A niche in life

Many of our students (and potential students) pick their major, or their courses, based on market demand. Of course, since they are not yet on the job market, they are basically picking it based on projected market demand, trying to extrapolate 2-3 years into the future, when they will be on the job market. I am interested, for example, in knowing what the business faculty's admissions figures will be like after this stock market crash.

Today, I went to the horticulturist's to buy some fertilizer for our plants. The place is run by a father-son combo -- the dad learned his trade from his father, the son graduated with an M.Eng. from a well-known UK university. Working in a nursery would not be a job that one would expect an M.Eng. student to get into, even if it were the family business. However, between the two of them, they have carved out a niche for themselves, importing high-quality and exotic plants, high-tech equipment and artsy accessories. And since the son speaks fluent English, they have also managed to corner a steady clientele of expats living in the New Territories who're desperate to recreate their own gardens from home.

It mayn't be a glamorous job, and certainly it's an unconventional choice of career, but I couldn't help feeling that the young man had made the correct choice in life. He clearly enjoyed what he was doing, he had expertise in his area, and he had managed to find himself a niche in life.

I wish that our own students would stop for a moment to think about what they *want* to do, and what they are suited to doing, rather than obsessing on what would make the most money or provide the most stable living!

A bit of pride and community spirit

Valparaiso, one of the seaside cities in Chile, is about 2 hours west of the capital city, Santiago. Since we had a day before the conference, we decided to try and pay it a visit. With a bit of luck, we managed to track down the inter-city bus terminal and buy our tickets.


The city of Valparaiso itself lies on some mountains, and the houses cascade down to the sea. It's quite dramatic to look at. There're numerous elevators, which are little more than boxes on wheels, driven by a counterweight, to ferry those residents (and tourists!) who'd rather not walk the steep slopes. The rides cost about 10-20 cents (US) and lasted for a couple of minutes.


The first impression of the city is that it's definitely more complex (as in, less safe) and less prosperous than Santiago (not that Santiago is very prosperous by Hong Kong standards, but still it is the capital after all). Indeed, we were actually warned by the tourist agency to not walk about the port town, and a lady driving by stopped to warn us to watch our cameras.


That said, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Valparaiso. The old part of the city was beautiful -- the architecture of the old houses were stunning and a lovely visual treat, especially for an architecture buff like me. I suppose they harken back to better days for the city, when the rich made their homes here.


Aside from the older houses, the newer ones weren't of very good quality. Many of them had walls made of corrugated metal -- I haven't seen *that* for years! -- or simply of poured concrete. Even given that, though, it was evident that people were taking care of their living spaces. Many of the houses were painted with very vivid colors (that's actually a recurring theme -- it seems that Chileans are very fond of color and do not hesitate to use bold colors), and we actually saw a row of houses that were color coordinated. That's a lovely sense of community!


I remarked on the sense of community that I felt from the first day in Santiago. In Valparaiso, I felt it even more. The houses may be somewhat run-down, but they were well-kept. The yards were nicely planted and maintained. The streets were clean, even the garbage cans were painted. It is obvious that the locals take a sense of pride in their living environment, and they take good care of their property and that of their neighborhood. This is even though they very clearly do not enjoy the same living standard as in many first-world countries.

I hate to say this -- but compare this to rural China, or many other countries in Asia!

Stress and tension drain in Chile

For the last three years, my all-time favorite place to visit has been Luang Prabang in Laos. The reasons are because of the slowness of the pace of that country, and the friendliness of the people there. So far I haven't been able to find a competitor for Laos -- but I think that Chile might run a close second.






The first thing that struck me in Santiago was how much slower the pace of life is. On a weekday afternoon, there were crowds of people sitting in the central Plaza de Armas, just hanging out, or playing chess. Even the dogs seemed to be much more laid-back -- there're a ton of strays in Chile, and it's not unusual to see a random stray dog passed out asleep in the middle of the street. (Surprisingly, for this many strays, the streets are quite clean -- I didn't see much dog poop. Wonder where it all goes.)



It seemed also that there's quite a strong sense of community among the people there. The town squares, or plazas, are packed when evening falls, with people just coming by to hang out, it seemed. And also, it wasn't unusual to see people engaged in conversation in the middle of the road, in the park, wherever. Reminds me of rural China, or Hong Kong in a slower, gentler time.


The people were extremely friendly. Oh, we attracted stares -- I suppose it's not usual to see Asians there -- but a smile almost invariably brought back a friendly smile in response. Many times, we were approached by total strangers who saw us looking at a map, either in the metro or on the street, to ask if we needed any help. And these were just ordinary people, not uniformed police or metro employees. Many of them did not speak English either, and they must have known that we probably didn't speak any Spanish -- but they just wanted to help.

