Sunday, December 30, 2007

二十二岁的感言


[Click play button for the music]


几天前璇倪为我搞了一个惊喜生日会,吹生日蛋糕前人家叫我说生日感言。我愣在那儿,不懂该说什么好,只会说谢谢、谢谢,谢谢大家今晚来这里为我庆祝生日。说完了大家也就忙着吃东西了,也不懂是不是每个人都听到。

其实我何尝没有感想呢? 有谁生日只是吃喝玩乐;一点回顾、检讨、展望都没有呢?

我不是一个交际广阔的人,平日没多少喧哗亮丽的生活。我所谓的社交,也只是偶尔和三五好友玩玩、吃吃、看看。 我不像许多人随便走在路上都会遇到好几个好朋友,或是每天都有不同的朋友出去玩乐。有时也会羡慕那些知交满天下的人,看起来生活特别有趣的。可是平淡的生活,也有淡淡的甘甜味,忙碌之中能和身边的人一起走过在异乡的日子,我默默感恩。朋友们平日的互相体谅、迁就和提点,我深深感谢。这平静的生日,我不奢望物质上的礼物;一声问候,知道大家都好,那就是最好的礼物。

一年三百六十五天里,生日也不过是又一个平凡的一天。如果我们换个角度想,生日其实是母亲多年前临产艰辛的时刻,而这一天,自然是感恩的日子。我不时常和家人通话,通常也只是通过妈妈知道家里的近况。大家还是一样咬紧牙根过日子,而我也知道哥哥和姐姐们一天比一天忙碌。看到网上放了几张家里新铺的草地,还有那新建好的厨房,感觉上离家也近了一些。不在家的日子,生活上下为自己打算,日子其实还不算辛苦,只是和家里的舒适差得多了。我要感谢家人对我的关怀,这些年来没有你们也不会有今天的我。如果生日有个愿望可以实现,我希望家人都开开心心,健健康康。这愿望听来老套,但我相信这些都是最重要的事情。

璇倪,这是我们第三次一起庆祝我的生日了。你对我说我们总是没机会一起迎接生日的凌晨,有些遗憾。你也总是为了生日要为我制造惊喜、选礼物,费尽心思去筹划,让你在生日前的日子都过得好像有压力似的。我每次告诉你我不要什么特别礼物,那都是真心话。我们没做过什么轰轰烈烈的大事,但是对我来说,每一天能够牵着你的手,看你享受我买的巧克力的模样,那就是我最大的幸福,也就是我最大的礼物。你为我做过的每一件事,我会在每一天以一颗真心来回报。每一年的生日,有你,有我,那多好。

不知不觉中,我已经二十二岁了。 :)

10 comments:

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Freaking HOT!!

The temperature in Melbourne right now is 39 degree Celcius!!! I was walking outside just now, and it was literally a sauna even under the shade.

Winson said my enzymes must be denatured by now. I agree.

Update: After two hours it went straight down to 26 degree Celcius because change of direction of the winds. Okay now I am a formal convert of the "four seasons in a day" saying in Melbourne.

Update 2: It's 17 degree Celcius at night.

6 comments:

Friday, December 28, 2007

Of Opening Door for Strangers

We have some very interesting kid songs that teach the kids about how to behave and what to do when unusual situations arise. I feel that in this regard, Chinese songs have much more cautionary tales than its English counterparts. Almost every single Chinese kid song says something along the line of "behave yourself and you will be liked by adults". Some sort of Confucianism "be obedient and ye shall be rewarded" kind of life philosophy.

Among those kid songs, off my head I can remember two songs regarding opening door for strangers. Just what do we teach our kids what to do when some strangers knock on the door when no adult is around? The ancestors have two tales to tell through the classics:

《老虎叫门》 "A Tiger Knocking on the Door"

小孩子乖乖,把门儿开开,
Little obedient children, please open the door,

快点儿开开,我要进来。
open it faster, I want to come in.

不开不开不能开,
No, no, I am not opening,

母亲不回来,谁也不能开!
before mum comes back, I am not opening the door for anyone!

小兔子乖乖,把门儿开开,
Little obedient rabbits, please open the door,

快点儿开开,我要进来。
open it faster, I want to come in.

不开不开不能开,
No, no, I am not opening,

母亲不回来,谁也不能开!
before mum comes back, I am not opening the door for anyone!

