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...