. Not that I'm one to harp about the National Debt, being neither economist nor even particulary attune with current affairs. Even so, the US market is definitely tightening.

The US is also feeling the poetic justice of having not only the tables turned but also the entire tea service thrown in its face. With the whole Mad Cow affair (I told you that only two pieces of news really interested me), its draconian policies of banning beef imports from countries with BSE has come around to haunt it. With American beef exports halted at over thirty ports of call, the US is probably regretting the huge fuss it made over importing beef from other nations.

As a way of retaliation, as I see it, the US is restricting international flights, to only those with air marshalls. It's a very dangerous game that they play, with the terrorism alert. The current move is one step closer to an all out ban on international flights, forcing travellers to use (or at least favor) American-based carriers or those of its allies. On the one hand, this is one of the ways that the government can demonstrate that it still has international power, by turning everything into an issue of terrorism and the exercise of soverignty, on the other hand, there's a definite limit to the amount of abuse these other nations will take.

Of course, in the world of international politics, of which I know nothing, things are much more subtle. But as I see it, the US government has been keeping itself in the world spotlight -- always at the center of attention and always making the decisions that make the rest of the world react, for a long time. In fact this decision making and acting as international arbiters, judges, peacegivers and bankers, has probably cost the US dearly financially. However, it ensures that everyone pays attention. Eventually, however, I don't know if all this talk will eventually exhaust the international listeners and the US will lose its power. (Ok, I'm not that much of a pessimist, but it seems that every piece of international news these days is US-tinged, and I'm getting a little sick of it -- and perhaps the rest of the world is as well.)

While the government is playing international loudmouth, domestically, it's acting more in the role of trash collector. Actually I know nothing about US domestic affairs, except that the government is lying about the spread of BSE and making a needless amount of fuss about the terrorism alert (OK, it may be the media's fault). Perhaps, they're trying to divert attention away from news about the upcoming Democratic primaries by keeping the government on the front page, I don't know. The world of American politics is even more mystfying than that of international politics. So, I lie.

Anyway, I'm sick about ranting about politics, it really isn't my style and I don't know what I'm saying half the time... my fingers just keep on typing.

I appreciate any and all suggestions of newer and better topics to discuss. It's very hard to find things that people want to hear me talk about that also has meaning. Ok, this is definitetly getting pessimistic, I'm going to shut up for a while and try to get some shut eye. I'll probably blog again before I land, so this may come as part of a double post. (Being as the way Blogger arranges things, the second post will be above, and you may quite possibly have already read it. Hopefully, it was more optimistic.)

--C.

Sleepless

Current Hong Kong Time: 5:20 AM

I can never seem to sleep the night before a big flight. It's as though my body knows in advance to prepare for jetlag. Anyway, here I am before you, blogging. In 8 hours I'll be on a plane to San Francisco.

At home, nothing much has changed. I've been sick and in bed. Mom and Dad are great and made all of my favorite dishes, yesterday for dinner. It was the best dinner ever, and I ate until I was near-exploding. This may or may not have contributed to my sleeplessness.

That said, I still have plenty of time to blog. . . and little to blog about. So, I thought I'd comment on a few news items. I've recently become addicted to Google News which, as with all of Google's other projects has yet to disappoint. I've also been reading a lot of commentary from the Cardinal Collective, which is fantastic. Anyway, I've been following two items of interest: the whole BSE scare and the terrorism alerts lately and have a few comments.

On BSE. As a biochemist, I have a lingering academic interest in what happens with the whole mad cow scare. It's not that I am interested in the epidimeology of the disease, but that I'm interested in how the US government is responding to a medical crisis and how much information about the disease they are actually passing on to the lay public.