小羊儿乖乖,把门儿开开,
Little obedient goats, please open the door,

快点儿开开,我要进来。
open it faster, I want to come in.

不开不开不能开,
No, no, I am not opening,

母亲不回来,谁也不能开!
before mum comes back, I am not opening the door for anyone!
《客人来》 "A Guest"

客人來,看爸爸,
A guest is here, to see my father,

爸爸不在家,
but father is not around,

我請客人先坐下,再敬一杯茶。
I invite the guest to sit down, and serve him a cup of tea.
During our time, the second song is taught as a basic courtesy to our guests. However, in the modern society, if our kids emulate the kid in the song, there would have been great danger that awaits their family. The guest could have been anyone disguising as a friendly visitor.

So, would you open the door for a stranger? The answer is, we should heed the songs' advice. If mother is not around, don't open for anyone. If father is not around, invite the guest in. If both are not around, serve the tea without opening the door. :P

Ka Lip, I know you must be going =.=" now. I know it. Probably I should not write something so lame. It was actually quite funny when I was role-playing with Xuan Ni and our little soft toy about the two songs. I should write about maths instead.

4 comments:

Maths - Not Always About Thousands of Formulae (1)

Many people have an impression that mathematics is about hard and meaningless formulae. Lots and lots of formulae. Whenever someone mentions that he or she goes to a maths competition, the others inevitably conjure an image of that person cranking thousands of convoluted formulae and sophisticated theorems and doing things like 10-digit by 10-digit multiplication. Meanwhile, they might also assume that in order to enter a maths competition, one must be equipped with an arsenal of bombastic formulae and be able to memorize the logarithm table off their head.

However, those impressions are far from the truth.

The truth is, unless you are doing a hardcore mathematical course in university, maths is rarely about formulae and complicated calculations. To be precise, recreational and competitive mathematics is accessible to anyone with a grounding in the most basic mathematical education. As long as you know how to count and some basic high-school maths, you are able to tackle many seemingly impossible question. In fact, you would be surprised at how many questions in mathematical competition are actually solvable using high-school maths most of us are familiar with.

For example, consider this mathematical puzzle:

Alice and Bob alternately choose a number from among 1 to 9, with no replacement. The first to obtain any 3 numbers which sum to 15 wins. Does Alice (the first player) have a winning strategy?

[Provided by Chiun Lin in ReCom. Spoiler Warning: Solution in the original page]
At the first glance, it seems to be "yet another complicated mathematical analysis do-able only by crazy and eat-full-nothing-to-do-mathematician" sort of question. Also, what in the world does it mean by "does Alice have a winning strategy"?! How do we go about attempting the question at all? It is not even asking for any sort of answer! How do we even calculate "is there a winning strategy"?

However, as we shall see later, some loosening-the-screw and out-of-the-box thinking will help us tackle the question without any complicated formulae or theorems. Before I discuss the solution in the next post, you could try to tackle this problem by yourself. Remember, absolutely no theorems or formulae are needed.

[To be continued...]
[4 Jan: Continued here]

4 comments:

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

The Festival Season

Yay I finally have some time to blog amongst all the frenzies! I think the last few days must have been some of the busiest days for me in a long while. It's the first time I am overseas during Christmas day, and for the first time in my life I am actually doing something during Christmas. For the past 21 years, Christmas had always been "yet another holiday" as I don't celebrate the event. However, the Christmas season in Melbourne is entirely different.

The festival season blasted off on Sunday. After having some good table-tennis time in College Square, I dropped by Xuan Ni's house to pay a visit. Surprise, surprise, surprise, when I opened the door, I was greeted by faces I wouldn't have expected in Xuan Ni's house. There cheerfully chatting and playing in the house were my friends who teamed up with her to give me a surprise for my upcoming birthday. :D Everyone cooked and brought tons of delicious foods and deserts; a few of them even came all the way from outer suburbs! Thanks to everyone who made it to the surprise party! Haha I don't think I can describe how delighted and flattered I felt on that night. So a big hug and thank you to you guys! :) And to the person who planned the surprise party: Muaks! <3 <3 <) (photos later)

The Christmas Eve on Monday started with myself and a few others doing some scouting in the city shopping precincts. On the Boxing Day (26 Dec) every year, there is always a huge clearance sale in almost every single fashion and electronic shops in Melbourne. Everyone goes crazy on this day, and for some outlets, there are even people waiting outside the entrance in the early morning just so that they could grab all the best deals before the others. So, yeah, on Christmas Eve, we were doing some last-minute scouting to look up worthwhile stocks to be bought on Boxing Day. Unfortunately for us it turned out not as fun as we thought, as we couldn't really find much good and cheap stuff.

