The Spirit of Christmas

Walking through the shopping malls and business districts during Christmas is quite an experience. Maybe it's the booming economy this year, but somehow, the usual orgiastic shopping experience that cumulates around Christmas seems to be especially pronounced this year. Being at St. John's on Christmas Eve was especially revealing -- it's always glam at St. John's, but somehow this year seems especially so -- almost everybody is dressed up to the nines, more as if they were going to a party or a dance than going to church.

I wonder -- where is Christ in all of this? It seems that the more blessed we are, the less likely we are to remember God. Maybe it's a hazy memory biased by the nostalgia of childhood, but I remember when I was growing up, and the society as a whole was less prosperous, every Christmas brought hope and joy. Maybe it's because now I am older and more cynical, but I find it hard to recapture those feelings nowadays. Christmas almost seems to bring more pressure than relief.

On a personal level, the closest I felt to God this Christmas was not at a church service, but among the mentally disabled children that we spent Christmas Eve with.

(BTW, this picture above was taken at the Central escalator. I was surprised to see such a strong religious statement in the midst of the business district. It's a good reminder of what Christmas is all about.)

In the Image of God

For Christmas Eve this year, we brought a group of our students to a home for the mentally disabled to throw a Christmas party for their kids. This is mainly due to the efforts of one of my colleagues, for whom this has been a family event for many years -- and made the extra effort last year to extend it into a school event for our students.

Spending several hours with the kids at the Home is quite an experience. It is challenging -- children with mental disabilities also often have physical disabilities and emotional/behavioral handicaps mixed in with it. Some of these children are so severely underdeveloped that they have trouble holding their own heads up, or they do self-destructive things like putting their hands so far back into their throats that they choke themselves, or even go about running into things and hurting themselves.

A friend and I went to midnight mass at St. John's the same night. The service started with the traditional hymn, "Once in Royal David's City". Listening to the choir sing the words "with the poor, the scorned, the lowly", and "he was little, weak and helpless", images of the children kept on popping up in my head, and I was so overwhelmed that I broke down in tears. Indeed, each of them were made in His own image, and He obviously loves them as much as He loves each of us. And we can be thankful for the hope that He promises for all of us:

we shall see him; but in heaven,
set at God's right hand on high;
when like stars his children crowned,
all in white shall wait around.

Those children will be at His feet, healed of the afflictions that handicap them here on earth.

Multiple Choice: Expected Value

When we discuss how our students answer exam questions, a common comment is that since they seem to just pick multiple choice answers at random, they might be better off just picking the same choice for all the answers, and get the same expected value outcome. However reasonable this seems, none of us had ever seen a student actually try this tactic, until this year, when a student tried it in StephenC's class.

When StephenC showed me that exam paper, I commented that maybe the usual practice of giving points for correct answers but not taking off points for incorrect ones actually encouraged students to try such a tactic. To try and preempt that, I set my exam to give 2 points for a correct multiple choice answer, and -0.5 points for an incorrect one.

I spoke too soon. Take a look at this exam paper. Apparently the possibility of getting points deducted isn't strong enough. And yes, the result is right at the expected value.

Relationships for a season

A friend and I were discussing recently how some friends tend to be friends for a while, and then they kind of drift out of our lives. She was rather hurt by this, and I was trying to tell her that sometimes, people come into our lives for a reason, and when that reason is over, they leave, and we shouldn't try to hold on and make them stay.

Anyway, today, I received a chain email from another friend. Normally, I really hate chain emails, but this one was actually quite coherent, so I'm sharing it here:

-----------------------------
People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
When you know which one it is, you will know what to do for that person.

When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed.
They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend and they are.
They are there for the reason you need them to be.
Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end.

Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away.
Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand.
What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, their work is done.
The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on.

Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has come to share, grow or learn.
They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh.

They may teach you something you have never done.
They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.
Believe it, it is real. But only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons, things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation.
Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.
It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.

Thank you for being a part of my life, whether you were a reason, a season or a lifetime.
-----------------------------

Unhappiness

Coming back from church today, CP chanced to mention to me an item of news that was both shocking and saddening. I checked the news channel when I got home and got some more details:

A lady in Hong Kong, in her late 30s, committed suicide this morning by jumping from a height. Before she killed herself, however, she allegedly first bound the hands and feet of her 12-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son, and then threw them from the apartment, killing them as well.

This scene is horrific, but I have to admit, we are probably shocked only because of how the lady killed her children. If she had burned charcoal or something like that and asphyxiated them instead, I think we would have just thought, "Oh, another one."

I remember seeing a commercial on the TV recently. I don't remember the entire commercial, but I do remember the tag line: "You have no right to determine whether other people will live." In the US, this might have been a pro-choice commercial. No, here in Hong Kong, it was a public service announcement, pleading with parents who feel that suicide is the only way out, not to kill their loved ones as well.

It's sad enough when people start thinking of suicide, and every time I see one of those PSAs from the Samaritans Society, telling people who feel trapped to call their hotline, I can't help thinking that this must be a failure of society. Now have we progressed to the point of having to tell people, "Okay, go kill yourself, but at least, please don't..."

What does it mean when society has reached this point? And how much lower can we go?

Isolationist Tribes

The BBC news had a video showing some footage of a nomadic tribe in the Amazon jungle who haven't been seen for 30 years. The video was shot by a team of researchers who were out looking for illegal loggers. They came across a primitive village of about 5 huts and 21 people, and they swooped in to take a closer look. The inhabitants were identified later by anthropologists who recognized the style of huts from photos taken in the 70s. The people from this tribe resist all outside contact, which is why nothing has been heard or seen of them since then.

Amazing as it may seem, there are indigenous tribes living in remote areas of the world, and who fiercely resist all contact from the outside world. The Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands, in the Indian Ocean, are among them. Their instinct to isolate themselves is so strong that after the 2006 tsunami -- which presumably caused destruction to their land and villages as well -- even then, they shot arrows at an army helicopter which was trying to investigate to see how much damage and casualties the tribes had sustained.