Even with the conference and the presentation hanging in the background, I could feel my stress drain away. As further proof, my seasonal dyshidrosis, which had been threatening to erupt as I left Hong Kong, faded away on the second day. Let's hope it doesn't return!

CSCWD 2009, Chile

After having been on one long trip earlier in the month, for SIGCHI in Boston, it was with a fair bit of apprehension that I left for Santiago, for CSCWD -- I was physically exhausted and mentally drained. And the thought of the 30 hour flight (15 hours to Toronto, 5 hours layover there, then another 11 hours to Santiago) was daunting.

Looking back, I am so glad I went, and I completely fell in love with the place and the people there. Second to Laos, I think I have to say that Chile has been my favorite country so far. The scenery is amazing, the people are friendly. Despite the stresses of having to be at conference, it was a good and much-needed rest for me.

Will be posting some more descriptions of the place over the next few days. My photo album has been uploaded onto Facebook but there are far too many pictures to caption, so I decided against trying to do that! But hopefully this blog will tell some of those stories.

The picture at the top was taken somewhere in Santiago, the capital. This picture below was taken en route to Argentina, somewhere in the Andes mountains.

Doesn't take a lot to make a cat happy...

My cat, Cheetah, has been allowed back indoors since his knee surgery about a month back. And of course he's wormed his way into my bed again. He was in an exceptionally good mood this morning (he usually doesn't like being covered up or closed in), so I managed to snap some pics of him.

Beggar on the Flyover

This afternoon, a friend and I were walking across the pedestrian flyover from the Central ferry pier to the Landmark this afternoon after church. We came across this beggar begging on the flyover. His left arm was missing -- either from an amputation or inborn. He looked like he was in his 20s. He was wearing only a singlet and was shivering visibly from the cold.

Part of my heart went out to him and wanted to give him some money -- money that I could definitely spare. The logical part of my heart told me that it was not possible that somebody that young could have been born in Hong Kong without the government taking care of him somehow, which meant that he was one of those unfortunates who are somehow "imported" from China, and left to beg on the street to make money for their gang leaders. Which is human trafficking, albeit in a more benign way.

I am ashamed to say that I walked past without giving him money. The logical part of my brain won out this time. Nobody else stopped to give him money, either, during the few minutes that I could see.

I could not help feeling guilty.

Variations on a tune

Most of us know the song "My bonnie is over the river". One of my students told me the version that she was taught by her teachers in primary school. Here it is, complete with actions:

My bonnie [outlines the shape of a person in the air, "body"] is over [makes the shape of an "O" with two hands] the o-[makes the "O" shape] cean [points to the lips, 唇, almost-homonym for the second syllable in "ocean"];
My bonnie ["body" action again] is over ["O" action] the sea [shades eyes with hand, "see"].
My bonnie ["body" action] is over ["O" action] the o-["O" action] cean ["唇" action] --
Oh bring [hands in a "come hither" motion] back [pats one's back] my bonny ["body" action] to me [points to oneself].

Interesting way to teach English.

120 hours

Finally. My hand looks like a hand again. There is some residual redness and pain, but the swelling seems to be almost completely gone.

Whew!

72 hours

It still itches like crazy but at least the swelling seems to be going down noticeably.

48 hours

Sigh... when will the antihistamines start taking effect?

Hot computer

So my computer is hot. Really hot. 75 degrees Celsius hot, that's how hot it is.

Whew!

Swollen Paw

What looks like horrible eagle claws here are actually my hands. Okay, so the perspective is somewhat screwed up so that my fingers look longer than they really are. But what I'm actually trying to show is how my left hand is so much bigger than my right.



It was caused by a tiny little sting and a completely freak accident. I was doing laps at the pool in school, when my left palm brushed against something thin and hard (kind of like insect legs) when it entered the water. My first thought was, oh, that's another insect that fell into the water. A split second later, a piercing pain went right through my palm. Having been stung by sea urchins, jellyfish and stinging plankton before, I didn't think much of it and kept on swimming. But the pain got worse, not better, and by the time I thought the better of it, I could barely hang onto the ladder as I climbed out of the water.

Turned out that it was a paper wasp, about 3-4 centimeters long (I made the lifeguards fish it out so I could at least know what it was). I have been stung by bees and wasps before without any problem, so I decided to ignore it. Which was a bad mistake because the swelling got worse, not better -- it's been more than 24 hours and my left hand is so swollen that it's a little frozen at this point. I can't even see my knuckles on my left hand right now.