At night we went out to Ivanhoe, one of the suburbs in Melbourne to see the Christmas lights. Since the 1950s, many of the houses at one of the boulevards have been showcasing their Christmas decorations. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, the residents made concerted effort in decorating their houses with scintillating lights, santas and reindeers. We enjoyed ourselves tremendously in Ivanhoe while seeing the effort and money put into this showcase. I didn't take any picture on the night, but there is a photo gallery in The Age website with some of the most impressive displays.

As it neared the midnight, we rushed all the way back to the city to catch the actions. We went to the St. Paul's Cathedral which is one of the most stupendous churches in Melbourne, located right across the road from Flinders Street Train Station. There was a midnight mass going on, so we dropped in and listened to a couple of carols. The carols were sung by the thousand-strong mass attendants under the grand Gothic architecture. With the accompaniment of the organ, "Joy to the World" sounded so mesmerizing.

At 20 minutes to midnight, we shuffled our way out of the cathedral embarrassingly and made our way to the Federation Square which is just right across the road. (Image credit: Federation Square website) There we watched a special acrobatic show where two acrobats kind of put up a show synchronized with some computer-graphic animations on a huge projector screen. It was pretty interesting in the first few minutes, but as the show dragged on for almost half an hour, the novelty wore off and we got rather bored by the repetitive actions on the screen. The show was behind the schedule, so when it came to the count-down chapter at 12.20am, the crowd was already rather unenthusiastic. We capped off the night with a supper in the King of Kings Restaurant in Russell Street, which was absolutely mouth-watering.

Christmas Day turned out to be a food day for me, as all we did was to attend a Christmas lunch with a few friends and a Christmas dinner with another group of friends. The Christmas lunch was a cozy meeting between Audrey, Su Min, Xuan Ni and I in Audrey's house in East Burwood. Four of us are in the same unit in the hospital for our research projects. Audrey's family were so nice that they prepared a whole meal for all of us while we just sat there and did nothing. :P Su Min also brought her mango pudding which was better than the one people have in restaurant, and it raised the question of why she is studying medicine. We chit-chatted with Audrey's parents for a few hours, and it's so interesting to see how Audrey grew confused as we talked about places in Malaysia and Malaysia's "internal workings" (Audrey's parents are from Malaysia but she's born in Australia).

In the evening, we rushed to another Christmas dinner hosted by Omiiga. Acherly very boring don't want to write about this. Hah it turned out to be a lot of fun! Among the highlights of the night were the Christmas Pic-tionary game (in which I drew "Christmas Carol" and was guessed right in 20 seconds) and Santa-Clause dress-up competition. Hah Eng Kiat and Yong Chin lived up to the image of Santa Clause so well that they could almost pass themselves off as the real thing. :) No photo again, unfortunately. :( When you are surrounded by so many delicacies, photograph has to be delegated to a lower priority. :P

Today was the much-awaited Boxing Day, but unfortunately I wasn't in much mood to shop for clothes and stuff. While the others happily swept through all the shops' hottest deals, I only got myself a pair of sport shoes. Anyway it was rather eye-opening to witness the rare scene of shoppers literally clogging the street happily parade all their Myer, Nike, Adidas, Target, JB Hi-Fi plastic bags. (Image Credit: The Age) While today must be the big-day for all the retail therapists; I guess those shoppers can only claim the second place as the happiest people today. It's not too hard to guess the first place eh?

Anyway, I made it home after a few hours of shop-crawling, and here I am typing a faithful "report" of what happened to me in the last few days. I know it's boring and long, because I am dozing off myself liao. For those who fell asleep reading this grandmother tale, now you should blame yourself for not realising earlier the reason I write more opinion pieces than narratives. :)

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

2 comments:

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Surely You Are Joking, Google Translation

Google launched a translation bot for the Google Talk service. Basically you can just add a translation bot to your chat contact (e.g. en2fr@bot.talk.google.com would provide English -> French translation), and talk to him as with any other friend, and it will provide an instantaneous translation! Read more about this new feature here.