Reading articles like this make me wonder: how do the people in those tribes perceive us, who are supposedly more "modern" and "civilized" than they are? I would imagine that they do know about the outside world, and they certainly have seen the helicopters and planes that fly overhead, or the ships on the horizon. I doubt that they are so ignorant as to believe that these are gods. However, even knowing that there is a whole other world out there, they choose to ignore it and continue to live according to the way that their ancestors had lived for centuries.

Why is this, I wonder? Do they just simply lack the imagination and sense of adventure or curiosity? Or do they know something that we don't?

Sabbath Year... what a pain. How do we get around it?

This BBC News article talks about an interesting dilemma for Israeli Jews this year. This is the Sabbath year, in which the land is supposed to lie fallow to give the earth a rest. I see it as an amazing test of faith -- you trust the Lord for His providence during that year -- as well as good environmental practice.

However, people have managed to find ways around the Sabbath year, as expected. During this year, many farmers sign their land over to rabbis, who then proceed to "sell" the land at really cheap prices to non-Jews. This apparently allows the farmers to still grow crops on the land, and observe the Sabbath year. (How the non-Jews come into this and lets this work out, I don't understand. I just take the article at face value.)

Interesting what sort of loopholes people can come up with, when there's money to be made!

All good things must come to an end...

Those people who know me well know that one of my favorite book series is the *Wheel of Time* series, written by Robert Jordan. I started reading that series when I was a senior at Brown, and then continued to chase the entire series, hungrily grabbing up each book as it was written and devouring it voraciously.

As the series was not finished, I often found it unbearable to have to wait for the next book coming up while the author finished it. And I was also annoyed by the way the author drew out the series (probably under pressure from the publisher), and slowed down the plot to a point where it was pretty much a crawl at points. However, since I had gotten attached to the characters by that point (I am a big sucker for getting attached to fictional characters), I couldn't bring myself to stop reading the books. I did swear, however, that I would never start reading an unfinished fictional series unless I knew that the author had already passed on. That's also the reason why I have never picked up the Harry Potter series, though now that it's been finished, maybe I can start reading them finally.

The author of the WoT series, Robert Jordan, announced in 2006 that the upcoming book would be his last, and I know I wasn't the only one who breathed a sigh of relief. The entire series had spanned over 17 years. Imagine our shock, therefore, when shortly after that announcement, he was diagnosed with a rare blood disease and had to be treated at the Mayo Clinic. For a while it looked as if he was beating the disease, so it was a HUGE shock when a news article announced his passing. I was in disbelief when I saw this article, only about 20 minutes ago -- I went and hunted down every piece of news I could on this, just to make sure that it wasn't some cruel joke. Alas, it isn't -- the author has passed on.

It seems to selfish to think of this now, but my first thought was that we would never get to see the last novel. From numerous fansites on the web, I know now that he has been dictating notes to a veritable army of friends and fellow authors, just so that if he happened to not beat the disease, at least somebody could finish the series from his notes. I am extremely grateful to him for that (and I have to say, that really shows how much he cares about his readers). However, it won't be *him* anymore. Sigh. I guess all good things must come to an end, though I wish they wouldn't end prematurely!

RIP, Mr. Jordan. You will be sorely missed by all of us.

Technology for Real Life

Check out this heartwarming article from CNN.com today. It's about how technology can literally save the lives of people.

The background of the article is this: in the refugee camps in Chad, Darfurian refugees who reach the safety of these camps must still leave the camp and forage far and wide for firewood, thus incurring the risk of running into Janjaweed fighters and getting raped or killed or kidnapped.

An NGO heard about their plight and thought up this idea of using solar power to cook food, thus saving on the need for firewood. They made up a design for a cooker that is easily and cheaply constructed, and convinced an NGO who was doing actual groundwork in the camps to give the idea a trial. They have now successfully taught the women in two camps to use solar power to cook, and this project will likely be extended to a third camp in the future.

This is the sort of thing which I think really puts technology to good use. It is like D-Lab project at MIT, which seeks to develop cheap technologies to make life better for impoverished people. Examples are things like a plastic backpack, so that women in Africa can bring home water more comfortably and easily, or a bicycle-powered generator for electricity. The focus isn't on cutting-edge tech, but rather on workable tech -- things that could really change the lives of people, rather than simply making it better -- things that people really need, rather than things that people simply want but don't need.

I wish we could have a course or something like that here. Some sort of a project-based elective, maybe. Something that would *really* open the eyes of our students and give them more exposure, as well as truly benefiting others.

Are we too conservative?

This BBC article caught my eye. It talks about a school on a quiet little island off the coast of Scotland which decided to go all-digital. ICT (Internet and Computer Technology) was introduced into the curriculum at all levels and all subjects, and UMPCs and laptops were issued to all students and teachers.

This is a little like a project that we have been involved in here in Hong Kong, with one of the local schools. The school board and funders were very supportive, but the teachers and principals were much more conservative. And I regret to say that our team, when asked for our opinions, also tended to be more conservative, recommending a very gradual digitalization rather than the full-blown approach that has been taken in Scotland.

Now, reading these articles, I wonder: are we being too conservative and cautious? I know that we have to be good stewards of our resources and not be wasteful, but sometimes, I do wonder whether this "look-for-blame" and "accountable" culture in Hong Kong has changed us all into fraidy-cats, contented with incremental, baby steps, and afraid to dream big and think about the impossible?

It's a sobering thought.

In-class Musical

This shot was taken from a real life lecture somewhere in the US, I believe. What happens is that a bunch of students made up this musical act to perform in the middle of a lecture. And by "performing", I mean literally, they interrupted the teacher and started singing and dancing in class. Listen to the words, they're hilarious.