I went to the doctor this afternoon and to the hospital this evening. Both times they told me that it looked like a hypersensitivity reaction and not an infection. Let's hope they're right. I am just glad that I'm a human and not a caterpillar!

Loss of Control == Faith in God?

In a recent blog posting on the NYTimes.com site, the author posited a correlation between a tendency to see patterns where none existed, and the perceived level of control (or lack thereof). His hypothesis was that when people are feeling out of control, they tend to see patterns where there is none, which is why people who are working in dangerous professions such as deep-sea fishing tend to have more superstitions than people who work run-of-the-mill jobs.

(He has an experiment that you can try out on the blog as well. Try it. It's interesting.)

Among the comments on his blog posting was one in which the reader pointed out that people of low income, who, by nature, have less control over their finances, are more likely to be superstitious or do irrational things like buy lottery tickets, etc.

Which then made me think: people of low income and those who don't have much control over life's events also tend to believe in God more readily. What does that mean? To a statistician, it might mean that "seeing God's hand at work" is seeing patterns where there were none, and faith in God is simply superstition.

What do you think?

Lots and lots and lots of trees

I'm writing this from onboard a ship, cruising in Alaska. It's the second time that I have been on this cruise -- the last time was well over 15 years ago -- and it'll be interesting to see how the landscape has changed. I heard that the glaciers have retreated quite a bit since the last time I was here.

We flew into Vancouver two days ago and spent yesterday cruising the Inside Passage. Last time when I was here, we managed to catch a pod of killer whales as they hung about the side of the ship for a while, so it was a disappointment to not see any whales this time. The scenery was stunning, though -- miles and miles of evergreen trees lining both sides of the channel.

Today, we're landing at the port of Ketchikan and we're going to try and see some bears. Will try to post pictures of some bears upon my return -- that is, if we're lucky :-).

Cool GPS maps

This will be a quick post because I'm almost falling asleep... having bought a new GPS some time ago, I decided that this last week when I was out of town on a service trip, would be a good time to try it. Here's my first attempts:

Part of the travel route that we took, from Huangshi, Hubei (our destination), back to Wuhan, by bus; then from Wuhan to Hong Kong by plane; and finally, by airport express and taxi part of the way to my home.



In case you are interested in how planes circle over Hong Kong before they land, here's a zoomed-up view of the part over HK...



Finally, here's a geotagged album of a walkabout around Huangshi. I still haven't managed to find a way to superimpose the track of our stroll onto the map, but at least the pictures are there...



Will be back with more details later, when I have a chance to recover...

Oh, the stories they could tell...

I had an interesting experience yesterday with my cell phone. Shortly after noon, I realized that I did not have my cell phone with me. I wasn't alarmed at first; I often leave my cell phone in my office, but I started freaking out after I realized that it wasn't there, and wasn't in any of the places that I remembered going to, either. Considering that we're leaving on a service learning tour tomorrow, it would have been very inconvenient, to put it mildly, to lose the thing at this point.

I made a number of phone calls to my phone, to find that it was ringing, but nobody answered. That gave me some hope that the thing hadn't been stolen but was in fact sitting around somewhere still.

About 10 minutes later, I get a phone call from my mother, who told me that somebody had called home, asking if an iPhone had been lost. My parents arranged to meet the guy and hand over the phone -- bless his heart, the finder refused to take a reward, saying that it was his duty.

The interesting part is this: the finder said that he had picked up the phone in TST East. I hadn't been off campus all day. How could the thing have made it all the way over there? The only thing I can think of is that I dropped it somewhere on campus; somebody picked it up with the intention of stealing, but for some reason left it in TST East. But why that would happen is the question.

I wish that thing could talk and tell me where it'd been. For that matter, I wish I could put some sort of logging onto an inanimate object and leave it sitting around for somebody to pick up. I bet those things have interesting stories to tell.

New Toys

I feel almost guilty for posting this, because it seems so decadent. But since I have a feeling that I won't be able to help talking about them anyway...

I got two new toys this long weekend. The first is a GPS logger:

I have wanted something like this forever, since I do love traveling and taking photos, and my photos have kind of gotten out of control. The idea of being able to geotag them has tempted me for a long while, and when a colleague of mine told me about the Holux M-241 GPS logger, it seemed that it would fit my needs. Basically, I didn't need something with a fancy map display, but I needed coordinate logging plus something that would show the current GPS coordinates on the fly (i.e. it needs an LCD display).

The minus side is that it's got HORRIBLE Mac support, and the only way to get the GPS tracks onto the Mac is through using a piece of freeware that's got (and I quote) "an exceptionally ugly interface". Yeowch. Oh well, but it works for me.