So Eric and I were trying out the English-Chinese translator, and here is the transcript:

me: We can talk in Chinese language
en2zh: 我们可以谈中国语文
me: It's funny
en2zh: 它的搞笑
me: Hahaha
me: Haha
me: It doesn't understand haha.
en2zh: 它不明白haha 。
me: the chinese translation is not too good
en2zh: 中文译本,是不是不太好
Eric: Sland doesn't work
en2zh: 岛屿行不通
me: for example
en2zh: 例如:
Eric: *Slang
en2zh: *俚语
me: read this
en2zh: 阅读这本
Eric: Hahah
me: Are you free tomorrow?
en2zh: 是你的自由,明天呢?
Eric: Let me try
en2zh: 让我试试
Eric: Holy cow!
en2zh: 圣牛!
Eric: Muahahahhahahaha
me: HAHAHAHAHAHA
me: Okay
en2zh: 还好
me: back to study
en2zh: 回到研究
me: back to studying
en2zh: 回到学习
Eric: Must say "go back to learn"
en2zh: 必须说, "回去了解" 。
en2zh: 嗯,不能
me: go back to learn
en2zh: 回去学习
Eric: Oh
en2zh:
Eric: Go back to revise
me: Good luck for your physics!
en2zh: 回去修改
en2zh: 好运,为你的物理!
Eric: You totally made my day!
en2zh: 你完全说了我的一天!
Eric: I love this!
en2zh: 我爱这个!
me: The bad translation made my day too
en2zh: 坏的翻译了我的天太
me: haha
Eric: Esp Holy cow!
en2zh: 电除尘器圣牛!
me: Okay it's getting worse and worse
en2zh: 还好它的每况愈下
Eric: hold stomach big laugh!
en2zh: 持有胃大笑!
me: hey really gtg
en2zh: 嘿真的gtg
me: see ya!
en2zh: 见雅!
Eric: Bye
en2zh: 再见。
Can somebody tell me how in the world "esp" becomes 电除尘器?! 圣牛!

p/s: Happy 400th post in My Little Moments!

4 comments:

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

A Special Patient (4)

23500975This post is a continuation of an earlier post.

As Maria started complaining about feeling sick (nausea), the nurses were very worried. The feeling started around the same time as we gave her morphine for pain relief, so they were suspecting that the morphine caused the nausea. Aih, those anaesthetics and analgesics are all funny unpredictable things, for the same kind of drug some patients deal with it just fine, feeling all comfortable and easy; but some patients flush, throw up, feel drowsy and get funny feelings in the head.

When Maria started complaining, my heart screamed "DAMN!". Look, I waited for the whole day since early morning, and at that time it's already near 7pm. I had also already spent half an hour setting up the patients with the belts, wires, monitor and all the fancy stuff. If the patient turned out to have allergy or adverse reaction to morphine, that meant I must cancel this patient, and all my effort on that day would just go down the drain.

Also, do you remember how I mentioned that I had not-too-good good first impression about the patient's history, with her smoking marijuana everyday since 13 and all? If she's feeling uncomfortable, just imagine if I continued to strap her up with those equipments, she might actually go find her "bad" friends and beat me to death. Okay I am exaggerating this, but my worry about the cancellation was real. It's simply a major pain in the ass whenever I have to wait for the whole day but end up with no useful work.

The nurses called the consultant to see whether it's okay to change the morphine to other pain killer. If they changed it, I was basically screwed since my research requires morphine to be given. Turned out that the consultant decided to change the morphine to a morphine-related pain killer called fentanyl which has a lower incidence of adverse reaction. The nurses told me, "Sorry, I think you can't do this patient this time."

Determined not to give up, I called my supervisor to ask whether it's possible to continue the study. To my delight, he said YES!! What happened was, in my research we were supposed to keep track of the morphine and analyse its effect on the obstructed breathing; so in this case, although they changed it to fentanyl, we could still convert the fentanyl to its "equivalent dose" of morphine and perform the same analysis. That meant my effort was not wasted after all!

So I went back to the bedside, but unfortunately the patient was still in clear distress. Just as I was figuring how to tell her "Hey despite your discomfort just now, we are still going to do the research anyway", she told me something that I will never forget:

Hey I heard that you can still do the study? I am really glad that you don't have to cancel the study! I really want to help you with this. I am a market surveyor and I know how important research work is to us.
Imagine being so magnanimous and helpful when you are feeling so nauseous. Can you do the same thing? I was so touched and grateful I was brought to the brink of tears.