It's a pity that more of our students can't think of creative things like these to do, and instead they spend their energy thinking up new and creative ways of complaining.

Interesting Tidbit

From the Wikipedia entry on "river" (don't ask why I was looking at it, I don't remember, i think I was following links and landed onto that page), comes this trivia:

It has been noted that on average, the air distance (euclidean distance) from the beginning to the end of most rivers is about one third their actual length. For rivers that flow in plain areas, this number is very close to Pi.

I think that's so absolutely COOL.

Partial Triumph

Okay, so I had to break the 4th commandment to do this, but I finally have 6 weeks of course material for my new course prepared. YAY!!!!!!!

It's impossible to describe how absolutely relieved I am about this. This coming semester is going to be insanely tough, and for the last few weeks, I have been stressing out about how slow my lecture prep was going. A wedding reception and a missions meeting scheduled for the two days before the first day of classes also didn't help. I was actually so stressed out this afternoon that I pulled out of the missions meeting to come back and prepare for class (and that's how I broke the 4th commandment).

So... one midterm, that'll take up one week, and then 7 more weeks of slides to go! YES!

Just for celebration, here's a youtube video of "I will survive" -- one of my favorite songs. I think that I will seriously need to be singing this to myself over the next 15 weeks!

(Clark, if you're reading this, check out the graphic for "you think I'd crumble" -- I think you'll love it.)

Is God There?

Taking a break from preparing course slides tonight, I scanned through the New York Times Op-Ed and caught sight of this article: A Saint's Dark Night. It talks about Mother Teresa's private journals and letters, excerpts of which were recently published. Interestingly, instead of a person who was always grounded in God and never doubted Him, apparently Mother Teresa suffered from long periods of darkness and doubt which lasted for decades.

When I was reading that, my first thought was to say, "No Way!" How could this wonderful woman, whose life personified what God would have wanted us to do with our lives, even have periods of doubt -- let alone a protracted period lasting for decades?

On second thought, however, I thought of a good friend whose faith I greatly respect -- one of those rare peoples whom I can point to and say that his life lives out the faith that he believes in. And yet he has also said to me that he thinks that there will always "be an element of doubt that will never be removed". Even Philip Yancey says that he wishes that God would just work a miracle for him and remove all shreds of doubt.

Maybe doubt is something that is inevitable, it will stay with us as long as we are on this side of heaven.

How horrible it must have been for Mother Teresa, though, to have such a long period of darkness, lasting *decades*! But I guess that God would not have put her through that if He had not known that she could have borne it. And the article writes that through these periods of darkness, she experienced an inkling of the sense of abandonment that the poor and destitute must feel, possibly contributing to the efficacy of her ministry to the same poor and destitute.

I guess, in Him, all things work together for good. Even if those things suck.

And the snake shall lie down with the hamster

Okay, so this is old news, but apparently the Tokyo Zoo has a strange friend pairing: a snake and a hamster.

The hamster was originally given to the snake as food during a phase when the snake wasn't eating, but the snake ignored it. Eventually, the snake recovered to start eating frozen hamsters again, but he has never tried to hurt the live one.

I guess the zoo knows a good media story when it sees it, and the two animals have lived together in the same cage since.

There's video of the two on here (warning: snake close-up in the first few shots):

A New Font for the Highway

Maybe it's because my handwriting sucks, but for some reason, fonts (yes, typefaces) have always been a fascination for me, even though they may seem like the most boring thing on the earth to most people. A beautifully designed font, properly used, can make such a huge difference in the presentation of an essay or article.

This was why I was so interested to read this New York Times article talks about a new font that has been designed for use on the US highway signage system. It's amazing just how much work goes into designing a new font and making it usable. The entire article is very long, but there's an accompanying slideshow that's worth a look at if you don't want to read through the entire article.

I probably should put this into part of my HCI class.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

This song has become one of the staples of the Hubei camp, with bits of the class singing the parts first separately, then in unison. I stumbled across this Pixar interpretation of the song tonight, and it's just too funny not to share.

Enjoy!

Feeling Special

The picture on the left shows the YX team from our school, getting ready to board the Shanghai-HK flight at the end of the tour -- or more precisely, most of the team, since 3 members of our team had to return to HK right after the camp and couldn't make it to Shanghai.

Anyway, the picture doesn't really have anything to do with the contents of this post. But just thought I'd share it.

I went to church today for the first time in 4 weeks -- I somehow managed to be out of town for 4 consecutive Sundays in July. It was really good to be there again -- I hadn't quite realized just how much I had missed it. The thing that really touched me though was that I managed to have a really good conversation with the new pastor. That may seem like it's nothing -- it's just a conversation -- but honestly, he made me feel that what I was saying was worth listening to and important (when even I don't know how important what I was saying really was!) At one point, one of the elders came up and asked him something and the pastor told the guy that he'd get back to him, and he continued talking with me like nothing had happened! I was very surprised and touched -- after all, I am really not anybody important like the elders, and he's here spending time talking with me!

What that made me really think about is how we interact with our students, especially myself, in particular. I have an "open-door policy" in theory, but there are times when I am so busy and caught up with work and administration that I have am often too busy for students who come and see me, even if my door happens to be open. In fact, there have been times last year when students came to see me for help just as I was about to rush off to something, and I had no choice (I didn't feel like I could reschedule the meeting and be confident that I would have time for them then) but to tell them to walk with me to wherever I was going, and I would talk with them on the way. Geez, I wonder how important *that* must have made them feel (turns sarcasm off).

I think I have a lot to learn still about being a good teacher and listener.

Hubei Afterthoughts

It's been more than two weeks since we left Hubei. After the cruise and roughly a week back at school, I think that my thoughts and emotions have finally sorted themselves out enough for me to give a coherent account of this year's Hubei trip.