Like the human version of the disease, vCJD, bvCJD can be a spontaneous occurence in the nervous tissue of affected cases. This fact is however less than reassuring to the American public as they bite into their umpteenth McDonald's hamburger. In fact, along with consumption of tainted feed, the cow may have been exposed to the infectious prion in other ways as well. That the disease takes years to develop and the rates of tranmission are dreadfully low makes the whole scenario a nightmare for epidimeologists. Instead of simply telling the public that they have no damn clue what's going on, the government persists in telling the public the best news it can. It's tracing back the lineage of the affected cow, to Canada, and playing a classic game of kindergarten point-the-finger. It, when the news first broke, insisted that the meat hadn't entered the food supply, now an obvious lie. The only real affect that all this posturing has, however, is to make the public more worried about eating beef than it really should be. Admittedly, the disease is a very frightening one, that turns your brain to mush, but unless, as one friend put it, "you eat cow brains as a delicacy", the chance of becoming infected is absolutely minimal especially if you eat non-CNS tissues (which is very likely). You're probably more likely to get salmonella from your Christmas eggnog. It makes for great media coverage, but what wouldn't?

The second thing I wanted to comment on is this whole orange alert thing. Now that the US has required some foreign carriers to host military, I'm not even sure I want to fly. Again, this is a case of the media making something sound bigger than it really is. It's sad that the US is such a major world power that the rest of the world must kowtow to it's demands.

OK, I have to go pack now. I'll say more later.

--C.

There's never been a worse time to be sick

I've got a cold, nothing more, I'm pretty sure. But with the SARS case in Guangzhou and the US taking any excuse to down a plane and search your luggage, my flying to Stanford 2 days from now is in jeopardy. At least I'm getting LOTS of sleep now.

Also in the vein of Bob's remark, this Christmas season, I've put on a fair bit of weight (at least fifteen pounds). Oh well, when I get back to Lag food and overstressed schedules, I'm sure it'll be a good backup source of energy.

--C.

Merry Christmas

Current Hong Kong Time: 7:15 AM, December 26th

I know I promised to blog as soon as I got back, but I've adjusted to this new time zone now and I haven't been getting up as early, which leaves precious little computer time before my parents wake up. Precious little time, in which I still need to catch up on e-mail and other mundane tasks. I'll try to do this as quickly as possible.

Home
Home is fun, I guess. Living in a household where everyone pretty gets up at 6 on weekdays and 7 on weekends, doesn't really give me a chance to sleep in or reduce this sleep debt in any significant way. I don't feel like I have any privacy at home, nor any free time. All day, I'm kept busy with chores and other tasks or dragged around the city with my parents. I love going around the city, don't get me wrong, and going around with parents does have the benefit of their buying me lots of things, whether I want them or not. However, it's just not fun. As for the lack of privacy, I feel like I'm constantly being searched or watched. My parents look over my shoulder when I read my e-mail and have empty all the pockets in my backpack and questioned the origins of each item. A number of things have then been annexed for my little brother (not that I begrudge him the use of things, but it's rather unfair). A blue book from a past midterm that I'd left in the bottom of my backpack was opened and examined and I was quizzed on the questions I got wrong. I brought home my digital camera and my laptop and have to some degree regretted both decisions. The first day, my dad had a hissy fit because I'd gotten such a nice laptop and "wasted" all that money. Anyway, I'm not even allowed to use it most of the time, at least not without people looking over my shoulder or calling me off to do chores. As for my digital camera, it's become my dad's new toy. I'm constantly being asked how to do this or that or to Photoshop some image he took to make it black and white, darker or lighter; to remove little mistakes and stuff. I personally don't think he composes photos that well and I'm forced to crop them and adjust around it as he expects the finalized picture to be perfect. Of course, every time I protest, my mom brings up some other person's college age kid who is the model of filial piety. That old Asian parent syndrome, to forever be compared to other people and made to feel inferior.
Christmas Eve, my little brother had a mini-concert and played a number of recital pieces he'd learned. He's really getting quite good. Actually, that's an understatement. In Hong Kong (and the UK), piano grades go up to grade 8, before you're recommended for study at a Conservatory. My brother's only 9 and he's already grade 6 and playing grade 7 pieces. He's also learning some pretty advanced music theory and has already composed a few short pieces for piano. As part of his education, however, all we ever listen to is classical. Not that I don't like classical music, but I could do without Czerny on repeat. I don't think anyone here has heard of jazz piano. When my brother practices, also, he expects to have an audience (usually me). One that will turn the pages for him and offer words of encouragement as well as one to whom he can gloat and challenge to spot his mistakes. Sigh.
I've been doing some reading, nothing at all difficult, to the great chagrin of my parents, but novels that I'd loved when I was little. Really early SciFi by Jules Verne (and I'm still searching for the original French), Jack London, Susan Cooper. I've always been able to be quickly absorbed in a book and lost to the world -- a sort of escapism that's coming in handy again.
I really miss Hobbes. Actually I miss someone I can talk to without having to guard everything I say. Thankfully, I can't seem to get onto the January 4th flight and I'm going to fly back on the 30th. A lonely New Year's maybe, but at least I'll be home. I'd also like to see the last Lord of the Rings movie but I'd probably have to wait for school to start. I've not seen any former friends since I've been back -- partially due to that I'm not online nearly as much, so in all, while I've been kept preoccupied, it's not been terribly productive.