Maria will always remain one of the most special patients I have ever had. She taught me so much about medicine, and how bad it is to let first impression cloud my judgment. Those things, we don't learn from textbooks.

3 comments:

If Your ATM Gives You Free Money

One day, if you find out that one of the ATMs dispenses 1000 dollars to you but only deduct one dollar from your account - would you be tempted to get more free money from that machine? Say, withdrawing 50,000 dollars for the cost of only 50 dollars?

Well, the answer is, DON'T DO IT - especially if you live in China.

Apparently this happened to a man in China. He discovered such a malfunctioning ATM, and he withdrew 175,000 yuan in 171 transactions. The embezzlement was discovered, so this guy got arrested and sentenced to life in jail.

Scary China legislation.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A man in China's southern city of Guangzhou has been jailed for life for taking funds from a malfunctioning ATM, local media reported on Tuesday.

In April last year, Xu Ting let his friend in on his secret that the ATM deducted only 1 yuan from his account for every 1,000 yuan withdrawn.

"Xu subsequently withdrew 175,000 yuan (12,000 pounds) in 171 transactions while Guo withdrew 18,000 yuan," the Beijing News reported.

Guo was jailed for a year after turning himself in while Xu remained on the run for a year before being apprehended and sentenced to life for theft.

The sentence has sparked an outcry from local media.

"Sentenced to life for unexpectedly discovering an ATM's malfunction and enticed into committing a crime is too harsh," the Beijing News said in an editorial.

Xu's lawyer said the ATM was the responsibility of the bank and it had had ample time to recover the lost funds. Xu's actions should come under the lesser charge of embezzlement, it added.

Xu has appealed against his sentence.

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Source: Cash-happy ATM lands man life in prison
Image Credit: Cartoon Stock

2 comments:

Monday, December 17, 2007

I Made a Fool of Myself

Read this post in Kennysia.com.

Basically Kenny Sia wrote about his experience in the red light district in Bangkok, and ended the post with a picture of him with a trans-sexual who agreed to pose her breast and let Kenny squeeze it at a price of 100 Baht (11 Ringgit). As you would expect it created a furore in the comments, some along the lines of "hey Kenny you rock!"; some say "naughty.... was it soft as the real thing?"; while some censured the photo.

When I first read the post, your truly's response was the latter.

I have always enjoyed reading your posts and is one of your loyal readers; but the last picture is really distasteful. Unless you have asked for her permission to put it in your widely read blog, you have no right to degrade him / her body by subjecting her to ridicule and lewd voyeurism here.

I understand that this post and your experience are all about entertainment and you may not mean to degrade them, but I think you ought to expand your moral boundary a bit wider than not sleeping with prostitute and not doing drugs.

While I expected nothing but more arguments in the comment section, a while later, when I revisited the page, I was surprised to see Kenny's reply to my comment:
Dear Chang Yang,

Thank you very much for your comment and concern. This is my point of view, and I hope that you try to understand and take it into account.

Chang Yang, the situation for transvestites in Bangkok is that they do indeed openly agree to pose for photos topless with tourists. Like it or not, that has been the tradition there and will remain the case for a long time.

One thing you must keep in mind is that she is a man. She is a pre-operation transvestite with implants for breasts. She is not born a female who has cultural boundaries when it comes to exposing the mammaries. And if you think of it that way, what difference is there between a transvestite baring her breasts and male swimmer baring his breasts?

Why is one more offensive than the other when in both cases the subjects are males?

No where in my blog entry have I ridiculed or degraded the transvestite. On the contrary, I find her fascinating and that is why I took a photo with her. After all, the livelihood of these ladyboys depend a lot more on photo opportunities with tourists than it is on anything else. And that is a fact.

I sincerely hope I have explained myself clearly why I believe I did not cross the line when it comes to publishing the said photo. However, even if I did not manage to convince you, I still do hope that we can agree to disagree. Obviously we as individuals have different opinions and boundaries when it comes to matters such as these. Some things that I think is okay, perhaps you may think is not. It's not who is right or who is wrong, but rather the differences of opinion.

I hope that you could respect my opinion just as I have respected yours. I genuinely do not believe that the transvestite will be ridiculed as a result of this blog entry. Unless I see symptoms of that, I would like to stand by my decision. And I hope that eventhough my decision does not make you happy, that you could at least respect my decision.