The second toy is a cappuccino machine! I have owned several of these when I was living in the US, but then, being a poor graduate student, I could only afford the semi-auto ones that I gave up on using after a couple of tries :-(. When I was visiting Ivy about a month back, I got introduced to her coffee maker, and decided that I needed my own :-). I wasn't too convinced by the Nespresso system, though, and after much research, decided to get the Saeco Giro Talea, which is fully-automatic, does a fair bit of self-cleaning, and brews an amazing cup of coffee to boot.

I think I can say goodbye to Starbucks now.

Fast(er) machines

I had a surprise this evening. I was backing up my Mac -- an operation which used to take 15+ minutes on my old Powerbook. The same operation has been taking less than 2-3 minutes on my new MacBook, and I had been assuming that it was because it's a new machine and there's less junk on it.

Until I clicked on the "In Progress" icon today and saw the INSANELY fast speed that stuff was getting copied over the backup drive. I think that it was transferring approximately 0.2G per second. Freaky.

The scary thing is that right now, I'm impressed. Give a few weeks, and it'll be normal. Give another year, and I'll be whining about how slow my machine is.

Just like my first 9600 baud modem, which I thought was heaven. Until the 14,400 baud. That lasted until...

Back to Nature

Well, not really. It's not really "nature" when you are experiencing it from the sanitized location of a resort. But at the very least, it's much more than anything you could get in Hong Kong.

A friend and I went to Redang, Malaysia, for a couple of days, just to chill out and relax. Maybe we just got there at a lucky time, but the sea was absolutely calm and the waters crystal clear. For somebody like me who's terrified of waves and also claustrophobic, it was swimming heaven.

The day after we got there, we went on a snorkeling tour. There were tons of sealife to be seen, the best of which were sea turtles. We saw three of them and actually got to see them interact with each other. Okay, sea turtle interaction isn't all that exciting. They just kind of stop being oblivious to everything around them and swim in the direction of each other, then swerve aside at the last moment.

Another exciting sealife moment was when we ran across a humongous ugly-looking fish with really sharp teeth that we later identified as a "Titan Triggerfish". Now, I don't scare much where animals are concerned, as a rule, but this one scared me badly. I had been fish feeding when all of a sudden I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I had known that he was in the vicinity -- I had been warned about him -- but still it was enough to really scare me. He gave me the evil eye and I threw all the bread I was holding in his direction and swam frantically off in the other. Apparently they are really territorial and aggressive, and they have a habit of chomping on divers.

Apart from that, I also saw a random monitor lizard hanging around on the beach (who kind of took off as soon as I got close to him with a camera -- so much for the Komodo Dragon reputation), and a bunch of bats which I mistook for birds at first. Having been closer to wildlife for a few days is making me really realize how completely artificial and sterile Hong Kong is. We hardly see any non-pet non-bird animals in HK. Well, except for the pests. So the general feeling is that any living non-human and non-pet is a pest and harmful to humankind, and deserves to be stomped on and killed.

Not quite a healthy view to have.

Goodbye Angel...

Angel, the white Persian cat that has accompanied me since my college days, passed away this afternoon. I wasn't at home when it happened, but apparently it was a very peaceful process. He had been incontinent over the last couple of days, and he seemed to be having trouble seeing, but was still happy to eat any cat treats and canned food that he was given. My mother made him a little box that was lined with old towels and rags, so that he could have his own space and not have to share the cat kennel with my other cat. He went into the box this morning, sitting in the sun, and fell asleep, and slept all through the day. He came out briefly in the afternoon at feeding time to eat another can of cat food. Then he went back into the box, and went to sleep again... and by this evening he had passed away.

I guess this was the best that I could have asked for him. I got him as a kitten at a cat show, and shortly after I got him, he was diagnosed with a heart problem. I was told then that he would not live for more than 5 years or so, and he has been on daily heart medication since then. He beat all the expectations and proceeded to move through 3 states and 2 countries with me. When he was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism about a month back, the doctor told me that it was already a miracle that he had lived for so long. Every day by then was truly a gift.

He went in the way that I would have most wanted for him to go. I had been terrified that I would have to make the decision to end his suffering like so many of my other friends who are also pet owners. But apparently he was happy till the end, and even got to enjoy his favorite activity (I have never seen a cat who liked to eat so much that he would literally be bouncing up and down outside the French doors waiting for mealtime!) only hours before he passed away. I could not have wanted better for him.

Rest in peace, Angel. I will miss you.

Angel
White Persian
March 15, 1993 - April 16, 2008