China
So, I went to China a few days ago. The technical details bore you, but we went and met up with relatives, I did the usual grin grin nod nod and act preoccupied with my little brother. Thankfully, less than a day later we went and joined a tour group and went around Wuyishan (a quite scenic area in Eastern China). With temperatures ranging from -1 to 12°C, it was bitterly cold by Hong Kong standards, chilly by Stanford's and positively balmy by Michigan's. I have photographs, some of which came out quite well. I'll post them here, in thumbnail format, when I get a fast internet connection again. Wuyishan is quite a beautiful place with the steep rock formations that are particularly liked by the Chinese -- the ones you see in all sorts of ancient water-colorsr paintings. We even got to climb one -- up stairs of course, the Mainland government would never trust anyone to scale the rock face. For a brief moment, it felt like camping trip I'd so enjoyed years ago. And then people started whining about how far up we had to go and that illusion was shattered. In an American tour, they'd talk about how the rock formations were formed, the type of rock it was and what the various layers mean. Here, they tell you that this rock looks like the sinking Titanic and that one like three pregnant sisters and you'd have to squint and twist your head around and nod like you understand. Definitely don't argue, these impressions are sacred and passed down through the generations (ok, maybe not the Titanic one, but that one I actually agreed with... sort of.)
A definite highlight was riding rafts down the main river. Whereas in the Americas, the native people drew pictures on the walls of caves, the ancient Chinese carved poems. All along the edge of the water, and in some places quite high up, were poems and lines carved into the sheer rock face. It was all done in painstaking detail to look like brush calligraphy. The rafting in and of itself was fun, as we slid through rapids and floated along. These were traditional bamboo rafts that were amazingly stable. I'm not sure if I should blog this somewhere else, but my mom got into a lengthy political discussion with the farmer poling our raft and it was quite surprising how in tune with World politics he was. He had opinions on Chinese government, the war in Iraq and what he thought of Saddam's capture as well as the state of peace in Israel and the West Bank.
Another highlight was this really narrow passage between two caves. It's called "A thread of sky" literally and it's basically two rock faces that jut against each other that you squeeze between. If you look up there's this very tiny sliver of light that seeps through. It was actually just fun to squeeze between the rocks in the near darkness.
Part of going on trips to China with a group, however, is that you're dragged from one "museum" to another. Each time, there's a very fast educational experience in a room -- one on how they make tea, for example, and then they try to sell you stuff. In the nicest possible way -- with what appear to be staggeringly good discounts. Except they don't let you go -- in the nicest possible way -- until you buy some. I'm sure the tour guides get a kickback from this, but having gone to four in four days, it was definitely tiresome. We ended up getting some really nice mushrooms from one, that I may try to smuggle into the US. My mom got a jade bracelet at another place, for what amounts to 98% off, although I didn't see anyone there who actually bought things for full price. The way jade bracelets work, too, is that they really can't be removed except with a lot of pain and soapy water, so my mom didn't really have a choice. I should be glad they didn't give one to me.