Thank you very much, Chang Yang and I hope that you have a wonderful day.


Regards,
Kenny Sia
At that moment, I was actually quite satisfied with his reply. Since he appeared to have no disrespect towards the person, and that he sounded rather sincere in that comment, I kind of accepted his rationale and respected his decision. I still do not fully endorse the action, nor would I do the same thing should I be in Kenny's shoe; but the thing is, I kinda "accepted" it.

Amidst the excitement of having a famous blogger actually replying to me within 15 minutes, I did something silly.
Thanks a lot for your reply, Kenny. I am surprised that you actually took your time to reply it.

Now that you put it in the context, I understand and respect your action. And yup, I always respect other's decisions and beliefs as well as agree to disagree. I believe that with this comment of yours, other readers would come to understand and empathize the culture in red light districts; instead of misconstruing your post as a disrespectful, vulgar and juvenile entertainment.

Keep your great posts coming! There are good reasons why your blog is among the widest read blog in the region.

Greeting from Melbourne. :)
That was meant to be the last comment I would post in that page, so I kind of added the last few lines as some sort of greeting and support to a blogger I (relatively) enjoy reading. I guess there's also an element of reciprocation to his courtesy of replying to my comment at good length.

But it proved to be a bad bad thing to write.
lol @ Chan Yang

starts off with some valid points which made a lot of sense but then broke down simpering with happiness when kenny addresses him/her.
lol chang yang.

like a dog receiving a bone from his master.
Hah I haven't been so badly humiliated since the ReCom arrogant-medical-student furore (day-dreamers should remember this I think).

While reading the comments, I got a bit annoyed by some invalid arguments and hasty generalizations. Some are giving the familiar arguments of "It's his blog, if you don't like then it's your problems la, why complain?"; while some said, "People should be more open minded."

After reading the comments, though, I kind of rationalized over the whole thing and arrived at a new stance. Nerdy as always, I actually spent my time writing a long-winded reply, while getting a good scold from Xuan Ni in the process.
When it comes to sexuality and nudity, I believe there are certain arbitrary boundaries in different scenarios, and among others, those boundaries are dependent on the culture and context in which the material is presented.

For culture, what seems okay for one culture might be a sin for another. Baring shoulder is the norm in Western culture, but in a conservative society the same outfit could be deemed indecent or even heretic. In Netherlands you could safely bare your breasts on a beach, but in a US street doing the same thing could still get you arrested.

Speaking of the context, pictures of various shapes of breasts are acceptable in a wikipedia article about breast; but the same thing wouldn't be suitable in, say, Power Ranger in Cartoon Network. A picture of a breast rummaged by breast cancer could, and should appear in a medical textbook; but if someone is to write a post taunting a girls' deformed breast using the same picture, I am sure that everyone would say that it's distasteful.

In my humble opinion, it would be ignorant to say, "Aiyarr, be open-minded lar, it's a breast picture nia marr, you little children cannot take it then close your eyes loh!" Such comments simplify opinions towards nudity into a false dichotomy of "open-minded vs. close-minded", and fail to consider the factor of culture and context. The world doesn't only consist of two mentalities where open-minded = all nudities are okay and close-minded = freak out at any signs of flesh.

When I wrote the first post, I was of the impression that Kenny has been poking fun at the sex-industry culture without respect whatsoever towards the dignity of the individuals who, by choice or by no choice, became a sexual / entertainment worker. To me, the post seemed to be bustling with testosterone excitement. Not that it's anything wrong to talk about exciting and sensual experience in a red-light district. But I must say that if there was already the slightest frown in me after reading the first 80% of the post, the final picture brought it home with its distastefulness.

Yes Kenny warned about the nudity in the very first line, but the picture still appeared quite distasteful. It seemed to be shed in the light of pure manly joy. As an analogy, I could very well write a dead-serious post about sexuality, begin with a warning that "hey there will be nudity in this post", then go on rambling about the issue, and then top it off with distasteful pornographic pictures done by two penniless girls who agreed to do it with reimbursement. Yes in Kenny's case it's not as bad as what I describe in this hypothetical example, but I am just illustrating what I mean by "still distasteful despite warning".