This is the third year that I have been involved with this project. The first year was simply as a participant, the second year involved only with the IT part, and this year, first as a planner/promoter, then as one of the organizers and finally as a teacher and coordinator.

To be honest, I think that I kind of overestimated my own abilities this time around. I had confidently expected that I would be able to "handle" it -- after all, this is my third time around, there shouldn't be any surprises. Leading up to the camp, I had hints of foreboding that I wasn't adequately preparing myself mentally and spiritually for the camp, but the overwhelming schedule that we had managed to saddle ourselves with in the 2-3 weeks leading up to the camp meant that the departure date was upon us before I was aware of it.

The stupidity of my foolhardiness crashed down on me on the second day of camp. I woke up with a sore throat and a heavy head, which proceeded to progress into a general fever and flu and an almost complete loss of my voice over the next few days. The worse was on the third and fourth days, when I woke up in the morning and seriously wondered whether I could last through the day.

But He was merciful. I have had it good this year with the best team I could ever have asked for: I had a fantastic co-teacher (who also happened to be my colleague) who was always there to pick up for me whenever I faltered and ran out of things to say (yes, it does happen. THE CAT can't talk nonstop, really); an enthusiastic youth leader who is one of the warmest people I have ever met; a devoted Wuhan student who put us to shame with her heart and zeal for Him; and a quiet, sensitive IT student who turned out to be fun and mischevious, but at the same time reponsible and mature. Together, they took so much of the load off my shoulders -- I always knew that if I felt that I couldn't handle anything, or even if I just wanted a break, I could just hand it off to them to keep the students occupied while I caught my breath.

And the students that we had this year -- I couldn't have asked for better. Three years ago, I had a group that took about 3 days of arguing and bickering before they decided to settle down and gell with each other; this year, our group was absolutely sweet and adorable and started looking out for each other right from the beginning. They were definitely well-behaved and cooperative, all of them -- I am glad that we did away with the practice of nominating the "best student" in class because I wouldn't have been able to choose any particular one of them!

(The funny thing about the "best student" nomination was that the students seemed to agree with me on the last point. We had left the "who is the best student in the class" question on the survey forms by accident, so all the students filled that out. I was in charge of collecting those forms, and I glanced through those of other classes -- the students in my class all put "everybody", "all of us", or something like that as the answer, unlike many of the other classes, which usually had one or two accepted "bests".)

However, even with all the blessings that He put in my path, there were so many occasions on which I felt overwhelmed and that everything was beyond me. On occasion, I caught myself heaving a sigh of relief at the end of every day and thinking "only 4 more days to go", "only 3 more days", etc -- and then feeling so overwhelmingly guilty about the fact that I would be looking forward to when the camp was over. Every night, my colleague and I would pray together for our students -- both those that we had brought from Hong Kong and also the YX students in our class -- and in my prayer every night, I would plead with Him to change my heart such that, when the camp ends and I tell my students goodbye and that I would miss them -- that it would be words spoken from my heart.

He answered my prayer, not in a dramatic fashion, but rather, through little things that had just as much impact and brought just as much comfort. Other more experienced team members confided their own feelings of tiredness and exhaustion to me, reassuring me that my guilty feelings were only natural and little gestures of concern from others showed me that He was looking out for me. And yes, when I told the kids goodbye and that I would miss them, I meant every word of what I was saying.

Over the course of the camp, 6 students in our class came to accept Christ as their personal Savior, and I know that 4 of them stayed behind in YX over their Summer holidays to attend new believers' classes at the local church. The seed has been sown; we have done what we can, save praying for them. All that we can do now is to pray and hope that He sends others along the way to nuture these seedlings as they grow.

Do I have any regrets about this camp? Sure -- I wish that I had spent more time with my students, both the local students and the ones that we had brought from Hong Kong, rather than being so caught up in managing the logistics and things. I wish that I had been more trusting in Him to take care of things, rather than trying to be a control freak and panicking whenever things did not go my way. Regrets aside, though, there is this overriding sense of gratitude and humility that once again, as flawed as I am, God let me have a part in His bigger plan. Not only that, but He also showed me that even when we feel that we are just treading water and making no progress, it's all part of His big picture and He will weave all the parts together into a unified whole.

That's all that I can say right now, and as you can see, my thoughts are still fairly unorganized, as so much happened during the camp. I will have more to tell. But to ask the big question: was it worth it? Yes, unequivocally.

A Study in Excesses

There are no ports of call today because we're on this long trip from Istanbul to Dubronik, so I have been trying to make the most of being on this floating city. And it seriously is a floating city -- when we were in Istanbul, I looked back towards the port and the ship looked like this giant white mountain against the backdrop of the city. Made the buildings and other ships -- some of them big container ships -- look like children's toys.

I have come to believe that cruising is seriously a study in excesses. There's such an incredible amount of stuff that's going to waste, chiefly amongst them being food. I guess that when you have 4000 guests and over 1500 crew to feed, with two dinner sittings and only 2.5 hours between them, you can't afford to be conservative -- better to have and not need rather than need and not have. But the amount of food that must be getting thrown away is staggering.

Anyhow, there's not much to report today. Have been wandering the ship in search of entertainment. They have a nice gym on board and nice swimming pools. However, the pools (or rather, the decks around them) are completely packed with people trying to get a tan. Some people kind of park themselves on a deck chair and stay there all day. Incredible.

Crossroads of Europe and Asia

We arrived in Istanbul today for a full-day tour of the only city that straddles two continental plates at once. Having read so much about Istanbul before, I had been expecting it to be rich in history and culture at once, while still bustling with modernity. I was a little disappointed by the latter (well, coming from HK, what do you expect, I suppose), but certainly not disappointed otherwise.

For a religious-architecture afficionado like me, Istanbul is absolutely fabulous. I could have spent hours in the Blue Mosque or in the Hagia Sophia Museum just staring at the domed ceiling and wondering how they had the technology to build that thing so many years ago. Or just wandering about the streets and soaking up the atmosphere. It was amazing to walk down a street of seemingly new buildings and all of a sudden come across a centuries-old mosque, or to be watching the metro go by and notice that it was passing next to an old city wall. The downside was our tour guide, who seemed to be on a quest to break the speed record for showing a group around Istanbul. I was tempted to leave our group several times, but then she was so conscientious about making sure that everybody was on the bus, I decided not to go about causing trouble.

One thing that I have noticed about Turkey: the Turks seem to absolutely adore cats. I finally gave up on my usual practice of taking a picture of every cat I see on the street. There are just too many of them hanging around. The nice thing is that all of them seem to be happy and well fed. (Okay, not too surprising, but I just came back from Hubei. Ask Stephen what those kitties look like.)

Ruined City: Ephesus

The first thing that greeted me on Turkish soil was a magnificent orange tabby cat that was strolling nonchalantly around the customs area of the port of Izmir. She was kind of blase about the tourists who were trying to get her attention, but she did stop to let me pet her and give me a good meow. Quite a difference from those cats that we saw in Hubei -- I think that she probably weighed as much as 5 of those Hubei kitties that Stephen and I saw.

Ephesus was much more impressive than Olympia. It's one of the three big Roman ruins -- you have Pompeii, there's one in Jordan whose name eludes me at the moment, and then there's Ephesus. Of course, this being the height of tourist season, the place was positively crawling with people, and it was also an extremely hot day (about 40 degrees), which was suboptimal for sightseeing. But it was impressive nonetheless. I especially liked the theatre/stadium with its rows and rows of seating. Will post my pictures when I finally get back to a reasonable internet connection.

(Note about my pictures: It's incredibly easy to make pictures lie. When you see my photos, you'll get the sense that Ephesus is somewhat deserted and you're free to roam as you like. Not so. You can barely squeeze through some of the narrower passages at times.)

Our guide for today was a retired journalist and somewhat of a philosopher. He shared a lot about what he thought of the Jewish/Christian/Islamic conflict (he didn't even try to be PC at all, which was shocking at times but also a refreshing change), and though he was Muslim, he knew a surprising bit about Christianity and the Bible. As he pointed out where St. Paul supposedly preached in Ephesus, he talked about the Christian martyrs and then he said, "We learn about the basics from our parents, from our mosques, churches and synagogues. However, we never really think about the fact that people have died in order to give us what we believe in." He then went on to talk about the lions that they used to feed the martyrs to.

Some of the Americans in the group weren't too pleased about this, "what a downer", they were saying, but I appreciated the reminder about how we got what we have today.

Greetings from Olympia!

It's been three days on this ship now and it's starting to feel like forever, sort of. Well, okay, not that bad. At least I'm managing to get some good sleep in and get a good rest after the massive whirlwind that was the last three weeks. But this is a huge liner -- almsot 4000 people -- and I have to admit that I suppose I don't really like the floating-city-on-the-sea idea.

One good thing about this ship, though -- it has a chocolate bar! Everything's chocolate -- they even have shot glasses made of chocolate inside which they serve choc-flavored liquor. And the whole place smells like chocolate. It's fast becoming my favorite place on the ship.

Anyway, the ports have been nice so far. Went cycling in Bari yesterday for about two hours -- those of you who have been on the biking trips with me before, it was about 38 degrees Celcius and under the noonday sun, so you can imagine what it was like. But somehow it didn't seem as bad as it would have been in HK -- maybe because it was so dry that your sweat pretty much dried off immediately. I do have a small sunburn and a few bruises from a minor accident to show for it, though :-D

Today was Olympia, place of the ancient Olympic games. And to be honest, it was a little disappointing -- maybe it was the hordes of tourists (note to self: when a 4000 person liner docks, it regurgitates 4000 tourists onto the same small town at once), or maybe it's because I have been spoiled by too many Roman ruins before, but it was somewhat underwhelming. I much preferred the ruins of Leptis Magna in Libya, or those in Jordan -- those had more of a "WOW" factor to them.

Tomorrow will be Ephesus. Will report more then. For the time being, I better get off this expensive Internet connection (0.50 Euros per 30 secs!!!!!)

College Rankings

There has been quite a lot of discussion around campus recently about college rankings, and now that our school has decided to get itself involved, there will be even more pressure to "play the game" and toe the line on research and publications.

Interestingly, the New York Times reported that a number of US liberal arts colleges have declined to be ranked. I wonder if this is just a small, quickly contained "rebellion" of a few, or the start of a larger trend? If it is the latter, then HK will be picking up on something just as people in the US are starting to find problems with it... which wouldn't surprise me.

Cat vs. Snake

Okay, this is fast becoming the video blog, but as my LCD TV is dead (let's hope it's just a blown fuse), I am getting my TV fix on various videos on the web.

Here's one with a bobcat and a rattler. As the commentary says "the cat is like Mohammed Ali, quick and agile. The snake is more like George Foreman, head down, straight ahead, one blow and you're dead. Lay your bets."


Bobcat vs Snake - Free videos are just a click away

Still proud to be Chinese?

StephenC asked in his blog post about whether people are truly more proud to be Chinese nowadays, or whether that's just a byproduct of the booming economy.

I think we all know that there's a good part of that economy that's built on some pretty sinister stuff, like fake (and unsafe) food and medical products, and gooodness knows what else.

Another scary part came to light today in the New York Times: forced child labor. Now this is a little different from other countries, like India, where children pretty much have to work alongside their parents and help out with family finances. Since children are a pretty scarce resource in China, I think most parents would try to ensure as good a future for their kids if they could. No, these are kidnapped children who are then put to work in harsh, dangerous jobs.

Now I know that there's an exploited class in any country or society, and even the US has its share of teen prostitutes who are runaways from home, and then tricked into the flesh trade by pimps who "befriend" them.

But somehow, this business of China's seems much more horrifying.

Retake, then tritake, then quadtake, then...

CNN.com reported this story of a man in India who has failed his 10th grade high school exams 39 times, but is hoping that the 40th time around will be a charm.

The man concerned is 73 years old, has had no formal education, and he claims that his not having passed these exams has hampered him throughout life, including his career prospects, and also his chances of getting a decent wife.

Would that our students had half the tenacity of this guy!

Girlfriend ban

CNN.com reported this news article about a Canadian man who's banned from being in a relationship for the next three years.

Basically, this guy stabbed his girlfriend when she tried to break up with him. Doctors say that he has "a dependent personality disorder" and "finds it hard to deal with rejection". The judge sentenced him to jail time served (150 days) and no girlfriend till 2010.

Interesting punishment. Some guys I know probably deserve that, too.

Cat Herding

I first saw this video several years ago as an ad in the Superbowl (forget which one now), and I remember totally enjoying it then. I had forgotten about it since, but I stumbled across it this evening while I was googling for something else, and it's just too funny not to share.

Enjoy!

Cats Rule

I had to post these after the cat chases bear up tree post. I found these two videos on Youtube. One of them shows a jaguar fighting an anaconda, and another one shows a jaguar fighting a pirarucu, which is a giant freshwater fish.





Cats RULE. That's all there is to it.

While I am on the topic of fighting animals, let me share this one of a shark being eaten by a... just watch and see.

Truly Freaky Robot

It's amazing what Japan keeps on coming up with where robots are concerned. The most recent one is the CB2 child robot.

Youtube won't allow me to embed this into my blog, so you gotta click here to watch that thing in motion. And you ought to. This is really truly scary.

Beware of the Cat

Take a close look at that picture. Up that tree is a bear. At the foot of that tree is a cat. Yep, the cat chased the bear up the tree.

The full story was reported on National Geographic, which reported that the cat was about 7 kilos, and was also declawed.

Impressive!

Three-toed Sloth

Doesn't this thing look like a nightmare? I think that if I ever came across something like this at night, I'd freak myself out thinking it was some sort of a deformed human being or something like that.

It's a three-toed sloth. I fell asleep on the couch tonight with the TV on while taking a short break from writing that proposal, and woke up with a start to see the face of one of those things staring out at me from the TV. Not fun.

But those things are cool. I didn't realize that one of these things is an entire ecosystem in and of itself. It's got specialized symbiotic algae that live in its fur (yes, in its fur). And these algae grow nowhere else. And of course, there're specialized insects that live in its fur and eat the algae.

Ugh. Sounds like a bad case of fleas. But isn't God's earth amazing?

Okay, back to work :-).

Stoning in Iraq

The following CNN video is pretty graphic. It depicts a young woman in Iraq being stoned to death for falling in love with a boy.




The amazing thing is that this was done in a very public scene. The film shows the young woman being dragged out from her home, into a public area where lots of men then take part in stoning her to death. Nobody ventures to help, but apparently lots of people are happy to film this on their cell phone cameras. The youtube film itself was filmed on one of these cameras and is therefore (thankfully!) very shaky and of very poor quality.

On the same day that I saw this video, one of our students came by my office to whine about how bad her life was, because of exams and projects. And how she was "almost dying" (in her words).

I didn't slap her or snap at her, but it took an effort.

Achievement... for what?

I read this article in the New York Times the other day titled For girls, it's be yourself, and be perfect, too, about a group of overachieving girls in the US. These girls were successful in everything -- in academics, in community service, in creativity -- literally everything. They got perfect scores in their SATs, and perfect GPAs.

And yet, a bunch of them did not make it into their first-choice colleges.

Reading this, I wonder what the world is going to be like for the next generation. Remembering my own portfolio when I went to college, I would seriously doubt if I could get into the same schools today, with the same achievements. I hear stories from friends with young children -- toddlers, even -- who are already going to after-school tutoring classes five, seven times a week. I see my friends and colleagues, who are already stressed out beyond belief from work. And then I see some of those people who are less successful and achieved, and are having difficulty making ends meet.

Is this what the coming world is going to be like? That if you aren't in first place, a superachiever, you can't survive? And if that's the case... many of my friends keep themselves going with a cocktail of vitamins and supplements. That's keeping them going now, but how much abuse can the body take before it collapses? And what does that mean for our children and their generation?

It's a sobering thought.

Sometimes I really hate computers

I am usually not one who's down on IT and computers as a rule (maybe I'm still young and naive, but I'm usually left being the one who defends IT and engineering when my older, more experienced peers start talking about how unattractive the field is), but sometimes, I really, really, really hate this day and age when everything is automatic and relies on computers.

I was trying to submit my journal paper this afternoon. Like most of the CS journals out there nowadays, the entire process is automatic -- you fill in forms with the title, abstract, contact author etc, then upload your cover letter and paper in Word format (why in the world would ANYBODY use Word -- but that's for another post, another day), and then it coverts it to HTML and pdf formats automatically.

And that's when the problem started. My document has both English and Chinese in it, and apparently there are some conversion problems with the Chinese characters. They kept on coming out as weird symbols, no matter what font I changed them to. More frustratingly, only some of those characters would get changed, but those that "didn't work" varied from trial to trial, and I couldn't not find any consistency between trials. And on occasion, I would get this "Conversion failed" message from the server, for no reason at all that I could discern.

I ended up fighting with that silly site for 3 hours, after which I just gave up and emailed the editors with a message telling them not to look at the PDF document. Sigh. You'd think that a COMPUTER SCIENCE journal could somehow get this correct, but alas, no.

This looks like fun

Some guy went into the London tube with skis and a camera strapped to his head, and skied down the escalator. Pretty insane stuff.

Alright, so I know that it gave the police and subway staff fits, but still I'd like to see somebody try this on the HK Ocean park escalator. Maybe they could consider it as a publicity stunt?

Inhumanity?

This NYTimes.com article sent shivers up my spine today. In case you don't have time to read it, here's the gist: a car with two children in the back seat, drove up to an American checkpoint in Iraq. The Americans let it through without a thorough check, I suppose because children don't quite fit the profile of insurgents or suicide bombers. The car went through the checkpoint, parked outside a school, and then the adults got out of the car and ran off, then detonated the bomb with the children still inside the car. The bomb killed the children and some other civilians and wounded a bunch of others.

Since part of my background can be described as hyper-liberal and anti-establishment, let me state here that I am aware that the US superbombs have killed tons more kids and maimed thousands others, so in the big picture, the insurgents are actually more merciful. I do understand and sympathize with that point of view. However, I can't help wondering: I assume that since the children were inside the car, the insurgents either knew them personally, or somehow tricked them into taking a ride. In any case, they must have had some interaction with the kids.

What drives people to the point where they could interact with another human being -- at close range, too! -- only to dehumanize them mentally to the point where they could simply be used as pawns to be killed?

No wonder why David said, "Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man." (2 Samuel 24:14, ESV)

Amen!

Do unto others...

There was an article in NYTimes.com today about refugees from the Sudan who have found refuge in Israel. Apparently, Israel, born out of the ashes of war and genocide, feels an obligation to take in refugees, for example the Vietnamese boat people; and also, I suppose that they would feel an affinity with the victims of genocide from Darfur.

What touched me the most was that many of the Sudanese refugees that have been taken in by Israel are Muslim. Given the historic animosity between Israel and its neighbors -- now that truly is commendable.

The article included a couple of stories from refugees that left me moist-eyed (okay, I am in an emotional mood today). Check it out, it's worth a read.

Hard Drive Freak-out

Okay, this isn't going to be one of those thought-provoking posts, but my hands are still shaking from this scare and maybe posting it will help calm me down...

I was working on my Mac tonight and the TV was off, so it was very quiet all around. All of a sudden, I noticed this clicking that sounded like it was coming from my hard drive. Having suffered through 3 (yes, read that, three) catastrophic hard drive crashes since returning to HK, the first thing I thought was that my HD was about to crash.

Major panic. Check everything. Looks like it's working fine. Drive back to school, pick up backup drive, back up immediately. Do SMART disk check. Everything fine.

Puzzlement. Thought it was coming from the new DVR. Check that. Seems okay, hard drive's not really churning, therefore clicks shouldn't be coming from there. Starting to get really confused.

Turn off everything. Still hear clicks. Finally track down clicks to... my alarm clock.

I felt pretty stupid after that. Oh well, doesn't hurt to be careful, I suppose. But maybe I should have a backup drive at home as well, to save me the drive to the office next time...

P1000708.JPG

Okay, so now that I've bored you stiff with my escapade, here's a pretty picture of the Church of the Good Shepherd in New Zealand. When I went in there, I immediately wanted to start singing the worship song "I lift my eyes up to the mountains -- where does my help come from? My help comes from You, Maker of Heaven, Creator of the Earth..."

No need for a stained-glass window for this church, not when they have such a wonderful reminder of scripture right there in front of them!

Married, Divorced, Single

At lunch today, one of my colleagues brought up this story about a female convict, who fell in love with a male convict, and after she was released, applied and was granted permission to go and marry him in prison. The male convict is serving a long-term sentence, and it will be years before he's even eligible for parole. So for a number of years, the woman will be married to somebody whom she can't see or touch, except on supervised prison visitations.

My colleagues were quite puzzled as to why any woman would choose to put herself into this situation. A few years ago, I would have felt the same way. However, surprisingly, I felt that I understood how the woman must have felt. Having a criminal record, she must have been thinking that her chances at marriage were slim. Faced with the possible alternative of a life as a single woman, she chose to at least be married, even if she had to be telling people that her husband was a criminal serving a prison sentence.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend some time ago. This friend, who is by *any* standards a well-educated, logical person, told me that he/she "would rather have been married and divorced, rather than still a single". The reason being that divorced meant that one had made a mistake, while being single implied that one was weird.

The sad thing is that, even though I have very strong views against divorce and, compared with many of my peers, I feel less pressure to get married, I actually can empathize with that view!. How terrible it must be for some other people, I can only imagine.

Chimney-Climbing Robot

Okay, so I have an obsession with robots. Check out this new Chimney-climbing robot that I found on the NXTblog. If only I had the time, I would actually go and try to build one.

Speaking of time, I really suspect that one of the reasons why my back is acting up so badly these days is because of the unearthly amount of time that I have been sitting on the couch, writing up that workbook. Went for a massage last night but that darned muscle doesn't seem to want to let up. Owwwww..

Anyhow, enough of my troubles. Here's the robot:

FLL competition

Today was the FLL Hong Kong competition. Overall, I think the teams this year performed better than last year's set: I guess that the added year's experience made a difference.

Having said that, I think that it'll be a long time before any of the Hong Kong teams achieves anything like this. This is a US high school team from New Hampshire that managed to achieve an amazing 400 points on the Robotics Challenge portion. Their robot even went and changed its own parts. Absolutely amazing.

Jesus' Tomb: Proof by Brute Force

NYTimes.com had an interesting article titled Crypt Held Bodies of Jesus and Family, Film says, about an upcoming Discovery Channel "documentary" which purports to have found a tomb with several ossuaries inside, with names of the Holy Family... including that of Jesus Himself, a son called Judas, and somebody whom they are alleging is Mary Magdalene.

My first thoughts on reading this were: (1) If the proof was really all that strong, they wouldn't need to have it shown on the Discovery Channel, of all places; and (2) being an avid Discovery Channel/Animal Planet watcher, why in the world did I not see it being advertised before, if it really were that compelling.

I did more research into the whole thing, and it seems like another one of those "proof by brute force" (to borrow a phrase that we coined back when we were studying algorithms) theories. Or proof through slick marketing and storytelling, I suppose. It's really not that difficult to poke holes in their theory (beyond the initial ones that I had). Here's one of the best of the analyses that I came across. (If you decide to read that, go through the comments as well as the blog post. Some of them are amazingly well-thought out, and rival the original post in terms of scientific rigorousness.)

The most disturbing thing to me, however, is not so much that somebody would come up with something like that. Proofs and claims like that have surfaced before and I am sure that we'll see plenty more in the future. The thing that disturbs me is: why are works like these so popular all of a sudden? First it was the "Da Vinci Code", then it was that Judas Gospel thing, and now this. I don't know enough about eschatology, but is this one of the signs?

Outdoor research lab

Enroute from Dunedin to Queensland, we passed by a research institute with some pretty cool labs. The institution does research on animal husbandry, and one of their projects is seeing what sort of grass gives the best weight gain rate for sheep. So their labs consist of fenced-off areas, each with its own bit of grass and its own flock of sheep. I suppose that at the end of the test period, you weigh each one and see what the average is.

Since *our* labs require that we be stuck inside a building all day long, that sounds kind of fun.
"What do you need to do today?"
"Oh, I need to go and weigh some sheep."
Baaaa...

Not having been fast enough to take a picture of the labs, here's a picture of two very happy sheepdogs to make up for it :-). Yes, that dog is actually leaning on the sheep. I kid you not.

The Smoking Land

This picture was taken from my hotel room window in Rotorua, New Zealand. The smoke is coming out from fissures in the ground: Rotorua lies in a seismically-active area and hot springs and geysers are common; kind of like a mini version of Yellowstone National Park.

It was neat to see the smoke coming from so close. Of course, having to smell the sulphur for the entire time that we were there wasn't quite so nice...

Ctrl-Alt-Del... the plane

This is a picture of the seat-back TV on the flight to New Zealand. Apparently somebody decided to go and reset the computer that controls the DVD movies and games. Thank goodness, though, that this did not occur till after we landed. Think of how scary it would have been if this had happened mid-flight...

Got People Sit One

I came across this banner in a Singaporean high school during this CNY trip. The above is in "Singlish", a patois of Chinese, English and Malay that serves as lingua franca for many Singaporeans, and the bottom is in correct English, which the government is trying to encourage people to use.

Being the weirdo linguist that I am, I have to admit to more than a little affection for Singlish. It's "language in evolution", as I like to call it. It's also amazing how adaptable English is as a language. Try doing Chinese with English grammar and sentence structure.

Disorder, or Discipline?

I came across this NY Times article titled "About that mean streak of yours: psychiatry can only do so much". It talked about how illnesses termed as "personality disorders" were increasingly being used to cover behavior that really should simply be classified as "he's just not a nice person".

We don't see that so much here in Hong Kong, but what we do have here (and I daresay that the US has too) is an increase in diagnoses of the so-called "Attention Deficit Disorder". Not being a psychiatrist, I hesitate to make a judgment on whether these are truly disorders or not. However, I do often wonder how many of these could be cured with just simply firm parental discipline rather than through medication.

Games for Education...

... or for raising social consciousness.

Games for Education, or Edutainment, is the new buzz-word nowadays. Everybody and their brother seems to be wanting to get in on it.

Most of the time, the games that are produced as a result are not much more than thin multimedia layers over textbook material. I guess teachers aren't usually creative types by nature, and the design-y types don't really care too much for learning, so there's very little cross-fertilization.

However, every now and then, there comes a game which is creative, fun, and still manages to convey a message or deliver some content. I came across one of these recently: Darfur is Dying, a game designed to raise social consciousness about the atrocities in the Sudan.

It was strangely addictive, frustrating and heartbreaking. The sight of the Flash Janjaweed warriors thundering across the plain set my heart racing. The cacophony of the virtual refugee camp grated heavily on my nerves but at least I could turn it down!

If edutainment is to take off, we need more games like this.

Tennessee Fainting Goats

Say what you want to about humans interfering with nature, if we weren't that meddlesome, some things just wouldn't be. My own personal favorite: the famous Tennessee Fainting Goats.

These are a very special breed of goat. When they are startled, or excited, all their muscles lock up, and then they collapse in a heap. Like in this video:



Apparently, the reason why this gene didn't just get eliminated through the process of natural selection was that herders used to insert a few of these goats into a flock of more valuable sheep. The reason? Well, think of what happens when a predator starts chasing the flock, and you get the idea.

So they had their value to man, and thus the gene survived, to give us funny videos nowadays.

Ways to make a difference

Wanting to be a "do-gooder", but lacking the guts to completely step out of my comfy-zone and really do something, I am always inspired by stories of ordinary people, living ordinary lives within ordinary means, who manage to do something extraordinary.

Today I ran across an article in the NYTimes titled Building a Memorial to a Son, One Child at a Time. It's about two ordinary parents, whom, trying to create a legacy for their son, ended up helping several African children who had essentially been sold into servitude.

As Lance's song at church goes, "Take my ordinary days, move them in extraordinary ways".

Too cool not to share

I stumbled across this video some time ago, and it's just too good not to share:



That stuff in the pool is oobleck -- a mix of cornstarch and water. Being the skeptical one as usual, I tried making up my own mixture at home, and it certainly works as advertised -- solid when it was hit (or impacted with a sudden force) and liquid otherwise. Though, given how it was almost impossible for me to yank my spoon out of the mixing bowl, I wonder how much trouble it took them to get those two guys out of the pool at the end...

We'll see if this works better

Trying to journal, or blog, or do something regularly, has always been a challenge for me. Being an ardent Google fan, I decided to try and switch my blog over here to see if the new interface works somewhat better in inspiring me to post. Will see how long this lasts!