Christmas
It just occurred to me a few days ago that Christmas has become the most un-Christian of holidays. Back when I went to school (and it wasn't even a Christian school) we sang traditional carols about the birth of Christ and Mary and Joseph. Stuff like "We Three Kings" and "Coventry Carol". These days, all that plays in the malls and shops and what my little brother sings in school are Americanized Christmas carols. Stuff about shopping and getting presents and playing in the snow. "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". Santa was a fabrication whose current image is based a lot on "Twas the night before Christmas", a poem from earlier last century. While I'm not Christian, I like my religious holidays to have religious significance, thank you very much. So if you are celebrating Christmas, and you are Christian, sing something a little more traditional (even if the only one you know is "O, Come All Ye Faithful"), for Christ's sake.

Anyway, the folks are awake. Got to run. Have a great Christmas evening/day after. If for you it's just a big secular holiday to American Consumerism, have a good one. If you celebrate something else, Hanukkahh (spelt however you like), Kwanza, Winter Solstice I hope it goes/went well and you had fun.

--C.

Overbearing Parents

Current time in Hong Kong: 3:02 PM

It's only been a few days and already I'm sick of my parents. Oh well. I'm off to China now without internet. Great. I feel so cut off. Oh well... I'll say more on my return.

--C.

PS, Google Ads have become the new personality test of the internet. I get ads about sleep aids, not that surprising, I suppose.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong current time: 3:52 PM

I have a lot to talk about, it having been a very eventful few days since my last post-of-substance.

Let's get started.

Finals are finally over, an obvious fact, given that Friday was the last day of finals week and I'm home in Hong Kong already. I'm already blocking them out of my mind and overlooking just how much pain they really caused. Thus I can be considering taking a just-as-heavy, if not heavier, workload next quarter. I swear, I do this to myself. That said, I don't think that any of my friends would let me do such a thing. To paraphrase, friends don't let friends commit academic suicide twice. I know some of my grades are out but I can't seem to access any of them on Axess being that my connection seems to be too slow to make it through the weblogin screen. Oh the joys of a 14Kps modem.

The flight home was interesting. We sat on the plane for almost two hours after boarding while the crew worked on a "computer issue". After a few reboots, (let me tell you, the rebooting of an entire 747 is a really funny thing, all the lights, the cooling and just about everything goes out), numerous wisecracks about Microsoft, and some rather poorly translated apologies in numerous languages, the plane started lurching forward. I promptly fell asleep. Soon, to wake up again to: "Barbeque chicken and rice or Beef and mashed potatos" (Translation: rubbery brown stuff and grainy white stuff or stringy brown stuff and mushy white stuff). I took the former and once I was convinced that it was actually edible, scarfed it down, hunger supressing any gag reflex that might usually have happened. I survive Lag food, I'm sure I can survive this too. (That would be a hit T-shirt: I survived Lag food.)

Hong Kong is amazingly efficient. From the time the plane hit the ground to the time I was sitting at home could have been no more than 40 minutes. From the plane, we were scooted along to a mini-tram-like thing, and rushed over to the main terminal. Immigration was a breeze, a single card swipe and you're in, no passport needed. Hong Kong is coming out with a smart ID card that will store everything and allow access to libraries and various other government services. From there it's a few quick steps to the baggage claim, where there are people who's entire job is to hand you carts from a rack so that you don't have to lug around a heavy suitcase looking for one. The cart can be taken striaght to the door of the train. Another swipe of a card and you've paid for the train ride home. Even at the train station, there are people who are paid simply to hand you a luggage cart to make your life just that much easier.

However, I suppose the first thing I noticed about Hong Kong is that it's still a city gripped by the ghost of the SARS epidemic. As you walk through immigration, they have the infrared temperature checks. About one person out of every ten is still walking around with a mask. Elevator buttons at home are covered with a sheet of plastic and marked "Sanitized every hour". Almost all buildings have a "Sterilization station" where you can get rinse-less hand sanitizer and spray disinfectant. There's a bottle of disinfectant by every piece of gym equiptment and as you enter they hand you a towel that's been sterilized for you. Busses and many rooms also have air purifiers going, filtering out any potentially airborn bacteria. It's pretty frightening. I'm glad I didn't have to live through it.

More blogging to come.

--C.

Sigh

I'm leaving for the airport in 3 hours. I'm about halfway through cleaning the room and this will be my second all nighter in 2 days. Not ideal.

--C.

Currently grooving to: Stanford Talisman - Going Home

Woah.

The bells of doom are ringing... I can hear them. Then again, I'm on 5 hours of sleep where I only dreamt about what would happen if Mario were 3D and first person... Trippy.

--C.

Currently grooving to: Brave Combo - Jeopardy (Schottische)

Exhaustion

So tired. Must sleep. But I have 3 finals and half a case of frappuchinos to go.

Hobbes!

I've decided to name my new Homocidal Psycho Jungle Cat after my favorite comic animal: Hobbes, in spite of being quite the wrong color. I've already been told many a time that he makes me like act like a five year old kid... which I can't quite decide is a good thing or not.

Anyway these were snagged on my webcam about 20 minutes ago.



--C.
[EDIT: where has my grammar gone?]

CONGRA­TULA­TIONS YUNE!!

I'm going to use this space to congratulate Yune on becoming an aunt, and to her sister Yoon (meep!) for giving birth to a baby girl! I'm kind of confused as to exactly what I should be saying (other than congratulations). I guess best wishes for the future are definitely in order, as are comments about getting a little rest (for Yune, Yoon, various family and of course the new little girl). Requests for pictures have been made but I'd suggest checking out Yune's blog as she's sure to rave for a good while... (which is more than proper!)

--C.

Safety School

I've decided to give Googlebombing a try. So I can go around telling people to Beat Kal... and that they're just weenies.

That is all... just a little twisted experiment of mine.

On the note of twisted experiments... having all my stuff due Friday... I can see just how much I can procrastinate before the stress kills me.

--C.

PS, I'll post tiger pictures as soon as I bother.

Currently grooving to: Dixie Chicks - Some days you gotta dance

I have a tiger!

I'm a sucker for impuse buys at Walmart and now own a 5 foot long tiger. It's the best thing EVER!

That is all... finals are killing me.

--C.

Charity and the Season

This is such a great idea, I'm sure someone must have had it before. Charity Christmas Amazon Wish Lists. So much present giving is now decided with Amazon wish lists, why not set up a sort of Giving Tree-like deal where you buy presents for children. This one benefits the Seattle Children's Hospital.

--C.

On procrastination.

I just spent an hour reading other people's weblogs (links on the right). It's amazingly effective procrastination. If you're here for that same reason, I suppose I must deliver on unspoken promises to entertain. With this in mind, I link to: procrastination.

Also, I've found that I can now include a line saying what I'm currently listening to automatically with my posts.

--C.

Currently grooving to: Barenaked Ladies - If I Had a Million Dollars

Who says you don't learn anything...

I'm sick right now and the sad, dorky fact is that all I can think about is how my immune response is progressing, whether I am building up a predominantly cell-mediated response (Th1) or a predominate humoral response (Th2) and whether this response is the right kind to fight the pathogen I'm infected with. I also have this cartoon animation of a cytotoxic T cell destroying a virus infected cell in my head on permanent repeat. However these thoughts come in bouts of fevered thinking and doesn't help me actually finish my immunology final or write my paper on drug delivery.

I realize that yesterday, I was unually weepy and melodramtic but I suppose that was my mood. It is one of the beauties of blogging that the development of your thoughts moods and feelings could be preserved in time like that.

--C.

On friends and pasts.

This week has be a weird one. Two of my friends whom I have not spoken to in at least five years decided to strike up conversation again. Although I have so many years of events to catch up on, it's almost as if there's nothing to say as the conversation has definately lagged. I guess my life is really not that interesting. Apart from schoolwork, majors and getting trashed by Notre Dame last Saturday at the game, I have nothing to talk about. This is pretty sad. One my friends is married -- a fact that is only just starting to sink in. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be disturbed or resigned to inevitable progress that aging has. Where is Peter Pan when you need him?

However, these conversations have been good for indulging in memories of my past. Of high school years and all those half-forgotten friends and aquaintences, faces that I probably won't forget but didn't think I'd ever see again. Of a summer spent at Harvard, enjoying Cambridge and roommates that became best friends in the space of 10 weeks. And sadly, of promises to write stacked like so many other misshelved books -- filed under dropped obligations as opposed to missed opportunities.

Sigh.

--C.