When Kenny replied to me, I was glad that he took his time to reply to my short comment personally. And after reading his context and views about the sexual industry, I felt that he's been sincere in that his defence that he has never meant any disparagement in his post. How the readers interpret the post are up to themselves, but as Kenny clearly stated his intention and gave a relatively acceptable context regarding the picture, I kind of accepted his reasoning and chose to respect his decision. Admittedly my flatteries might have been unnecessary.

Having said that, if I were him I wouldn't have put up the picture, and despite respecting his decisions, I do not endorse it.(I said " I understand and respect your action", not "I support you"). It would have been much better if he gave a good context in which he describes and places the picture. Or simply don't put the picture at all.

But oh well. Since it brings in tons of hits...
To which, I got a reply:
Chang Yang get a life.no one's gonna remember you 10mins after they close this page on their pc.they will,however,remember kenny sia.don't try act smart la.
I made a fool of myself. Probably I should stay in My Little Moments and don't try act smart. :P

17 comments:

Sunday, December 16, 2007

[frank2c] Did You Really Say This? & An Introduction to Gerrymandering

Someone quoted this line from his highness, and I can't believe my eyes until I read it in the paper.
If you are an invited reader, read it here and here.

If you have no idea what it is, read more about frank2c here.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Tasmania Trip (3a) - Of ICA, IGA and Expired Goods

I was complaining the other day about how some supermarkets sell things which are already past its best-before date. I kind of suspected that best-before are different from use-by, and that Yong Chin's theory (best before, not too bad after) might actually be right.

After some random searching and browsing, there was a shocking revelation:

While it's illegal to sell products after its USE-BY date has expired; it's legal to sell things after its BEST-BEFORE date, provided that it doesn't pose health risk to the consumer.

Apparently USE BY dates tend to apply to products where the character of the product will deteriorate over time, or perishable produtcs that present a food safety issue if eaten after a certain period of time. Examples are fresh foods such as meats, dairy products, liquids, some frozen foods etc. Those are the things that you usually find in those "quick sale" section.

Meanwhile, BEST BEFORE dates are applied to more stable products that do not need to be eaten within a certain period of time. Examples are dry food products such as cereals, grains, canned foods, oils and tea. The BEST BEFORE date simply indicates that the product may have lost some of its quality after this date passes; but as long as it's stored properly, it should still be safe to consume.

Lastly, there are some food that don't have any date marking at all, e.g. canned foods such as baked beans, because they are safe and keep their quality for over two years.

So, apparently the IGA that we went to weren't doing anything illegal at all. But still, one year and three months is a bit too long, don't you think?

Sources:
To Eat or Not to Eat
Wikipedia - Shelf Life
New South Wales Food Label Facts Brochure (PDF)

5 comments:

[frank2c] Of Optimism and Pessimism

The question is, will you gamble your own life with the unknown future?
If you are an invited reader, read it here.

If you have no idea what it is, read more about frank2c here.

The Father of All Reviews

It's rare to see a review about a pen, and much rarer to see a review of such depth:

Very good if you need to write on paper
By M. Williams "Matt Williams" (Essex, England)

Since taking delivery of my pen I have been very happy with the quality of ink deposition on the various types of paper that I have used. On the first day when I excitedly unwrapped my pen (thanks for the high quality packaging Amazon!) I just couldn't contain my excitement and went around finding things to write on, like the shopping list on the notice board in our kitchen, the Post-it notes next to the phone, and on my favourite lined A4 pad at the side of my desk.

My pen is the transparent type with a blue lid. I selected this one in preference to the orange type because I like to be able to see how much ink I have left so that I can put in another order before I finally run out.

When the initial excitement of taking delivery of my new pen started to wear off I realised that I shouldn't just write for the fun of it, this should be a serious enterprise, so by the second day of ownership I started to take a little more care of what I wrote. I used it to sign three letters, and in each case was perfectly happy with the neatness of handwriting that I was able to achieve.

I have a helpful tip for you that you might not know about - if you let the ink dry for a few seconds you can avoid the smudging that sometimes happens if you rub the ink immediately after writing. Fortunately the ink used in this particular Bic pen seems to dry very quickly.

On the third day of ownership I went on a trip to London and took my pen carefully packed away in my brief case, but I needn't have worried, this isn't some temperamental ink pen that leaks when you store it at the wrong angle. I sat at my meeting and confidently removed the cap from my pen and it wrote flawlessly, almost immediately.

I notice that the barrel of the pen has been crafted very carefully to fit in the pen holder down the edge of my Filofax. It's not so grippy so that it is hard to remove when I want to make a quick note, and yet not so loose that it falls out too easily when I open my Filofax in a hurry. Maybe the choice of surface texture on the pen has some part to play here, because it seems that the inside of the leather grip on the pen holder in my Filofax has just the right level of adhesion that I can be confident when I need to reach in and get my pen it's going to be just where I left it!

Today is the fourth day of ownership of my pen, and I have to say I'm starting to treat it like an old friend. I walk around the office with it clipped in to my shirt pocket and someone in the accounts department actually asked to borrow it while we were both standing at the photocopier. Would you believe it, they actually tried to walk away with my pen! They were very embarrassed when I called after them as they walked down the corridor and asked for it back. You will be happy to know that it is now back, safe and sound in my top pocket, ready and waiting to start writing again.

In summary, I would happily recommend this pen to anyone who is planning on writing on paper. If you are considering a writing implement for some other surface such as writing on a CD, or other non-porous substances then another pen might be better suited, but if it's just plain old paper then I think you will probably be well served by this particular model.
Read the original page for more follow-up comments.

Obsession to the max.

[via Digg]

3 comments:

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Fotoholics

I am a member of a club called Fotoholics, a photography club in Melbourne Uni launched back in 2006. I have had a lot of fun since I joined the club, so I thought I might just put up a video as a plug for this club. For the best effect, click on the full screen button at the lower right of the video.

The video was compiled by Stanley, the current club President.

0 comments:

Tasmania Trip (3) - Of ICA, IGA and Expired Goods

This morning, I was reading the Wikipedia frontpage when I came across the ICA meat repackaging controversy. Apparently a few hypermarkets in Sweden allegedly repackaged out-of-date meat and put it back on the shelves, jeopardizing the public's health. It forced the ICA (the supermarket chain) to apologize and withdraw some of their festival programs.

This incident reminds me of some encounters I had with IGA (Independent Grocers of Australia), one of the popular supermarket chains in Australia.

There are IGA stores all around Australia in just about every state, and there used to be one just downstairs when I lived in the College Square apartment in my first two years. While that particular IGA was pretty convenient, the price was rather reasonable, and the owners were friendly; there was something that I found disagreeable - sometimes they sell expired goods.

There are sometimes chips, chocolates or sweets that have expired for weeks or months in the store. While some of them are labelled as "reduced to clear" (which is an euphemism for "expired goods to be lelong-ed"); some of them are mixed in together with other goods. If one is not careful enough, he is at risk of consuming expired stuff. But then we kind of lived with it, and picked up the good habit of checking "Best Before" dates for every single thing.

Just a few days ago, when we were in Launceston, Tasmania, we lived in an apartment with an IGA just next door to it. The IGA was a full-size hypermarket and they sell quite a huge variety of goods. When we first arrived in the apartment, we visited the IGA at night to stock up our food for the next day. We were browsing about the hypermarket when, to our shock, we came across some expired drinks in the refrigerator. The first bottle of fruit juice, produced by a famous local brewery, had a sticker that says "Best Before March 2007". The second bottle of fruit juice, with a different flavour, had an amazing best-before date of September 2006.

We were rather irked by the expired drinks, so we brought the two bottles to the cashier and told him about it. He smilingly apologised and put the two bottles beside him. With that, we paid for our own food, and left the IGA for our apartment.

Two days later, we stayed in the same apartment again, and as a routine we headed back to the same IGA for more shopping. We thought, oh, for the sake of it, let's just see if there are still any expired drinks or snacks around in the supermarket. And, after one minute...

We found the same two bottles of fruit juice, displayed nicely on the rack.

How disappointing. Not all supermarkets are irresponsible, but the ones that are, shame on them.


p/s: Yong Chin had a theory about what the supermarkets think about best-before dates - "It says best before, after that not that best but still okay..." And may I add, "after one year, still not too bad lah".

5 comments:

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Tasmania Trip (2) - A Random Poem

Just a random poem I saw in Tasmania.

2 comments:

Tasmania Trip (1) - Teasers

Tasmania is about...


Lush valleys.

A rich history of 19th century convicts.

Giant mazes

Beautiful flowers.

Upclose wildlife

Amazing coasts
Summer sunsets at 8.30pm

... and needless to say, Cradle Mountain!

More to come!

6 comments: