PRACTICE

New home

2006-03-25T17:59:00.000-08:00

My blog is moved to http://lmeimei.com.

Come to visit me!

From China, with love

2006-02-26T19:45:00.000-08:00

From China, with love

I go to an event of Asian Engineer Association with Bin yesterday. The head of Microsoft Asian Technology Center holds a session introducing employment in China. To lure the attendant hearers to come to work in China, he shows some pictures of landscape of Beijing and Shanghai-new skyscrapers stretch to horizon, comparable to any international cities, the brilliant city light that hurn your eyes, stylish pubs and coffee houses, and the deep alley and old house near Forbidon cities (cultural needs), followed by a stack of photos of colorful Chinese dishes; finally a not-so-artistical photo with the complacent man had his feet massaged by a young lady, which, the speaker claimed that “you can only afford 10 minutes at the airport in the US”. That’s quite a presentation in terms of showing the country’s charm. Eat, drink and massage. When I was growing up in China, we were told that the evil capitalism tried to poison our pure mind with materialism and consumerism. Heck now, seems my mother country nowadays knows exactly how to buy the heart of people overseas.
Those static image of food really makes me very homesick and want to fly home the next day. Maybe it’s just my stomach and month that got homesick. What depresses me the most is the frustration of finding some good Chinese food in Seattle (not able to go to Vancuver yet), and the damage is even bigger than the gloomy winter. Well, maybe it’s the combination of the both that kills the cow (me, and I don’t know why I will invent such expression)… Anyway, guess, if not my heart, at least my stomach is bought by this presentation.

Links reminder

2005-12-14T17:21:00.000-08:00

Links reminder

Alexa Web Search Platform (free web crawler) via Alex

Touchgraph (ego-centric network) via inforsthetic

brandimensions (marketing intellegience) via Datamining

Does Your Company Belong in the Blogosphere?

2005-12-05T23:20:00.000-08:00

Does Your Company Belong in the Blogosphere? via Kevin

Higlights:

**a Euro RSCG Magnet and Columbia University Survey of the Media in 2005 found that 51 percent of journalists view blogs regularly.

**Have a distinct focus and goal. For a (corporate) blog to deliver value, it has to be created with a specific purpose in mind.
"You need to set expectations very carefully as to what a corporate blog is going to be about. People will expect you to discuss everything about your company, but you need to stay on topic as explained and introduced," says Michael Wiley, the director of new media at GM.
Robert Cox, a blogging consultant in New York, says that a company should carefully identify the corporate marketing objectives of any blog. "You need to ask: Are you trying to showcase your employees? Are you using the blog as a recruitment tool as Monster.com does with their blog? Or is it more of a product support tool? You have to determine what it is you are trying to get done."
**"Don't let the PR department write your blog. Bloggers will sniff it out, and when they do, you will lose all credibility"
In your blog, express your enthusiasm and passion for your work and your company's product, with occasional asides on topics that reflect your personal interests. The latter will keep your voice authentic and increase the linkability of your blog.
**Permit both positive and negative posts on your blog, and reply to comments made on other blogs pertinent to your area of focus. Respond in a professional and businesslike way. If you don't want to hear from your customers and critics in a public environment, don't blog.

Da Vinci ain't get no Ph.D

2005-12-05T00:52:00.000-08:00

Da Vinci ain't get no Ph.D

History channel is playing a documentary about Da Vinci. I thought he was most famous for his painting, but hack, that’s something he’s got so bored that he would rather be sued by his patrons than finish his commission. To escape the boredom he left for Milan and started his phase of military design for Duke Sforza. This is one of his designs that were so beyond his time that it was not realized until 400 years later. However, Duke Sforza was more interested in using Da Vinci’s artistic talent to serve his own pleasure and build his own legacy. So poor Leonardo had to paint such uninteresting objects as the Duke’s Mistress (The lady with the ermine) or the “last supper”. Because he tried to experiment some news painting material which turned out not that successful, ‘Last Super’ had been dampened and disintegrated within the first decade of its completion. Sforza horse, the tribute to Sforza was destroyed by French while it’s still a clay mold. Fleeing from Milan, his military innovation, including the Diving suit, paddle boats, or semi-submersibles on water was not particularly interest to Duke of Venice neither. Finally appointed by Cesar Borgia as the Chief General Engineer (sounds not very artistic), Da Vinci however was repelled by his cruelty and left for Florence to explore gentle side of human nature. While Mona Lisa forever a work in progress, he switched his interest again to designed wings for human being, which by the way was the prototype of today’s airplane. And of course he did not make one it because he develop another new profession-autopsy…

As a tribute to the Great Da Vinci, I left this post unfinished… Poor Leonardo, he could’ve never get his Ph.D becourse he had nothing complete for his committee. Have I mentioned that he was blogging too (kinds of, he kept 15000 pages of notes, whose contents ranges from his design and the laundry he’d done) and they were in “mirror writing”?

2005-11-23T11:25:00.000-08:00

A MIX OF MASH-UPS via Seattle Intelligence Post Intelligencer

wash-up:" Web sites combine ingredients from different online sources to create intriguing hybrids."

SAMPLE SITES
www.analygis.com (census data + maps)
www.aytozon.com (Amazon.com + eBay)
www.celebrity-maps.com (celebrity homes + maps)
www.cellreception.com (cell phone towers + maps)
www.fboweb.com (flight location + maps)
www.homepricerecords.com (home sales prices + maps)
www.housingmaps.com (maps + housing listings)
www.simplyhired.com (job listings + social networking + salary info + maps)
www.trachtenberg.com/emgm (eBay motors + maps)
www.weatherbonk.com (weather + Web cams + maps)
SITES WITH LISTS OF MAPPING MASH-UPS
www.googlemapsmania.blogspot.com
ws1.inf.scd.yahoo.com/maps/applications.html

20-years of ‘Pride and prejudice’ complex

2005-11-13T14:13:00.000-08:00

20-years of ‘Pride and prejudice’ complex

I could not remember what was the last movie I saw in theater, which means it must be long long time ago. But since long long time ago, I’ve been looking forward to seeing this ‘Pride and Prejudice’. I can’t wait to see a young and perky Elisabeth Bennet (that doesn’t mean I don’t like BBC version and the one with Laurence Olivier). I was so excited with the approaching of its’ opening, that I felt I was back to the 13-year-old girl again, whose heart bouncing so fast when turning every page of the book (in Chinese at that time). For a very long time, I don’t know, or believe in any love other than the one between Darcy and Elisabeth, the one built on the parallel of two similar spirits, as well as the enjoyment of intellectual clash. I read and again all the chapters where two of them fight so hard to outwit each other buth underneath the conflict it was such intellectual satisfaction. I remember the sunny Saturday afternoon when my best girlfriend and I read together “if your feeling still are what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affection and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever”. It sounds like Bach. We sighed and laughed at her small bed, dreaming about the days when someone will speak the same words to us.

Now back to the movie, I think it’s doing very well on such love-fight relationship and the chemistry is real between the two; some sexual energy is just right, except at the end the audience burst into laughter when Mr. Darcy showed his bare feet. Talking about the audience, the late show at a rainy night (So Seattle!) was surprisingly sold out and the room was so crowded which only reminds me the audience size for “Fahrenheit 911” or “Lord of Ring’. (Maybe people read more in Seattle?)

It’s very interesting to see the director moved the setting of some important conversation from living room out to the wild. It adds a nice romantic touch and infuses more nature of force to the love in a very conservative era. Some of the scenes feel so “Wuthering Heights”, another favorite book of mine. It’s such a imaginative and bold move to ahve Lizzy standing at the edge of cliff with long hair blowing in the wind, and Darcy and Lizzy kissing against the morning sun in the prairie. I don’t remember too much wild sprit, which is quite typical in Bronte, in Austin's books. But the movie pulls it out very well. Darcy in the movie was presented convincingly as someone incapable of socializing and small talk, which is very charming (where to find a rich and handsome young man who doesn't flirt with othe women?). Kightly’s Lizzy is close to Lizzy I envisioned, with crooked teeth though, which looks very naughty. I only wish them were in nicer costumes, and it would've fulfill perfectly my fantacy of the perfect love (God, how shallow I am!)

When I was 13, I could not wait to grow up to have my own Darcy-Lizzy story in real life. When I am 30 something now, I wanted go back to a younger years, when love is much simpler thing-an exchange of witty words, a brush of love one’s hand, an evasive glance and an unexpected encounter can lighten the day up like in heaven. I guess I am very old fashioned in heart.

better than never

2005-11-08T14:39:00.000-08:00

Better than never

Google finally launched blog search engine (not fair, it's two months ago). I asked the Google research director after her talk two years ago in San Jose when google would have search engine for blogs, since my blog often got readership referred by google; a lot of search terms are amusingly strange and total irrelevant to my blog . She was not quite prepared for that question and told me they did not have such plan since Google tried to include as many WebPages as possible in their search results. hmm, I wonder if I could get credit for the reminder.

I'm worried, for I'm a lady

2005-11-01T11:14:00.000-08:00

I'm worried, for I'm a lady...

(So that's what happens when you mind is not creative-blogging turns into some reading notes-or in a more fashionable term 'knowledge management'.)

Now, this one is from newsweek-an interview with Robert Leahy, a psycologist writing a book called 'the worry cure'.

Why do women worry more than men?
Because, simply put, women are better human being!

"Worriers tend to be more concerned about how other people feel and are better at empathy than nonworriers. Worriers also overempathize, and I think women are more likely to do this than men. In other words, they are concerned with the effect a particular action might have had on another person. Women also tend to ruminate a lot. They tend to go over something over and over again to be sure it’s the correct decision. Men are more willing to fail--or perhaps men have more of an illusion that they’re not failing. "

Does worry get worse for women with aging?
good news!-and how wonderful to get old: " Anxiety and depression are most common in women between the ages of 18 and 33. ...There are a lot of life changes, a lot of uncertainty and unrealistic expectations about what you have to look like, what your job has to be, what your romance has to be. As people get into their 30s, 40s and 50s, they have adjusted their expectations and have stabilized in terms of work and friendship. You wouldn’t have “Romeo and Juliet” for people in their 50s; it would be called “The Honeymooners.”

learn a new term (or two):
Amygdala-'where all your anger, anxiety and arousal come from'.
agoraphobia -'the fear of being in open or crowded public spaces'

In a nutshell

2005-10-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

Flashback & Snapshot

I could not blog too often recently. Work is always lagging behind (housework and schoolwork..dissertation is a kind of homework too I assume). On top of that, I started an internship with a PR company in Bellevue. Since I am working with the research group, it doesn't feel too different from graduate school. I think that's pretty good combination of my research skills and my interest in business world. Driving is a constant headache; traffic is always slower than 20 miles on 520, from 4 :30 to 7:30 pm, kind of frustrating. In my opinion, there is nothing more than being stuck in endless traffic that makes you feel the hardship of life. Glad the company has this flexible work plan available.

Went to Chicago for AOIR 6.0 earlier this month and presented my paper on blog links within American cities. Staying in the 42nd floor at Marriott Downtown Chicago, I felt I was in a different planet from my cabin deep in the woods at Seattle when I looked down upon the giant and bright city (on iron shoulder?)every night.

I lost my Cannon powershot s400 on the plane back to Los Angeles for Pavoratti's concert. I bought a SD410 later, and found none of my old accessories, from battery to charger, from memory card to leather case, compatible to this new little thing. That makes me not very happy about Canon. I would bought the exact same S400 should they continue the model, which, I believe, is like only 2 years old. I don't see the huge difference of these two models, but nothing work together. That's ridiculous. Quoting Bin's favorite words-Capitalism is sucking my money.

why do you blog?

2005-10-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

Why blogging?

Edelman PR has a survey on bloggers. for the first question: what is the primary reason you blog?" I wonder if they forgot to add an option for me: Blogging for writing practice-in foreign language. Anybody out there?

but of course- the survey is for PR popurse. Other intersting findings: bloggers trusted other bloggers most (62%) when looking information about a product-another good reason for corporate to hire some professional bloggers to talk about their companies or products; however, blogs are not that trustworthy if endorsed by a company (only 6.68% say it's VERY trustworthy).

And, Surprise!- about 60%(!) of bloggers interviewed have been contacted by PRs. Now I can't help wondering if the blogger samples are kind of skewed to those top bloggers.

I will be back

2005-09-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

I will be back

I will be concentrated on wraping up my dissertation and getting my degree. Blogging will be back in mid October.

Unexpected

2005-09-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

Unexpected

I must admit I haven't' paid too much attention to Katrina at Louisiana for past few days, not close to half as much as I had for Tsunami in South Asia. How bad could it be, I thought, the richest country in the world, who dealt with hurricane/flood on annual base, who spent billions of dollars fighting terrorism and protect its people, how bad could it be?! I didn't pay much attention until I overheard an angry anchor ranting on CNN while I was cooking my lunch. I don't understand. How could the major rescue force there consists of Red Cross and local policemen in the face of large-scale death, famine, epidemic, looting and shooting? Where is the capable governor that can draw millions of federal funds and the caring president who passed sandbag on the dan, like what happened in Florida last year? I hope it is not because this is not an election year, or because Louisiana is certainly not a swing state, or because 60% of New Orleans are Black.

Rainy days and Mondays

2005-08-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

Rainy day and Monday

It's Monday and it's a rainy day, and the song from my younger days sounds in my head all day long. The teenager-appealing lyrics starts to make sense to me again and actually it fits my current situation quite well. Blues. nothing seems to fit. lonely clown.

It's the first rain and overcast day I have in Seattle, and it happens in a Monday (actually starting from late Sunday evening). It feels like the party is over... (though I'm not a party person at all)

I used to live in Buffalo before my Californian days, I don't expect the weather change could do so much on my mood this time around. But it does. Those warnings about 90-day straight raining season in Seattle start to make me worry.

I need to be strong.

2005-08-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

old bottle, new wine

An interesting research done by University of Michigan gives an empirical foothold for the old theory of high context / Low context culture. What's newly revealed in this study is that such differences may be natural born, which could be a quite a blow on the notion of "culture is learned".

"Nisbett .... asking Japanese and Americans to look at pictures of underwater scenes and report what they saw. The Americans would go straight for the brightest or most rapidly moving object, he said, such as three trout swimming. The Japanese were more likely to say they saw a stream, the water was green, there were rocks on the bottom and then mention the fish. The Japanese gave 60 percent more information on the background and twice as much about the relationship between background and foreground objects as Americans."

"the researchers tracked the eye movement of the Chinese and Americans as they looked at pictures. The Americans looked at the object in the foreground sooner Â? a leopard in the jungle for example Â? and they looked at it longer. The Chinese had more eye movement, especially on the background and back and forth between the main object and the background, he said."

I met a biologist from UCLA not long ago and he predicted in our lunch that social science will eventually have to find answer in genetics. That's quite a bold statement. But if you read the recent bestseller Freakonomics, you might discover a newfound territory of eugenics in social science researchtolerantnt abortion policies correlates with the declination of crime rate (because potential criminals do not get chances to be born); who the parents are, rather than what parents do to the kids are highly correlated with the children's school performanceNumbersrs don't lie, that's what the Levitt, thauthorer believe. That reminds me that the whole regression theory starts with Galten's (he's Darwin's cousin) passion on eugenics. He was the one who stood at London street to measure the beauty of women passerby, and who set out to collect heights of hundreds father and sons. I guess social science does start with, or at least with intent to understand, genetics, and there might be a trend today that revives this dangerous tradition, which can be easily labeled as racism.

sweet home Maple Leaf

2005-08-17T22:49:00.000-07:00

Sweet home Maple Leaf

This will be hard to beat, we found a house in three days. We will have our first home in Seattle. Hidden in the woods, however, it's only one block from the bus stop. No famous attractions or cultural center, but everything interesting is within 10 minutes of driving, and a coffee house with free wi-fi is a few blocks away. The house is a little older than we've expected, but we can't complain too much-Seattle is such a hot market today. The view of cascade mountain is just irresistible.

Leadership

2005-08-11T16:30:00.000-07:00

Leadership

I had my first telephone job interview today. I think it went well and my background kinds of impressed the recruiter. But I stumbled over one question about leadership. I don't even remember how the question was asked, but I remember I was very surprised to hear the term. It's not that I never heard of that, I did, actually, too many times everywhere, and came across it every time when reading interview tip. I don't know why I just skipped it every time and think no one will really ask such abstract question. Maybe I've been in academia too long and the word sounds so strangely corporate to me. Or, I just realized, maybe I am never comfortable with the question because of culture background? Maybe deep inside, I was more conformed to the value of teamwork and collectivism and never wanted to be the one that look above all others? In Chinese, we said the bird that stands out will be shot first and there are lots of other proberbs on keeping low profile. Even I've heard this term 'leadership' thousands of times, the value associated with it makes me turne back on . When I got off the phone and eased down, I realized the question is just about a set of management skills, not about principles. I should have mentioned the teaching experience (I think I was given a cue by the recruiter, then I forgot), how to manage a class, how to keep litseners' attention and how convey message effectively. I will remember it next time. And I should not skip any popular question on interview tips anymore.

new data on Blogosphere by comScore

2005-08-11T00:58:00.000-07:00

new data on Blogosphere by comScore
key findings:

"· 50 million U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005. That is roughly 30% of all U.S. Internet users and 1 in 6 of the total U.S. population
· Five hosting services for blogs each had more than 5 million unique visitors in that period,and four individual blogs had more than 1 million visitors each
· Of 400 of the biggest blogs observed, segmented by seven (nonexclusive) categories,political blogs were the most popular, followed by "hipster" lifestyle blogs, tech blogs and blogs authored by women
· Compared to the average Internet user, blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed connections
· Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and theyare much more likely to shop online"

For the last finding, it will be convincing if T-test is available. And I would also like to see how top 400 blogs are categorized

The research has quite impressive sample size: 2 Million internet users.-"The comScore panel includes representative samples of home,work and university users and closely reflects the demographic composition of the general U.S.Internet user population."

remembering Peter Jennings

2005-08-08T16:32:00.000-07:00

Remembering Peter Jennings

I was quite shocked to hear the news about Jennings’s death today. It felt like yesterday that he announced in ABC about his lung cancer. He came to my attention during 9/11 in 2001, when most of news anchors went way too emotional and he remained his composed and caring gesture. He gave an impression of news insider, who does homework and actually knows what he talks about; and his presence gave a star power of TV personality. I saw him the other time on PBS hosting one of the opening night of Carnegie hall. He transformed himself into a classical music expert without trace of trying, and kept it cool and charming. He reminds me those old-time movie stars like Carry Grant, warm and assuring, but with much more brains and knowledge. And he has the best voice, before he got cancer, in all those veteran anchors of his generation.

Santa Barbara

2005-07-15T02:19:00.000-07:00

Sanata Barbara (Click to see large image)

Santa Barbara

2005-07-15T02:07:00.000-07:00

Santa Barbara (Click to see large image)

lost in Santa Cruz

2005-06-25T01:42:00.000-07:00

Lost in Santa Cruz

I love watching ‘curb your enthusiasm’. Life is filled with so many embarrassing moments, and you are guilty of innocent crime any moment. One of the biggest embarrassments, I find, is the “emperor’s gown”. We are forced to follow some inexplicable social norms and fashions, so we don’t look stupid. In one of the episodes, David Larry was dragged by his wife to beach front to spend the day. He was so reluctant and said ‘I feel anxious here because I don’t know what people are enjoying’. Well, this blog is not about the TV show; what David Larry said is just how I felt about Santa Cruz, though I do enjoy a walk on beach most of times.

The hotel for the weekend was sold out at some insanely high rate. The price we paid for this small inn can buy any a 4-star hotel in any big city, but the quality is outrageous poor (what about ragged and ropey blanket for $170 a night, and NO air conditioner). We assume the place outside hotel must be somewhere like heaven to level this price. Then we got really anxious when we drove around the little town looking for miracles. It was colder than LA’s winter, literally. Cliffy beach has tall pine-trees with long-reaching boughs. It is quite picturesque and has much more natural appeal than Santa Monica, but not as good as 17-mile drive at Monterey. Cloud was so thick at dawn that not only view of sunset on sea is not possible but the falling sun can not even paint a slight color on the clouds. That’s a big turnoff to us the sunset chasers. Bin joked that the hotel room here is like real estate in Los Angeles-any crappy room can be a hot buy because everyone buys for the fear of losing something big. And who knows what that ‘thing’ is.

We are told by a local student (who looke hurt when we said, mistaking her as a conference attendee, we felt the city was overrated) that Santa Cruz is a city with natural wonder and steer of commercial vain. And we were told by the others that this city is like a home or resort for high brows in Silicon Valley. For those who hate the idea of home in San Jose and who are very rich, they buy a home here. For those who hate the idea of home in San Jose and who are not that rich, they come here for weekends as gateway from that hideous place(actually, we have felt hotels in San Jose are always best deals and incredibly comfortable). Santa Cruz is said to be a great place to get outdoorsy if you are outdoorsy type and good at those expensive recreations (golf, surfing…). When you get here, hopefully, you are automatically a member of the Yippie club who tried to escape from the hectic city life and stressful jobs with handsome pay. If you get that feeling, you get it and you will not feel Larry David’s anxiety, I guess.

UC Santa Cruz is hidden deep in the mountain. They say campus buildings are not allowed to be seen from the city; so when you drive onto the out ring of campus you see, on the one side, giant grassy plains with a couple of cows wandering and on the other side, a magnificent view of the town by the sea. When you drive really deep inside, you start to spot small industrialized-style architectures sitted in the woods. Behind the engineering building, there is a warning sign detailing tips about how to react when encountering violent animal such as lion: like raise your hands and make yourself look bigger and taller, or fight bravely. Certainly it is a very special campus.

From Seattle, with love

2005-06-11T01:17:00.000-07:00

From Seattle, with love

First, I do not travel as much as it appears in my blog. But, I just came back from Seattle. That’s the second time, and Seattle has never been overcast or gloomy to me. In the contrary, it’s been sunny, green and sweet-aired both times I was there. I stayed by the Lake Union this time. Daylight is so long at this time of the year. We sat in a sushi restaurant by the waterfront about 8:30 in the evening, and just in time to catch the sunset and its flowing colors on the water, very nice.

Downtown Seattle is warmly chic instead of threateningly cosmopolitan. White people is very white (compared to tanned Californian), yellow is not very yellow and black is not very black. I got a bottle of ‘water for peace’ from a street vendor and its label instructs how to send a message in a bottle to White House. Later I took a bus to Capitol Hill and see a lot of coffee houses with people reading in front, a lot of colorful hair and a lot of men holding hands.

Public transportation is not the most convenient one, but luckily I got friendly locals for help. Just coming back NYC where everyone looks busy and focused, I was flattered when not only one people come up to offer help when I stood dazed at the middle of the road. While you are ordered to get out of bus for short of a dime in LA, the Seattle driver only wanted to accept one dollar even you paid him two. Both town car drivers (I should say graceful gentlemen) that drove us from and to the airport are both emigrating Seattle from the Northeast, and they talked like Seattle ambassadors, even to us two Californians who they say are responsible for the rising house price in Seattle these two years. Is it just me that feel the security check in Seattle is the friendliest and most thorough, however, consequently, the slowest one, among all these big cities? Well, being slow is better than being perfunctory and inhuman, I guess.

I love New York in spring

2005-06-04T01:45:00.000-07:00

I love New York in spring

I had been to NYC 4 times before I moved to LA, none of the trips was as good as the one I took last week to attend ICA. I’m lucky to wrap up my presentations on the first two days, and I was a free bird for the rest of days . The weather is the best of the year. After long rainy and cloudy season, sunshine and breeze came back to town.I walked around the town and felt very reluctant to go underground for subway. I just discover the joy of traveling alone: no need to compromise to group interests and wait long line for those landmark sites, and I can take as much time as I liked in museums.

The trip is pretty much about museums, and it kindles my interests at modern art. My knowledge on fine arts had never gone over 1910, and most stayed in renaissance, impressionism, no more than cubism. I never knew it is so much fun in paintings from 20th-century avant-gardes such as Magritte, Munch, Klimt, Rousseau but I have not grown enough insight to appreciate Kandinsky and Pollock. I was very much captivated by Marc Chagall’s work, they are so imaginative and rich, with all the floating and upside downs that I can relate to my own dream scenarios. Hopper is another painter that I just knew and liked very much, and to my surprise, he is an American and had only one wife for 50 years. I like the way he conceived and portrayed America, silent and often static at an unexpected moment, leaving much space for imagination and speculations. Some of his painting reminds me a lot about Hitchcock’s movies, but with colors. I guess both Hopper and Chagall enthrall me for their abundant innuendos to Freudian notions that have universal appeal. Frick Collection is the only place I visited with classical works. A splendid Athenian white mansion facing east side of the Central park, with hundreds of paintings ranging from medieval age to Monet (only a few impressionisms, and no further), Frick has fiber collections than any museum I’ve seem in Los Angeles, including LACMA. There are Ingre’s Countess d’Haussonville, Vermeer's Mistress and Maid, a whole bunch of Gainsborough, and a Rembrandt’s self-portrait. My personal favorite in Frick is Bellini’s St. Francis in the desert. The color, the scene and the gesture feel so theatrically transcendental. MOMA is just great great place that I will go back again and again, I believe. Sitting in the middle of the midtown skyscrapers, the building has the huge glass window all around through which visitors get magnificent views of the urban landscape. MOMA has wonderful collections of cubism, surrealism, expressionism, abstracim, so do Guggenheim and Whitney. Before my plane took off, I rushed to Pier 54 by the Hudson River for the ‘Ash and Snow’ photo exhibit. Thanks to the almighty NYC metro, I was able to see these stunning pictures, hung in a intentionally-made crude and ragged hall enclosed by hundreds of shipping boxes, at the last moment of my stay.

After my last presentation in the Sheridan at Midtown, I walked two streets downto the half-price ticket stands at Time Square trying to get a ticket to see Monty Python’s Spamalot. It’s sold out, so I went to see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels instead. Not bad, very hilarious. Using pop culture to mock pop culture, the show feels like a good sitcom, a smooth slapstick with nice music numbers. The next day is the Memorial day, I went to St. Johns Cathedral to see a concert featuring Tchaikovsky and Korsakov. I was stunned by the sound of symphony reverberant in the huge church, totally surreal. No wonder early music were only dedicated to God.

East village is a new-found treasures in NYC. A lot like Adams’ Morgan at DC, the village demonstrates wider variety on cuisines. My friend, Chi, works for a Peruvian client recently; so we went to a Peruvian restaurant at the corner of 2nd Ave. and 7th street. Tried Ceviche for the first time, even better than sashimi. We also had a lovely outdoor brunch at Café st. Bart’s by Saint Bartholomew’s dome. A trip to NYC without going to Chinatown sounds incomplete, but the city is definitely has much more to explore.

Press fights back

2005-05-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

Press fights back

New York TImes has two articles on Sunday that explore the problem of blogs as new media. on Week in Review section, Adam Cohen discussed the ethics policies that should be imposed on political blogs in 'The Latest Rumbling in the Blogosphere: Questions About Ethics'.

Cohen notes that bloggers will be hold accountable someday for what they publish on line. While bloggers often criticize MSM for violating journalistic ethics, they seldom apply the same rule to themselves:

"The thing about influence is that, as bloggers well know, it is only a matter of time before people start trying to hold you accountable. Bloggers are so used to thinking of themselves as outsiders, and watchdogs of the LSM (that's Lame Stream Media), that many have given little thought to what ethical rules should apply in their online world. Some insist that they do not need journalistic ethics because they are not journalists, but rather activists, or humorists, or something else entirely. But more bloggers, and blog readers, are starting to ask whether at least the most prominent blogs with the highest traffic shouldn't hold themselves to the same high standards to which they hold other media. Every mainstream news organization has its own sets of ethics rules, but all of them agree broadly on what constitutes ethical journalism. Information should be verified before it is printed, and people who are involved in a story should be given a chance to air their viewpoints, especially if they are under attack. Reporters should avoid conflicts of interest, even significant appearances of conflicts, and disclose any significant ones. Often, a conflict means being disqualified to cover a story or a subject. When errors are discovered or pointed out by internal or external sources, they must be corrected. And there should be a clear wall between editorial content and advertising. Bloggers often invoke these journalistic standards in criticizing the MSM, and insist on harsh punishment when they are violated. The blogs that demanded Dan Rather's ouster accused him of old-school offenses: not sufficiently checking the facts about President Bush's National Guard service, refusing to admit and correct errors, and having undisclosed political views that shaded the journalism. Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, resigned this year after a blogmob attacked him for a reported statement at the World Economic Forum at Davos that the military had aimed at journalists in Iraq and killed 12 of them. Their complaint was even more basic than in Mr. Rather's case: they were upset that Mr. Jordan said something they believed to be untrue."

Cohen notes that reformers should 'held themselves to higher standards thatn the institutions they attacked': "Many bloggers who criticize the MSM's ethics, however, are in the anomalous position of holding themselves to lower standards, or no standards at all. That may well change. Ana Marie Cox, who edits Wonkette, notes that blogs are still "a very young medium," and that "things have yet to be worked out." Before long, leading blogs could have ethics guidelines and prominently posted corrections policies." Some blogs have begun the self-regulation; an example is http://cyberjournalist.net/

The second article is 'A blog revolution? Get a grip' (May 8, 2005, BU1) on Business section. Discussing the business model of Gawker Media, a network of teens of blog, including gawker, fleshbot and Wonkette, Zeller, the author implies that blogging is just adopting the traditional media model and publishing on line. With the strategy of grouping of blogs, like what Gawkers do, Advertisers are treating them more seriouly. " "There are too many people looking at blogs as being some magic bullet for every company's marketing problem, and they're not," he (Denton, Founder of Gawker) added. "It's Internet media. It's just the latest iteration of Internet media." "

Starting a new blog

2005-04-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

Starting a New Blog

I am starting a new blog, which is a collection of Main Stream Media's coverage of Bloggosphere.

Why bother? I realize I'm becoming a news junkie, spending whole mornings in Starbucks reading three newspapers, plus 4 to 5 magazines each week ( Maybe I should get a job or have a baby). I read in New Yorker sometime last year about a gentleman in NYC reading every page of NYtimes, and he was still 20 years behind even he has given up sports section. Such total consuming without result bothers me. I could never become a political pundict; but I am surely a good librarian, now I have this file box with 20 something hanging folders labeled with 'IT', 'Media', 'politics', 'science', 'Art', 'book', 'China', and surely 'blog', etc. Yes, in this digital age, I am building my paper clippings collation. It is fun so far. I guess it is in my human nature the joy of collecting something visible every day.

Information explosion and the information overload aftermath overwhelmed me, I stopped reading anything on line or on hard copy for a while ( I mean news), and then I decide to return to tradition, letting elite news media guiding my news consumtion. And I am amazed by how many stories about blogs in the MSM, and how unimportant individual blogs is unless you are celebrity, or tied to celebrity. Mena Trott, the cofounder of Sixapart says (MIT technology review, Apr 2005), ' only six people in the world may want to know what you did for dinner last night, but if they are six people you know and concern, it (blog) is worth it'. That's true, and that's why I still keep blogging, I guess. Then my collection of MSM's coverage on bloggosphere stems from a curiosity of how millions of personal voices make news, if they can every make news. So far, news stories I collect is mainly about celebrity picks up blogs as news hobbies or business endorse blogs as new PR tool. I feel something is missing here: hey, how about these 10 million anonymous bloggers? The idea about blogs' impact on politics are their strengths on grassroots, the total of collective voices. There are technorati and blogpulse working on it and should have got more attention on people's agenda, but certainly it does not matter too much to MSM, who's still dedicated to voices from Capitol hill. I don't' know if the MSM's angle on blogs will change with the time being, but I sense it is something worth attention. Let's get real, MSM might sometimes be too slow or too cautious to pick up some explosive news lead, but without going to national news media, what news can be truely big and reach the majority of the population?

a little Italian inside

2005-04-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

A little Italian inside

I usually don't do this. Taking quiz to know yourself sounds a little too self-indulgent and feminine to me. But I am glad to declare:

Your Inner European is Italian!

Passionate and colorful.
You show the world what culture really is.

Who's" Your Inner European?

I would have chosen to study Italian major if Beijing Foreign language University had opened that major in 1992. Ok, now I know it was not only because of Puccini, I do have a little Italian inside me.

city with opera

2005-04-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

city with opera

Pavarotti ’s Farewell concert in Hollywood Bowl is on sale from 10:00 this morning, the box office is not open until May 7 (how on earth people got ticket before Internet?). The concert is 6 months away; we ordered the ticket on line at 1:00pm. I just feel so lucky to live in LA, one of the mere two cities in the US that Pavarotti will sing this year as part of his farewell tour (at least that’s what shows on Ticketmaster.com). So far I’ve seen all three my favorite tenors, my life is so full.

Well, I have not met any celebrity on the street of Los Angeles yet. When I read US weekly at snowy and bleak Buffalo, I imagine I would dine in the same restaurant or shop in the same seven-eleven, in Santa Monica or Malibu, where most of the ‘star is just like you’ pictures are taken, with Johny Depp or Matt Damon. It does not happen. But I paid to see, 100 feet away, Domingo in ‘Indomeneo’ , and the view of Andrea Bocelli’s back in his concert at Las Vegas. I guess with the ticket I paid for the Pavarroti concert, I would only see a tiny dot of this giant (literally and metaphorically) at Hollywood Bowl. Notheless, it’s already thrilling enough for my frail heart.

Ok, I’m getting a little straying again ( It is suppose to be a blog on opera instead of tabloid). Acturally, when talking about opera, I am too awed to be blasé. Moving to Los Angeles and 10 miles from opera house feels like an 8-year-old who’s home next to Disneyland. We saw La Boheme, Madam Butterfly, Indomeneo, and Le nozze di Figaro in Los Angeles Opera. For recital, I went to that of Hei-Kyung Hong and Renee Fleming. We drove east to see Andrea Boceli in Las Vegas, and we drove south to San Diego for Josh Groban, who I considered, has operatic voice anyway. The only popular music concert I went is for Jewel, who I reckoned to have one of the most beautiful voices in pop music world, and she also challenged herself with one of Puccini’s arias at encore.

The second act of La Boheme, the scene at café of Latin Quarter, where ex lovers went through a series of jealousy, pretended nonchalance and outburst of passion, has become my favorite opera moment. The Quando men vo is just splendid, splendid. I can’t think of any melody as enthralling as this one; totally Parisian, Paris in spring, with flowers wavering in the breeze of love and desire. Musseta is so different from any other heroine in Puccini’s operas, so overbearing, vivid, and sexy, but with a soft heart. I love her more than anyone else, just because of this aria only. Did I mention how powerful and beautiful when all the other 4 main characters join her in the quintet. Nothing to compare. Listen to it before you die.

news media or news?

2005-03-30T17:39:00.000-08:00

News media or news?

No news medium can afford not paying attention to bloggosphere nowdays. Newsweek starts a ‘blogwatch’ column every week, ‘a weekly mainstream-media snapshot of what’s hot (or what’s not in the ever-widening world of weblogs. Inside politics at CNN contribute several minutes or so (used to be 20 minutes, not sure how long now) every day talking about what’s in bloggosphere, drawing analysis from blogpulse. The implication is the same, mainstream media reports on what happens in bloggosphere. I think it is a very smart redefinition of the dynamic of blog and mainstream media.

It is such a norm today that blogs challenge main stream news by disclosing more inside scoops, therefore snatching audience from TV to computer. Sure, Blog is a medium, so is every human being; as long as you are a channel of communication you are medium. Thanks to the Internet, a personal blog became a mass media (sort of), but still, saying bloggosphere is a kind of news media really overturns the journalism study for the past two centuries. I used to be a journalism student and a journalist for a very short time, a decade ago (wow, time flees). I still remember the time when I was a feature writer, how much work and human resource has to put in for a news story, endless phone calls, the disturbing number of read marks from editors that overwhelm my original writing…What I learn from those years is, news, for the need of, if not the truth, the fact, is collective work. What one person says is news, but it can hardly make this person a news medium.

And that’s how I feel about personal blogs. It is really not a competitor to mainstream news media; instead, it can and should be a great complement for news sources. News media has been accused for long for their elite-dominated news sources, a.k.a, the senators, the statesmen, the professors, together with some very anecdotal accounts of Joe of Wisconsin, or Jose from Santa Anita. Now, bloggosphere make life easier for reporters to find out what millions of average Joe or Jose say and think. The trick is how to find this fragmented information dispersed in the infinite internet, and how to present them in a comprehensive and representative manner. As a former and short-lived journalist, I wish my research can be a help to news reporters to generate information about real public opinion in the public sphere.

What a difference a 0.1% makes…

2005-03-18T13:46:00.000-08:00

What a difference a 0.1% makes…

It feels such refreshing to know that any two human beings share 99.9% of identical genetic code. All the differences including eye color, height, body hair, possibilities of getting cancer are only decided by the rest 0.1% of the human genome, which is called ‘Single nucleotide polymorphisms’(SNP))(Wall Street Journal, Feb.25 2005, B1). I’m not writing about human genetics in scientific sense, which is a topic I had been quite intrigued since Bin works on the department of human genetics of UCLA. I’m just so amazed by how such similar human beings look and live so differently in the world.

Los Angeles is a melting pot, and it is the most diversified neighborhood I’ve ever stayed. At Westside, we see Jewish men in their small black hat everywhere on Sunday; actually one block to our home there is a synagogue, where some low-profile ceremonies are going on every day however, Westside is very much dominated by an Arabian, especially Iranian business. Persian restaurant, Persian bakery and bridal store, Persian bookstore, Persian carpet, gallery, you name it. Then, perpendicularity to Westwood avenue, about 100 yard away, there is a huge Mormon temple with the tallest monument of West Los Angeles, which is my lighthouse when I’m immersed in the traffic ocean. And of course there is a Christian church not faraway, with charity picnics all year long. I often speculated that the world will be much more peaceful if Gaza can be west Los Angeles. But why it only happens in places like Los Angeles?

Well, from the perspective of human gene, I guess all these people of different religions and ideologies that can co-exist peacefully in this land because they share some identical genome. Whybrow, a UCLA professor thinks the same way; in his book ‘American mania’, he suggests that immigrants share the genesis of risk taking that traced back to Homo Sapiens. Dopamine system plays a central role in curiosity and novelty seeking, behaviors that feature prominently in the typical migrant profile. Hence, ‘it is the relative activity of these information superhighways-the genetically programmed balance among these systems-that helps determine the differences in behavior that exist among individuals”(P.63). Such genetically programmed information processor determines mindset of risk-taking, reward-seeking, curiosity and upward mobility for migrants, and consequently it’s in the blood of the offspring of migrants. I guess war or conflicts often start from fear, fear of people from other side because we don’t know them. But the migrants, who inherit this brave gene (literally!) in their blood, reach out for strangers and find they are similar at 99.9% degree, so they decide to make peace and live on the same block.

For a more prevailing phenomenon, I often wonder if class is a product of fate, or say, genetics, the 0.l% in our discussion. Every night, we went out walking, we will see a black cat meowing in front of our neighbor’s door, where it often finds pet food left by our kind neighborhood Denise. He (I assume it is a ‘he’, since it’s black) is just an ordinary black cat, sleeping on top of car hoods at winter’s night when engines are just turned off and you can’t tell him apart from several other black hats lurking abound the neighborhood. Meanwhile, inside Denise’s apartment, there is this 16-year-old Missy, a Himalayan pussy with long fluffy shining hair and emerald eyes. Not to worry about the food or cold winter, Missy enjoys the stroking and fondling as well as the full attention of Denise. If there is a cat version of TV show ‘upstairs, downstairs’, it should be called ‘outside the door, inside the door’, I guess.

Discovery channel has a special about beauty and human beings, packed with statistics of high correlation between good-looks and successful careers. At the end, the narrator says something like born with good-looks is like winning a lottery in genetic pool; it is unfair, so deal with it. If you think about those18th or 19th English or French novels, beauty is the only pass for poor girl/boy to enter the higher class (except Jane Eyre, but Bronte made her a moderate rich heir and made Rochester blind and limp at the end to balance their status).

Americans don’t like the word ‘class’, as Fussell points out in his book ‘Class’, since every individual is suppose to be born equal and has equal right in this freeland. But if you see the recent cinema sensation ‘Sideway’, you could not help but wonder if all Paul Giomany’ fuss about wine is his struggle to keep his losing sense of class. According to Paul Fussell, the denial of the existence of class is mainly prevailing among people with middle or prole economic status. Class is a very favorite topic for people in upper class and class is there form the very beginning of your life: what part of England that your ancestors are from, the city where you are born, your height, how thin is your chin, how high is your forehead and your nose. Class is in your blood. However, if you are not born high, there are ways you can appear less low. The book written in early 1990s is still very enlightening when read today. And now we know these fundamental difference deciding your life is only the 0.1% of variation in your genes. Unfair? Deal with it.

I should stop here, before I really get lost and talk like a racist. On the flip side, recognizing the 0.1% of the nature selection and enjoying who we are, maybe you will have a good attitude, expect better, settle for less and embrace happy life.

in news

2005-03-01T23:55:00.000-08:00

In the news
Ok, it's only UB news. But at least it is a little comfort when your research is shown in a news story after two years of hard work, lonely days and nights, without seeing any light of imminent monetary or career gain (that pretty much summarizes a Ph.D student's life). Better than nothing. For those friends who care for me and often asked about my dissertation, this seems a good summary and reads like I was being interviewed and talked in some big words.

A book called ‘BLOG’

2005-01-24T15:24:00.000-08:00

A book called ‘BLOG’

I fetched a book called ‘BLOG’ last night from B&N, assuming it is a general introduction on blogging, and might be a reference to my research. ell, yes and no. Aside from some banal discussion of how political campaign and corporate PR/marketing can benefit from information obtained from using blogs, the author, a republican pundit, took every opportunity to attack liberals and CNN, and singing praise to GOP and FOX news. In a book with the title of ‘BLOG’ that shinning in gold, he proposes that blog, with potential of equal to talk radio, is a weapon that conservatives have been and should be picking up to get even with the prevalence of mainstream liberal media. And he keeps reminding the readers (at least in two places in the book while I flipping the pages): if you are liberal, this book is not for you, go back to your Michael Moore movie. There are some very weird notes through the book, such as, the journalists are all liberal because, they hate their alumni who became richer by working for corporate, and ‘CNN begs audience to listen’.

My news consuming mostly takes place on cable news channel, and I happen to like almost all CNN news anchors, since they appeared reserved and intellectual (and CNN is going to cancel ‘Crossfire' partly because of the criticism from Jon Stewart). When I watch FOX or MNBC, their threatoning and dramatic tone really turn me away. If one thing that Hewitt says right, those anchorman and anchorwoman from FOX do sound full of ‘revolutionary spirit’. Likewise, what make me uncomfortable about republicans are those conservative fanatics, such as this Hewight, who can not even talk straight about a technology in an impartial and calm tone; or that Ann coulter, the most famous blond right-wing writer in past two years, who declares that her upmost happiness is to see ‘liberals weeping, crying and threatening to move to Canada’ (Time Magazine, Jan.17). Above of all, what make conservatives amazing is their ability to make it sound they are the oppressed group and unheard voice. In Chinese, we have a saying like ‘the thief call ‘Catch the thief’. That’s a very smart way to get away with the blame and cover oneself up along with the innocent. And that’s how I felt about him or the book when I flipping over the pages of ‘blog’. Though everyone knows media is owned and controlled by big corporate, let’s make it sounds far more liberal than it really is; though the nation is totally governed by Republicans, let’s make it sound as though the liberals are overwhelming. As an outsider, I do think the republicans are the noisier and more aggressive ones, however, it is the Democrats and liberals who look desperately seeking for attention.

I don’t deem myself democratic or liberal. Actually I am quite conservative in many ways: very slow accepting new art and new technology, stick to classic music and books (even the futon cover I just bought is so neutral and old-fashioned). I am for free trade, small government, but not low tax (which I think is very irresponsible for the people and society). And I think religion (at least for individuals) and family are very important, and a man married a woman is a better match (in Chinese, we says ‘yin’, the female, meets ‘yang’, the male), but just in my opinion. I did wish there was a change of regime only because I disagree with the lot of things the current president and his administration has been doing. His problem solving is really making no sense to me: invading Iraq to fight terrorism while the terrorists are in Afghanistan and nukes are in Iran and North Korea; cutting deficit by privatizing social security while spending more on a war a continent and an Ocean away; improving education by imposing standard exams to all children while cutting education budget; starting medical care reform from limiting legal action towards medical malpractice? The logic behind his proposals is either non-linear or suspiciously crooked. In Chinese we will describe such actions as ‘scratching the itch on your foot with your boots on’. It really doesn’t help much.

Then the secret weapon that the Republicans still rock the election and the country, after all that the administration has done, might be sought on their highly disciplined and very effective campaign team and the invincible propaganda machine. During the campaign season, we see all these prim and polished republican PRs speaks on TV in such a consistent tone and words, while not much novelty but very disciplined and strategic. And all these conservative pundicts like Hewitt or Coutler, have the courage to voice their partisan rants everywhere, funny sometimes,but very virulent most of times. I went to an assembly led by Michael Moore in UCLA during that time, and I said, boy, Democrats were not going to make it. Loosely organized, with 60’s rock-n-roll spirits, the event was a ride of transitory ecstasy and longer lukewarm stage wait. And it is no secret that Kerry failed by the inconsistency and lack of attacking spirits of his campaign team. Nonetheless, the reason that liberals are liberals is because they are, more or less, anarchical and in contempt of organized and institutionalized propaganda machine.

Then, it just comes into my mind, if Hewitt did not imbed those ideological comments to the book about blog, his publisher ,who seems to be much favor of the religious topics, may not want to publish his book called ‘BLOG’.

Pacific Heights

2005-01-12T11:35:00.000-08:00

Pacific heights

Moving to Los Angeles, I found we are badly wanted by landlords. Our current property manager basically begged us over phone after her office hour back to take our current apartment, the second day we were in California. It turns out the applicant before us was a Con artist, who was charged for fraud as Spielberg’s nephew, and who used to pose for Child porn in Internet. Michelle, the manager was so glad that she let us move in the next day, a Saturday when she is supposed at home. She told us she was so worried earlier that we had to leave because the Con was applying first: “I felt so bad that I had to let the right persons go while I knew this guy has something wrong.’

While we started our second run of apartment seeking, after realize how impossible it is we could own a house in this city, we kinds see how disappointed the managers are when we do not take the apartments immediately after they show us. And they made us feel guilty. We used to see a two bedroom that owned by an old Jewish couple. Not very impressed but trying to be polite, the told the amiable old bald gentleman that we could not move in until two months later. You will think he will just let us go, since not many apartments in Westside can be vacant for that long. Guess what, ‘we can wait’, he said: “good people are more important than the rent”.

We don’t quite understand this logic. We got used to be a repressed class that has to borrow the property of evil capitalists, and were afraid of being kicked out in the cold and snowy winter night, like in movies. Renting in California is such a strict procedure, credit check, rent in personal check with home address, no moving-in if the deposit is in cash, and deposit usually is higher than monthly rent, all the fuss. How could we be begged by the smiley capitalists to move into their nice apartment? Is that because they could do whatever they want to us since we are ‘nice’ and will not fight back (then they will be very wrong)? Is it a trap?

We don’t quite understand until we saw ‘Pacific heights’ on Bravo! in the weekend. Oh, they want us so badly not because they can take advantage of us but because we will not harm them! Such enlightenment! There are so much harm an evil tenant can do to the landlord while being protected by law: not paying rent for a while, changing locks, damaging everything in the property and kept landlords at custody! Wow, Landlords should be very afraid of bad tenants. I wonder if the movie, shot in the late 1980s brought more paranoid to landlords, or the other way around, some desperate landlords behind the production of the movie cooked such a scary but taking story, a story about good landlords revenge against evil tenants since the law protect the latter instead of the former. I kind of withdraw my plan of starting a project of a bad landlord index on line, for the fear of bad tenants taking advantage, and totally give up plan of investing real property and being a landlord… but the movie is cool.

Call me naïve

2005-01-03T17:45:00.000-08:00

Call me naïve

I did complain from time to time about scant share of material wealth, while deep inside I indulge in the self-admiration of intelligentsia image. Being in school for my whole life, and married to a man who has no interest at any type of science that serves business or production, I was fostered an ignorance, sometime a contempt, to business world. Call me naiveté; I did not recognize the power of money until recently. I thought power comes from knowledge, from intelligence, from social capital, or determination. No, no, no, all these are nothing to the world without being transformed into money.

Cuiqing, my college roommates back to China ran a small manufactory with her husband for several years. Making Mah-Jongg, the so-called national quintessence of China, is a very competitive business-All manufactures are tough nowadays. Compared to the money they made when they worked for press and advertising, they made less money. They are both well-educated and can just starting anything new or quit the business. ‘But what about my 100 something workers?’ she said, ‘They can at least brought home 1000RMB today. I have to work hard for them.’ Well, though she was the girl used to sleep under my bunk, she was way too beyond me now.

I believe there are tow kinds of people in the world, the innovators, the very few, and the consumers, the rest of us. I just came to realize without consumers, rich or poor, all innovations, technological or artistic, are in vein and may not be made possible. Business bridges the functions of these two groups, and the key persons in business, who controlled the money flow, makes the world different, for good or for bad.

Read an article from MIT technology review the other day forecasting the doomed defeat of Google by Microsoft. The author, who sold FrontPage to Microsoft for $130 million 8 years ago, justified Bill Gates’ ruthless business expansion by his philanthropic ambition. Leila, Bin’s English tutor back to Buffalo, who hated everything the big corporations and this administration stands for, once said ‘I would not mind people like Bill Gates make a lot of money’.

In such a cynical world, it’s hard to declare one’s life goal as noble as fighting for world-peace, human rights, better environment, saving the poor and homeless. People who does that, well, they are so… well, alternative. While these alternative/Bohemian/liberal/idealists are quite preoccupied by all kinds of humanity courses and most of them not afraid to take the pain of those who suffer, the ones really make big difference are the ones hold the money bag. The man who initiated the prop 71 and now head of California stem cell policy board is not a biologist or a physician, but a successful real estate developer who has a son with diabetes. Amazon, Starbucks and Wal-mart are among the first groups, much earlier than President Bush remembered to express his shock at his Crawford ranch, to initiate donation for the South Asia tsunami. Each of them generate as much as money as the initial relief fund from any single nation.

I guess the world is better off with business or corporate, as long as these rich business men are not busy in expanding their ambition at the cost of people’s (employees, consumers and, well, people) interests and not only busy in ‘conspicuous consumption’(Verblen’s term to describe the rich using ornament and glitz to show off their class and wealth). On the other side of the coin, these two things are not necessarily leading to only negative results. For one thing, huge profit from big corporations often means big charities or art patrons; second, the willingness for extravagant spending, in a lot of occasions, indicates a spirit of innovators or early adoption of new innovations, which generally is a good thing in the process of civilization. In a nutshell, frog leaping from a naiveté to a sophisticator in a one night like I did, we still can’t see the world in black and white.

The very long Christmas song

2004-12-09T01:38:00.000-08:00

The very long Christmas songs

I don’t usually do the Christmas shopping; first, I don’t have much of family in this country and none of my international friends are really into Christmas. Second, since I learnt the difference of Hanukkah and Christmas, I’m especially cautious giving Christmas card or present to American friends, and the safest thing is, not give anything. However, as shallow as me, I usually do after-Christmas shopping for killer price.

My unusual Christmas shopping this year starts with the unusually cold winter in Los Angeles. I don’t own any warm pants since I moved out of Buffalo; plus wearing some warm underpants is so un-Californian, so I decided to shop some cotton or wool pants that are soft and warm. GOd, how difficult it is to get a pair of petite pants in Westside; and it really hurts to admit that the fitting one is dragging on the floor. To my opinion, all those trendy pants are designed for leggy models, yes, long legs and firm and flat abs. That's understandable. In Westside, there are fitness centers or tanning clubs in every block, but the number of buffet in the whole Westside? Zero. I never see any over-weight man or woman dares to shamelessly walk on the street. So yes, it is understandable most of stores don’t need to have an inventory for those with even the slightly deviant bodies.

So I decided to go to a more plebeian place. By Plebeian place, in Westside, it means department stores like Robinson May or Macy. The firsts one is a kind of old for me, so I swore to find something in Macy, which has started its holiday hours and open till 11pm. Even I’ve got used to operatic ‘Ave Maria’ and jazzy ‘Let it snow’ that have been played everyday in Starbucks since Halloween, which has made me cut my Starbuck time in half, the music played in Macy is still over-festival for me. It was late at night, approaching 10, not too many customers around, the blatant while bland chanting of ‘Merry Christmas, and Happy New year’ (What’s the name of these hideous song anyway?) in children’s voice, like a horde of invisible ghosts sweeping around the store. And then the emotionless baritone started to hum ‘I will be home for Christmas and you can count on me, blah blah blah’, and then you can guess, very flirty ‘Santa Claus blah blah….’ and another very flirty ‘Let it snow, let it snow’. And jingle bells lalala. The same repertoire is replayed again and again while I strolled in the store and it makes you wonder there might be no any better Christmas music in the world. It's like you are indeed in the Matrix, I mean THE MATRIX, in which these cold, machine-like noises, generated by computer and sung by robots are programed to play endlessly. Luckily, amongst this audio torture, I did find three pair of warm pants in the unfashionable middle-aged woman pettite collection (a figure like mine seems only tolerable when grown on a old lady, what a cruel city,! or, wait, maybe I am indeed a middle-aged).

When I checked out, I was told that by opening a Macy account, I can save 30% during this ‘holiday weekend’, which, by the way, is 10 days after Thanksgiving, and three weeks before Christmas. Nonetheless, as housewifely as me, I opened an account; even more, I came back the second day to take the advantage of 30% discount effective through 24 hours, and to suffer the same noise of 24 hours. I could not help asking the very nice saleswoman who helped me checking out twice, today and yestoday: ‘won’t you go crazy listening to this music whole day?’ The smart woman surprisingly took out a pair of ear plugs and told me: “My husband is a musician, and gave me these ear plugs. He said it was a torture to listen to this garbage all day long.’

The latest Time Magazine has a small piece saying how profitable some radio stations became this year by going all Christmas as early as Halloween: rating hikes and advertisers flock. And it puts people in shopping mood. I feel it is incredible. I’ve only been in this country 6 years and did not paid attention to Christmas until recent couple of years. And I’ve been so cloyed by the bombs of Christmas music heard everywhere, even inescapable in restrooms, 1/6 of the year every year. My migraine comes back since November, and I started to wonder if it is caused by Christmas songs. Shopping mood cultivated by Christmas song? No way, it is the discount, you fool. Is it just me that has to bear this audio torture for a 30% discount? If I don’t need these old-ladies' winter pants and not care for the 30% of discount, I imagine what I will do is screaming and running all the way out of the mall.

lament a death

2004-11-28T01:54:00.000-08:00

Lament a death

My little brother died yesterday; I cried my eyes out and lost my voice. We were both only child; he is like a brother that I never had, and I’m like the sister he never had, though we have other cousins, but much younger ones. We had the same eyes and mouths, and he was the only playmate I had in my childhood. Strangely, I could not remember and quote any complete exact sentence he ever said, I wish the memory will come back after this sudden shock. He was not a talkative pal anyway, and we don’t talk profoundly. We had been together before we could not talk, so talking is not our way of communication, I guess. I met him mostly on MSN these years. He bought a Lancer last year, and Lancer became his screen name. He used to call himself ‘autojin’ before it was Lancer. Boy, he did love cars, and he had owned several before most of Chinese were able to have one. I don’t know anything about car, so we could not talk about cars. We’ve seldom talked anything serious since long time ago. Our lives were running paralleled after I left home country. Deep in my mind, I knew we would have plenty of time hanging around and talking when I go back home, when we are old. I can’t imagine my older years without him, he is the only one connected my early years, and, I believe, the end of my life. How wrong I am; he left so early. I felt the void of my life; one big piece disappears from the scene of my older years, if I am going to live long.

Jin is the same age as me, and he fell down the hill and broke his skull. I can’t match his dear face to the man who fell down the hill and broke his skull, and when I can, I scream the way I can’t wake up from a nightmare. My little brother Jin, he was the tallest and most good looking man in the family, the kind you felt proud to introduce to your teenage girlfriends at high school…This is the saddest moment in my life so far; I’ve never felt so close to presence of death. I must be lucky: I’ve been living in a fairy tale with no immediate death for more than 30 years. I don’t know how to deal with death. This shock is so overwhelmed, I felt so weak, both in my body and my spirit. But strangely, for the first time I felt less scared about death, since someone I’m so close to is waiting on the other side. He is so young, he just celebrated his 31st birthday last week. His mom, my aunt has lost the will of living on. My mom cried so hard too, and she kept asking me: “what do I do if this happens to you?”

I’m going to buy a Lancer in the future. I don’t know what I can do to keep him as though alive as long as possible in this world. This might do, and I will also put ‘jin’ in my unborn child’s name. I made a little altar for Jin in my living room, with our pictures together, flowers and candles. I pray to God to take care of him. I wrote a little poem, in Chinese style, on the bouquet I sent to his funeral, and I put three exclamation marks after the word ‘pain’ at the end, as though it can express how painful I really felt. But do all of these make any difference? Can it bring him back to life and heal the pain of the family? I did not receive any education on dealing with death, I felt like a helpless child. How to remember, without pain, someone you love very very much? To me, stop thinking is betrayal, but every memory serves such a pain. Bin said instead of crying all day long, writing something about him would be a better way of remembering. And that’s what I did. Then I realize when we cry for the loss of our love ones, to a great extent, we are crying for ourselves. Death has no impact on the one that dies, but on the ones who live on. I would not know it until I sort out my thoughts in writing.

2004-11-11T21:14:00.000-08:00

Ms. Lin goes to Washington

Have I said that I got a little too much the sunshine and droning coziness in California, which makes my trip to DC especially exciting? That was the first trip back to the East coast in 15 months, and I embraced autumn leaves, rain and wind like an old friend. Even the air, dry, fresh with scent of pine, smell so different from the West coast. It was my third visit to DC. In the summer of 2000, I came as a total tourist and only spotted wherever crowded with most of people, that means Smithsonian, Whitehouse and Lincoln Memorial and DC is just a tourism city to me. The second time I took a stroll alone from Dupont Circle to Adams Morgan, one afternoon during my stay in Maryland University for a workshop; I had a Thai seafood plate outdoor in Connecticut Ave near the subway. It was a late summer afternoon, the whole street is lined up with small dinning tables shined with white cloth and wine glasses; candle lights flickering in the mellow and warm wind, people drank and laughed in front of assorted restaurants serving exotic culinary. I’m an incurable petty bourgeois and I believe I felt in love with DC at that moment. I learnt later that Adams Morgan is the most bohemian area in DC.

This time I came as a traveling spouse who got a ‘friend fly free’ deal and came with no specific plan. I just wandered around the city, and surprisingly found how much it (the good part of it) resembles Paris: grandiose palaces (or government buildings), Beaux style of residence buildings neatly and harmoniously filling the streets, small plazas with classic sculptures and fountains spotted everywhere, and outdoor coffee houses and restaurants are crowded with yuppies. In a rainy afternoon, friends took me to a Peruvian restaurant for lunch in Farragut, a very urban area packed with office building and department stores. It was so cold and raining so hard that day, but the restaurant was full of warmth and life, and of course, people. I like to see all those professions in white shirt and black coat, some with necktie, some with a cashmere scarf casually around the neck, to a professional student like me, these people look like from another world. It was the second day after the election; many tables were engaged in heated discussion, so was our table of three ladies. American politics in a Peruvian restaurant over an exquisite dish of seafood rice mixed with chili and red wine, very hot.

Georgetown is the chicest college town I’ve ever been. The M street leading to the campus felt like Beverly Hills but with intellectual touch, while the campus felt like an cloister abbey back to 18 century with all the grey gothic buildings. Around the campus are quiet streets where you found rows and rows of upscale town houses with heavy doors, peaked or arched roofs and big grilles. We strolled through the quiet streets after dark, listen to the rustle of the dry fallen leaves we stepped on; the air is cold and fresh and the light from the windows are warm and homey. I heard the ‘ The Exorcist’, one of my favorite horrors was shot here, but that’s not horror how I feel. What was in my mind during that walk is that I would exchange the warm weather in California for a winter in Georgetown.

The last night in DC I took Bin to Adam’s Morgan to revive some Bohemian spirit, but I could not found the street I used to have dinner two years ago. So we sat down in a Spanish restaurant looking down a small plaza in the center of which a postmodern sculpture stood, by ‘postmodern’ I mean I could not tell the shape of the sculpture, especially after dark. The first floor of the restaurant is a crowded bar, while we sipped Sangrias and waiting for our food, the flamingo music from downstairs pumped through the floor, and together with the Sangrias, burning in my vein. I do love DC.

DC

2004-11-03T20:15:00.001-08:00

Don’t know much about politics
-in Washington DC

In front of Crossfile studio at George Washington University, there is a donkey dummy painted in motley and an elephant dummy interlaced with hundreds of white lists of political quotes written in black. The most conspicuous one, in the frontal side, is a quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche: 'Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule’. The ironical thing with this quote in front of ‘crossfire’studio is that the show seems trying very hard to push people apart into the insane groups. I know a lot of people, represented by Jon Stewart, resent this show, but I found it a very entertaining for my everyday lunch break (actually, the whole political campaign is more and more like a show business to me). Since I was in DC and had nothing really specific to do, I joined the live audience this afternoon. The show is way too quiet in the studio than on TV, especially today after John Kerry’s concession. Paul Pegala is awfully reserved and sad; Tuck Clarkson is not even as half mean as before; Mcmahon, the guest from Democratic Party kept a pan face and hold his tears, while Fabrizio, the guest from Republic Party tried very hard to hide his smile. Fabrizio revealed that the strategy for Republicans is quite a simple one: targeting those with conservative value but never voted before, and knock their doors one by one and send personalized mail from three years ago. Bush won by 4 million popular votes, and the number of evangelists that came out to vote the first time is the same.
The night before I flew over all those ‘fly-over states’ from LA to DC on Jetblue and scanning through all the TV news channels for updated election results. They say these red states are the real America while people in blue states live in a fantasy. Such a fantasy, however, is quite riveting to me. I came to understand why the president spent so much time in Crawford, Texas rather than in oval office in DC. In a city where 90% of population voted against him, where diversity and foreignness are appreciated, he might hardly find peace in mind. his supporters voted for value rather than economy or war on Iraq. That scares me a lot. It always struck me that republican has such die-hard supporter groups in South and the Midwest, while in DC where they exert their absolute power in, they are so unpopular. It will be very hard for me to believe that the people in city have no value, but urbanites do have broader information access and higher analytical minds, which I think, make the whole propaganda on value and ethics less appealing in cities. Value is the number one concern for republican voters , and they won the nation. However, when a nation concern more ideology and value over economy, education, science and diplomacy, according to the history, it seems to me a start of disaster; it happened not long ago in China when the whole nation is thrown into culture revolution and abandon everything else. I do realize it is not a good analogy, and I assume a disaster can be avoided in the US for the self-adjustment of its democratic structure (then again, how could all the authorities in capital hill are dominated by one party?)
Carl Rove seems an even bigger winner than Bush in this race. He reminds me Professor Henry Higgins in My fair lady. Maybe Rove bet with a pal that he can make any one a beloved president, no matter how unintelligent he is, how he lack of class, how many catastrophic mistakes he made. And Rove won, twice. I don’t know how much Bush enjoyed another four years of ‘hard work’, but I do believe all the pleasure is Rove’s.

life with/without computer

2004-10-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

My life with/without it

I’ve tried from time to time to blog regularly, but my slow computer forbids. Once my notebook is occupied by two or three Python programs, any typing is in vain, unless you can bear a 20- second frozen screen on between every word you type. On the other side of the coin, the break from my computer, although taken involuntarily, gives me some justified time to do things I’ve long wanted to do but can’t do for fear of wasting time that is supposed to spent on my dissertation: laundry, calling friends, watching every news hours on CNN, playing Scriabin that long been laid on my piano, and watching rerun of Saturday night live midnight at E!, and best of all, going Starbucks to read without pulling my computer case. Last week, I even feel totally carefree for spend the whole day taking a visiting friend to Getty, Venice beach and late night jazz in Santa Monica. Such a time used to bring guilty pleasure to me, like the feeling of a mum sneaking out for a quick window shopping while the baby taking nap. Since my baby-my computer is having fun running python, I felt totally justified to leave it alone.

Then I wonder since when the computer started to take control of our life. Why I have to go everywhere carrying it, or thinking about it. Is it a baby that never grows up and needs my full attention? To some degree, I felt a little bit blessed that my computer with 256MB memory and with no Pentiums runs like a turtle. Work never ends; we’ve become compulsive to perform one task after another, some serious and some just for fun, on our computers. My dear friend Le calls computer our ‘squared-face lover’; I have to say this must be a totally insatiable lover that wants endless touch and stroke; or, wait, are we the ones that are too horny to stop when facing it?

Anyhow, in one or two weeks, my computer will finish this run of data mining and call for my return to its side. And I, no doubt, like being hypnotized, open my arms and stretch my hands, embrace my baby/lover and never let it go.

going away and back...and wandering

2004-09-17T16:33:00.000-07:00

Going away and back…and wandering

I’m so eager to travel, to go any place other than home; but I’m even happier when I come back home-and I only found about the latter part recently, after spending one week in San Francisco, four-star hotel and expensive shopping spree, champagne and lobster at sunset by the golden gate bridge (it happens to be our 3rd anniversary!), trendy urban scenes played non-stop before your eyes as you walk or ride the streetcar, and feeling good that you are part of the landscape...Nonetheless, none of these evoked greater pleasure than the moment I plunge myself in my bed-at home in Los Angeles. I woke up in the morning and wondered: what happened to the wild kid who eager to off see the world, and who scoffed at parent’s comment ‘nowhere is better than home’ and thought their life so lame? Am I growing up? Or am I growing old?

Still considering myself a curious child, I feel the changing in my heart and way of life day by day. Like this one, I feel more comfortable that life goes back to track than… say , go to an exotic place for unknown excitement…Mentally, I’m preparing for my mid age and years long after that. I paid quite a lot of attention to health tips and read ‘how to live to 100’ in Time magazine two times. I walk, jog and drink a lot of water. Blockbuster and billboard songs hardly appeal to me anymore (where is the opinion leader of popular culture?); our cable channel is locked at CNN (What happened to the young girl who disliked journalism so much and gave it up after five years of education and training?). LA times and Newsweek (Which used to be so boring to me but now they can kept me sitting for one hour or two) replace romance or detective (I only read two fictions this year, Washington Square and One hundred years of solitude, and they are old, or classics…and I should read more of the kind ). God, I’m not only getting old, I’m getting boring! And most significant changes of all, I felt comfortable of being alone (not being single though…)

When I was really young, sometime that spanned high school and college, I had problem of fitting in. While I wished to join peers for fun, I could not fit in because I arrogantly think they have no ideology or principle for life. My generation growing up in China was educated to obey instead of to think, to fit in a big group instead of being a loner. Our intellectual puberty overlapped with the transition period of our country, switching abruptly from a monopolistic ideology to all possibilities: while we could not get away from the relic of old tradition and shadow of Maoist, we were suddenly overwhelmed by materialism, capitalism and other western culture. Our teachers and professors offer us survival strategy in a morbid society while they were shy away from giving us guidance on philosophical or spiritual level, for they were cut off from Chinese tradition and imported philosophy by culture revolution while they could not believe in communism wholeheartedly; what they can. While fumbling in the dark tunnel, I did a rebellious thing by joining an underground Christian youth fellowship, which worried my parents even more than if I went out with a wrong guy. While my peers were indulging themselves in dating, getting drunk, working hard for high score and top rank which to me is tedious and unnecessary (or because I couldn’t make it?), or being smarmy to the Party heads (oh yeah, the school and department is led by the Communist party and Youth Communist party branch) so as to get green lights on everything, all of which seems so empty to me, the youth fellowship kept me upbeat and spiritual, and brought me best of time of my college. The happiness last until three years later, I felt ashamed of myself for betraying the goodwill of all the brothers and sisters, who tried to keep me in a short-lived relationship with a brother, who I decided not a fit for me anymore. My dear brothers and sisters thought the relationship in God is blessed and they kept praying for the changing of my heart. I was panic and ran away…but I did not abandon my spiritual belief--I still pray every night, for world peace and God’s guidance and inspiration, and I read Psalm or Matthew when I was confused or lost, but I am very carefule to be involved in any religious group again. And this reluctance was even strengthened after I received a news letter from a Christian friend, whose home was the meeting place for an international fellowship that I used to participate, and who I respected very much. In one of his weekly news letter, he comments on the political situation saying that

‘... there is only one thing that has made America a great nation and that is Trust in God. All of Hollywood, the main news and entertainment media, and the majority of those in the elite learning institutions in America hate that fact and would like to erase it from American culture. They especially hate our present president simply and only because he is a Christian. It doesn't matter what happens in Iraq and it doesn't matter what happens to the American economy. The only thing that matters to these God haters is that he is a professed Christian, so they want him out. Yet however much men have hated God and tried to wipe the knowledge of Jesus Christ from American society, they are doomed to failure. ..'

Such an irrational comment, bolder than right-winged radio, from such a rational gentleman (an engineer) chills me to the bone. I sincerely believe he doesn’t say it out of any political purpose; he just held a belief in the president who appeared to hold a unshakable believe in God. His notes serve an vivid footnote for me to better understanding the current political race in America: why the overwhelming supports for Republican come from those whose real interest the party hardly represents ( No matter they won this time, which seemed more and more obvious everyday, or not, they’ve already triumph on the victory of ideological battle, considering what they've done domestically and internationally… can’t help talking about politics again). As I said earlier, I don’t think it right that religion, or its community interferes with public life or other's personal life. I realized how this country (or higher education?) changes me, I valued individulality more than group affiliation.

Speaking of that, I realized that this is an extreme example about one’s spiritual journey (or sometimes I wonder if it really ever started). The point made here is that I finally have peace of mind for being alone and individual now. All my younger days I was struggling to gain a sense of belonging and often feeling upset, and now it doesn’t bother me anymore. I just realized, not long ago, how precious of being alone and how important to think independently as a human being. All knowledge and information that we receive, all education and tradition we are exposed to, all sensual or material pleasure we are endowed with, and all institution or social groups that we are member of, can be the fetters to our intellectual freedom if we don’t think in our own. It took me almost thirty years to realize such a simple thing (I should have got it four or five years ago, when it is manifested so obviously in ‘Matrix’ I. Who said we have to read Plato or Nietzsche?).

Now let me get back to the beginning of this blog: no matter how far away we go, or no matter how long we were isolated at a place, as long as we keep an open mind and a will to think, we are as free as, no, freer than, a bird . Nowadays my prayer to God has been added one more request, God, please let me think and not let me walk in others’ shadow, and let all the people in the world think and not let their minds be slaved.

The Grand Bleu

2004-08-08T15:28:00.000-07:00

The Grand Bleu

When I was in college, I bought a punched cassette, the pirated music cassette confiscated by customs and mysteriously sold at the curb of the campus. The album is called ‘The Big Blue’, soundtrack of the movie with the same title. I never heard of that movie, not to mention the album, but the cover design seized my heart at the very moment I saw it. And boy, the music sounds like coming from another world, literally. In early 90s, while the reminiscence of disco was still fresh, what prevailed in China was pop/soft music from Taiwan and Hongkong, or the US; we never heard of any ‘new age’, the first encounter with Eric Serra’s music (he is the composer of almost all Luc Besson’s movies, remember the music in ‘fifth element’ and ‘the professional’? how cool are they!) was totally surreal. To me, electronic music often fell into a gaudy and shallow genre, especially when mingling with saxophone, but they sound deep and sophisticated in the Big Blue. From the music, you hear the natural call from the deep and the faraway, so calm and so determined, and above of all, inexplicably nostalgia. Our dorm was rested on the top of a hill overlooking the ocean, not even a mile away. At night, after the electricity cutoff, the anonymous lights on the ocean are flicking at the end of the sky, the music adds a mysterious yet titillating touch to the salty wind through and around the building, soothing my young and lonely heart.

Then 10 years later, when I saw real dolphins the first time in the Sea world San Diego, the image of dolphin jumping out of water on the cassette cover and the magic music suddenlycame back to my mind, and I found the DVD in Netflix. Director’s cut is long, almost 3 hours, but you would not want it to end. I watched it twice, and believe me, you have to watch twice. The first time you will be too distracted by the spectacular cinematography and the music that could draws you into the deep sea. I don’t quite follow what happened above the ocean or who is who. It is very European movie after all, people wandering around and staring into the air for ever, Jean Reno smirks for no reason all the time, and the movie ends at such an unexpected moment that a Hollywood moviegoer will never prepare for ...But I don’t mind to watch it the second time for another run of surreal experience anyway, not to mention to have another look at Jean-Marc Barr’s dreamy eyes. And then I realize how sad the whole story is. Obsession to the impossible, the ultimate tragedy of mankind or you might called the glory of life, seems to me is the theme of the story. Enzo is dying for his obsession to beat Jacque in deep sea diving and he did lose his life to the sea at the end; Joanna gave up her career and American life dreaming of family life with Jacque, the man who doesn’t have human mind and heart, and she lost him to the ocean in the end; Jacque, obsessed with the mermaid(I think he believes Dolphin is a kind of mermaid) in the deep water and believed ‘it is better down there’, plunges himself into the dark abyss with no mercy to crying Joanna and the unborn child. In the last scene, he met a dolphin in the deep sea and he let go the diving device, following the mermaid to the unknown darkness, and the screen turns dark, the end. I heard that US edition added a happy ending to the movie and it was 40 minutes short. I saw the trailer and it sold the movie like a si-fi horror, I can’t imagine how it’s going to work out. But so far, the Big Blue has beaten ‘the profession’ and topped my list of Luc Besson movies.

will be right back

2004-06-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

will be right back

Being away from blogging for whole month. Being lazy. seems learning computer language is quite distracting. Don't feel motivated to switch between machine language and human language, nonetheless, they are both foreign language to me.

Also being troubled by what to write. Not because nothing to write, but too many things to put down in detail, but hate to just list them like an inventory. So I give all the little nice things and thoughts in my life a fair treatment-keep them in my memory only. Memory is fading and altering all the time; I'm worried that my time in this life just click away without leaving any trace, even my own memory can not hold that much enriching life stories. Do we live for the moment or for the forever memory, or for some stories that can run through the offspring generations after me, or even, an immortality that might be mentioned in strangers' lips? That decides whether you need to keep a journal, what you want to write down and to whom you are spoken to.

I've been recently, coming to realize that I, like majority of human beings, serve mainly as a consumer in this life. Food, clothes, theme park, books, news, movies, concerts are all good things that we are given to enjoy and play with. The core of consumer culture is transient pleasure which we have to pick up more later. We think we can leap forward by spending quality time in intellectual or cultural activities. Well, that depends on what you do. Most of these activities can not be more than consuming cultural product: reading other's book, contemplating on other's idea and fantasizing in other's art creation. I'm not negative about it, this is life, we can't escape, not everyone is born to be a creator. Most people are doomed to lead a life of a consumer. I sometimes speculate that some people, consciously or unconsciously, strive to smash the self-image as consumer and remold oneself in writing. Writing per se is the most accessible form of creating. The bottom line, even it is not a good writing, is that we at least engaged in a creativity, even what we really do is re-creating our self image based on our self expectation.

And that's it for my blab today. got to go back to Python, the machine world.

Seeing Josh

2004-05-12T01:07:00.000-07:00

Seeing Josh

We drove to San Diego for Josh Groban concert. Though he will hold one in Los Angeles, his hometown, in late August, we did not know it when we ordered the tickets as early as in March, the night we happened to push button to PBS Great Performance featuring his concert. Well, because of the superb experience we had with PBS, the concert last night, while still flawless, feels a little soulless. In the other word, the live concert sounds like the exact copy of his two CDs, in want of some personal touch. He surely can sing live, as perfectly as he does in studio; however what we expect is a little twist/variation in a concert. Compare to his elegant and classic look in PBS Great Performance, last night he seemed much groovier, with bigger hair, striped shirt and tight jean. The only surprise was his impromptu (at least it seems like one) of “Look for America” at the last encore. His unique sincerity and purity coming with his young age, gives a fresh tint to this beloved song; he played the pino alone while sang the song, very charming. But the real show stopper last night was his first violin, a young girl with black, long hair. During an intermission, the girl in red played a solo adapted from Queen’s “Bohemia Rhapsody” so passionately that she brought about the only stand-up applause except the ones during curtain call.

I would hate to think Groban just wanted this show in San Diego to be over earlier since ‘home is only miles away, and hours away” as he said on stage. I knew he was in this national tour for long; I understand that any repetitive practice, even an artful and inspiring one, could be a labor’s work at the end. He is so young and sings with such powerful, sweet and intoxicating voice. But I am not convinced that he’s touched by the song himself at the first place, and his singing in turn can only gave pleasure to my ears but not touch my heart. Groban got an amazing voice; a give that draws tens of thousands of music lovers together, regardless of ages and genders. The audience last night were really diversified: with well-dressed middle to upper class and mid age as majority, but also many younger and older faces on sight. Two girls behind us kept screaming and deafened us all night, joining other young fans interspersed in the huge arena. I got the feeling that Groban is in a process of defining self, in deciding what kind of artist/singer he wants to be. It is hard, like how do you define his concert, mostly with art songs, but was hold in a stadium, with some people eating pizza and buffalo wing, and others sipping red wine…He certainly has talent and style for classical or musical, but he also play with folk and ballad very smoothly. However, the diversified styles from the broad selections of songs do not really reflect in his singing. Using Bin’s words, why do all the songs sound the same tune? It is not the songs, but the singing, dude. He is so young, and I would hate to see him degraded into a singing machine entangled in national tours and all kinds of venues, even it means scantier opportunities to see his performance. We would rather see Groban an artist than Josh the star. After all, he is our favorite young singer for whom we will not bother to drive 3 hours in rush hour to see the little spot of him from the far and high terrace seats.

And I found an amazing usage of cell phone in concert. My friend, another big fan of Groban, listened to several songs with us at his phone, from home at St. Louis, MO. I’m sure I’m not the first one coming up with the idea of dialing your cell phone during the show. As long as I don’t make any noise…anyway, it is in a staduim with people eating pizza and drinking beer. I know taping concert sometimes could be illegal, how about transmitting the show through cell phone? Any regulation?

2004-05-02T23:18:00.000-07:00

Exercise while alive… and eat to the last breath…

I have been engaged in different kinds of workouts since I settled down: yoga, Pilate, weight, tennis, jogging… It doesn’t necessary result that I grow a West LA body, which is supposed to be lean, tall, and tan and looks fabulous on short top tank and low-rise chino shorts. Oh, no, though it is always my ultimate fantasy, I have much more practical goal for my workout: keep burning calories so I could feed myself more ice cream.

The intersection of Pico Blvd, which is three block from my home, has three ice-cream shops. On the Northwest, Baskin & Robbins is one of the famous chain stores and has assorted fancy sweet and creamy things; On the southeast, Big Chill sells healthy non-fat and non-sugar yogurt, with only two flavors-vanilla and chocolate (which not really reminds me the real flavor); and Penguin on Southwest is something in between, with both healthy and unhealthy food, and its ambiguous traits makes it the first one tossed out from our visiting list . In the weekend, you will see long line of adults through the big window of Big Chill, and swarm of kids and parents in Baskin & Robbins. From consideration of our age and long-term health goal, we should join the long line of adults; but after licking the flavorless yogurt twice, like adults do, we decided to return to innocence, joining the screaming and scampering group in Baskin & Robbins, but sure without much screaming and scampering ourselves.

Baskin & Robbins in Sunday afternoon is as fixed in my life as the gym in Sunday afternoon. Heading for ice cream place after gym makes me a laugh stick to Bin, “why do you have to go to the gym in the first place?” well, otherwise, “I could not have ice cream”, I rolled my eyes. This is the guy who has no problem to keep his slim figure for no matter how much junk food he takes in; surely he has not a bit of understanding on the redemption for a bite of Praline’s N cream, the Vanilla ice cream with praline-coated pecan pieces and a caramel ribbon, which has become our favorite. This is the guy who has become so insatiate that has to order a whole quart of Praline’s N cream instead of one of two scoops, for our 30 minutes of stay, and dozed off happily after the whole quart. Well, I am not that lucky. I have to run my butts off on the treadmill for the moment of sensory joy of mouth and suffer the fear of more fat under belly. Is such a sensory joy worthwhile the whole ordeal? Think in the other way, I could have spent only 5 hours, instead of 10 hours, in gym, just to keep my old body from rusty, if I don’t have such a good appetite (not only for ice cream, a lot of other things). If I could be more self-restraint, I could have spent these extra 5 hours on some more profound things, like music, book or research, instead of repeating the same physical movements and sweating and puffing and blowing. Is it the price I paid for the joy of life, just like people have to keep busy on their boring jobs for sake of house and car? Well, I could live without big house and fancy car, but not without good food.

Just watched the interview of Hugh Jackman in “inside the actors studio”, when asked the last routine question “If heaven exists, what do you expect God will say to you at the gate”, his eyes gleams with joy and amusement and he answered “there is excellent food here”. Wow, that’s exactly what I would say. For it, his ranking in my actor lists has climbed several places up.

2004-04-27T01:34:00.000-07:00

Learning language

I thought I know how to write in English, but every time I had my writings (mostly academic writings) edited by native speakers, it turns out that I was still the high school students struggling with basic grammars. It seems ten years didn’t change anything, I still don’t know where to add “the” and “a”, when to use “to do” or “of doing” and how to arrange the words in a sentence. I really don’t think there is a standard rule to follow in English; the right sense seems more important than right grammar. Talking about rules, I often think of a scene in “I love Lucy” where Ricky Ricardo tried to makes sense out of the different pronunciations of “ough” in “bough”, “through”, “ought” and “dough”. Well, that might not be the best parallel, but it comforts me that I’m not the only one that get lost in this language. Go back to the thought of writing: the most frustrating part is that I could seldom plug into the writing of the vocabulary and sentence structure I learned from readings, which is hitherto an accumulative of a good size. Repetition of same word and expression even bore myself away from reading my own writing, especially on academic one, which I have to deal in daily base.

Recently, I’ve tried to learn some computer languages, starting with C and Python, so I could handle the huge dataset for my dissertation project. Computer language has much more straightforward and unequivocable rules to follow-compared to English. Learning programming is just like learning a set of traffic rules, both of which are binary featured, 0 or 1, yes or no, right or wrong. Neither it is difficult to follow what those sample codes lead to; and you think, well, it is not a big deal, I understand these codes and I know how they work. But once you try to get your hand dirty and program for real, you feel so helpless and not know how to start. And it makes me thinks back on learning English: like even you manage to understand every word in New York Time, or Harper, or even diary of Sylvia Plath, it doesn’t mean you know how to write out something like these.

So I speculate that, in the process of learning a language, either English or C, there must be a metabolic phase, where what you learn can be transformed into some capability that empowers you to use what you learn. I hope this function is not decided by gene, but rather something can be improved by practice.

2004-04-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

Got a Gmail

Was given a Gmail for being an active blogspot user. Finally, I own an email account with my name in it:jialinatGmaildotcom. and it has 1000MB! It is the best freebie I get this year. Now I can rest assured that my dissertation materials will be safe even all our computers at home are smashed in the coming big earthwquake

2004-04-19T22:17:00.000-07:00

Scholar blogs, via Alex

Are they indexed because they blog scholarly things, or because they are scholars? Anyway, I add my name to this one. Now question becomes-am I a scholar? or should I blog only scholarly thing in the future?

2004-04-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

Return of myth

May issue of Harper has a piece (Buffalo dances, by Lewis Lapham, p. 9) on the receding of American’s scientific thinking and its implication on national politics. The article starts with the recount of Union of Concerned Scientist’s report titled “Scientific Integrity in Policymaking”. The report, signed by 60 of Nation’s most accomplished scientist, condemns the rejection of scientific methods and distortion of scientific findings by current administration, who’s in favor of its conviction that “if the science doesn’t prove what’s been told to prove, then the science has been tampered with by Satan or the Democratic Party.” While admiring the signatories’ the collective alarm, Lapham argues that it is naïve to think “the government’s divorce from reality is a curable disease subject to congressional diagnosis and legislative remedy”. No, the one needs to be cured is not the government, bu the people. It is these scientists, not the Bush administration, who are at odds with the majority of society. In the other word, people are stupid, and they are not capable of scientific thinking anymore, and they are haapy to accept the magic and myth fabricated by the authority. What makes it? Here is the best part of the article:

“The postmodern sensibility is a product of the electronic media, which lend themselves more readily to the traffic in dreams and incantation than to the distributions of coherent argument. As the habits of mind beholden to the rule of images come to replace the systems of though derived from the meaning of words, the constant viewer leans to eliminate the association of cause with effect….Weightless and without consequence, the images drifting across the mirrors of the self appear and disappear in no context other than their own, demanding nothing of the audience except the duty of ritual observance. Because the camera sees but cannot think, it doesn’t matter who sings the undying songs of love, or whether the twenty-four-hour circus parade goes nowhere except around in circus. Nothing necessarily follows from anything else; what is important is the surge and volume of emotion, not its object or its subject, and the accelerated data streams of the virtual future carry the friends of Rush Limbaugh backward into the firelight flickering in the caves of the pagan and prehistoric past. Narrative dissolves into montage and knowledge becomes a matter of instantly recognizing the iconography (Osama’s beard, the Nike swoosh, Ralph Lauren’s polo player, Howard deans’ upraised fist, Howard Dean’s upraised fist); history reverts to myth, and politics collapse into the staging of pageants sometimes accompanied by a fall of brightly colored balloons.”

Lanpham continues to interpret the effect of mediated political campaign on audience. He compares the political campaign to reality show like “Survivor and “the Apprentice”, and noted that the winner is who can “survive the stupidity and pitiless indifference of the television cameras.

“Of our presidents we make celebrities-a safer from of constitutional divinity than the one embodied in the name of Caesar-and with gifts of adulation and applause the media appoint them to the office of totem pole. To say that Mr. Bush is an incompetent president is like saying that Tom Cruise can’t act or that Britney Spears can’t sing. The observation might be true, but it ignores the point that celebrity is a commodity meant to be sold at the supermarket checkout counter with the cosmetics and the canned soup. What was once a subject has become an object, no longer capable of error of human speech, imparting a sense of stability and calm to a world intelligence refuses to prove what it’s been told to prove. The headlines bring word of death in Iraq and terrorism in Spain, famine in Somalia and banditry in Washington, but on the smooth and reassuring surface of a magazine cover or movie screen, the golden masks of divine celebrity-George W. and Nicole, Julia and the Donald-bestow upon the faithful the smiles o infinite bliss.”

The deprivation of thinking from public minds by mass media seems an un-invertible tragedy and it gives rise to the handy manipulation of public minds. Lanpham argues that the loss of 3 million manufacturing jobs is far less serious than the depletion of the national reserves of political intelligence, without which “we join secretary of defense Rumsfled in the magical explanation for the non-existence of hideous weapons in Iraq (“The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” or Attorney General Ashcroft in the belief that in America “there is no King but Jesus”.

2004-04-07T01:09:00.000-07:00

Is this our ancestor?

PBS Nova was running a special on coelacanth . It amazed me that we this species was not in our high school textbook back to China, even what we learnt in biology, as well as in politics (yes, we have courses called politics, or “ethic education” when we were younger) started with introduction to evolution theory. In short, coelacanth is the oldest fish (about 400 million years) living in deep sea and strangely acquired some features of amphibian: limbs instead of fins, viviparous instead of oviparous, and as big as human being. Because of these features, it was considered the “missing link” in evolution process before the living one was re-discovered in 1930’s.

Animal and politics were the new interests I acquired since living with a man. I think we are good complements to each other. He opens the window outward for me to see the macroscopic, real world, I push his window inward and he finds his sensitive heart and fluttering spirit. Anyway, the world of animal does mimic the political arena, or the other way around, in both of them survival of the fittest. Maybe that’s why men are more into politics, and why they fridge their butts off in front of “Animal planet” or “National Geography”?…. I could go on discussing the parallel of animal world and international politics, but I get a little tired recently for paying too much attention on politics. More importantly, my man prefers his girl to embrace art and beauty, so I’d better shut up (remember Barbara’s fate in The way we were?)

But still I have something to say, and I’m just saying it as someone pursuing knowledge. I will not consider myself a firm believer of evolution, upon which, though, my whole elementary and higher education were built. I think monkey might be my cousin, but we are not born to the same parents. My intuition tells me life is way too complicated than evolution process, though there is some scientific veracity in it. Then here is a tough question: Do I believe in creation? I might have less reservation on this idea, if God inspired a biologist or astronomer to document the Genesis (that doesn’t mean I don’t respect Moses). Am I a nihilist? I hope not. I believe that God, as the spiritual saver, should only be kept in ones’ heart. Religion is personal and should not be forced on public life. Too many radical things in this world are carried on under the name of religion: war, terrorism, femicide, filicide, obstetricide (I made this word), burning of artcrafts and books, and persecution of of science; I don’t know what evil thing could not be done under the inspiration of God or purporting a defence of religious integrety, and everyone thinks their deeds justified. We can love our God, but the God should not be used against what we are not agreed upon, and certainly it should not be the reason we keep ourselves from pursuing knowledge that might be against what’s in Bible.

Well, a too serious topic. To conclude with some lightness, but not only trying to be funny, I will say I was once more convinced by message from X files- we were the creature of, or at least were adapted by, some entity with higher wisdom (it was aliens in X file). Who is this higher wisdom? Is it My God? The truth is out there.

2004-03-31T14:24:00.000-08:00

Air America is on air

Glad I'm in LA, one of the only four cities can receive it. But you can always listen to it on line. The first liberal talk radio ever, it reminds me how wonderful this country is, not only for the existence of liberal voice, but more importantly, the tolerance for such an existence.

Speaking of that, I think it is the time I talk about radio. I used to be an avid radio listener in college, where no television or "interesting" newspaper were available. I walked with and sleep with radio on. At our time, we considered VOA and BBC our channel to truth. Since I came to this country, I waged a long battle with language obstacle. I picked up television since it is really a great tool for studying English. One night, David Letterman show suddenly made some sense to me, and CNN suddenly sounds like talking in my language. I thought it was time to resume my radio listening. Now I woke up with NPR every morning, driving and walking with NPR, while TV news became more and more unbearable to me, especially after September 11. Propaganda and exclusive focus on US news is one reason, the commercial operation is really what turns me off. This morning, I woke up hearing NPR reporting the death of five US soldiers and four contractors in Iraq, and cheering Iraqis hanged some of the bodies on bridge. When I came back home at noon the coverage and comment was still continuing in radio. But when I turned on TV, surprisingly all news channels, from CNN to NBC to FOX were broadcasting live the police search of a suburb in Wisconsin and for one suspect that might abduct a college girl. I really don?t understand the significance of this news compared to the nine death in Iraq. The college girl (surely a white one) was found alive, the suspect might be armed with a gun, it happens in a marshy area? I don?t get it. Just like I don?t understand how Elisabeth Smart, Laci/Scott Peterson or Michael Jackson?s case could be a national sensation in all national news channels, do I forget to mention Janet Jackson?s breast? Is the howl of Howard Dean the only memorable moment of this man? Do news TV also try to turn themselves into Reality TV?... That's the other thing I feel sorrow for this country, where people enjoy the privilege of free speech and access to truth, while they don?t cherish such endowment. Anyway, I?m glad I still have radio, actually a lot of radios-I have five at my one-bedroom apartment, not including our four computers where we can listen to Internet radio.

2004-03-22T01:35:00.000-08:00

Nessun Dorma

We stayed up till four o’clock in the morning waiting for the result of TW election. I’m not a fanatic unification advocator, but I’m concerned about the consequence of the election to my hometown, where my parents and friends live and where might one day become a battle field or at least front, because of its proximity to Taiwan. Fujian, my hometown, for several decades after the revolution, had been strategically under-developed for its strategic position to Taiwan and for the possibility of military conflict. Every radical political move from the other side of TW Strait is followed by the scandal of tenser military practice in our backyards. No need to say, the re-election of President Chen will only intensify the situation.

We were nailed in front of our computers and kept our eyes on the ballot information updated every two minutes at Chinatime, where we could read the number of ballots from every city. Votes of the two parties were so close all the way that it struck me that the real divergence today is not between the Mainland and TW, but within the small island: green at south, and blue at Norht. Lian and Song, the two candidates of KMT who each won 30% of vote in last election (and lost the campaign to Chen because of the diversion of the votes), while this time forming an ally, can only attract 50% of the votes. Just IM with a friend, who is a political analyst in TW and who is a supporter of KMT; what bothers him most is not the fishy success of Chen, but how divided TW has become. Even KMT wins, how could they win the heart of the other 50% of voters at South, those aborigines (opposite to immigration from Mainland after defeat of KMt) who are, generally, less rich and less educated?

I had been wondering how Chen’s administration, in the past four years of economic slump, fussy political stunts and corruption scandal, pulled in even more votes than before. I could not help comparing this campaign to the one in the US. I guess people vote for whom they identify with, not those who would really do good. Chen, who dubs himself as the son of TW, talks in the dialect and advocate TW identity, and Bush, who presents himself with an all-American style, keeps his cowboy and God-believer identity, and feels proud of not being cultivated by elite education from Ivy League, are both very successful in campaign, especially considering their lame leadership in politics or economy.

Well, I’m a little off track, and I’ve forgoten my original intention when starting this blog (and I love blog, where discursion is not a sin). But there is another thing just comes into my mind. When Howard Dean lost his place as the Democratic front runner, I was amazed by how the country is divided: all my acquaintance who are in such vacations as professors, graduate students, writers and scientists are fervent supporter of Dean, and elite media had then introduced Dean as the indubitable Democratic candidates; But it turned out that this Dean sensation is only a phenomenon limited in a small potion of the people. The mentalities of intellectuals and general public diverged from each other to such a great degree that most of political predictions end up clueless. On that, we can't avoid speculating on elite democracy, which, however, seems forfeit the essence of democracy.

Democracy is a wonderful thing, but it comes with the cost. Nonetheless, to be involved in democratic practice must be even more wonderful, than being just an outsider, like me, who can only observe others’ democracy, from distance, with wishfulness.

2004-03-15T23:26:00.000-08:00

Our artistic life in LA

“Now we are a decent couple,” Bin likes to say, “Because we tango”. If we could really master the essence of intimacy and desire in the steps, maybe he would find nothing in it to do with decency. Tango is what I always wanted to learn, largely because of my obsession with its music, which, to me, is a strange combination of refined wildness, down-to-earth dramatics and endless loneliness reeling inside. And when you dance to the beat of the sad melody woven by the cello and accordion, for one second or two you are losing your time, space and identity to those in glamorous drama. When we finished out 3-month lessons on five Argentina Tango and three American Tango steps, I said to myself: I will feel one less sorrow even I left the world tomorrow.

One of my old friends used to compare the life journey to a jigsaw puzzle game, and we construct the picture by filling tiny pieces one by one. In my jigsaw puzzle, I guess Tango is a big piece…also, watching Madam Butterfly in Opera house is certainly another one. The waiting, the yearning, the despair and the sheer unconditional love breaking forth from the story and the music have haunting me decades. Nonetheless, my first real encounter with Madam Butterfly is such an unconventional one, with Cio Cio San, along with everyone else moving like a robot on the empty stage. No kimono, no tatami. Every costume is made of a whole piece of cloth from something like aerospace fabric, with only white, grey and black color, absolutely simple style with no decoration or filigree whatsoever. The scene is made of only by lighting and single one post-modern designed chair (must be very uncomfortable to sit on); even the dagger that kills Cio Cio San at the end is an imaginary one. It feels that singers are objects instead of a presenter in the art. In many occasions when they are not singing, they have to maintain their body in absolute stationary gestures that are usually transitory. The idea is quite intriguing here; the actors on stage are like automatic mechanism, and are activated only by their moments of singing. The art director, I guess, is pursuing a pure form of music art, without the distraction of visual effects. And that leaves a lot of space for imagining; like when Cio cio San prepared the returning of Pinkerton, we know from her singing they she decorates her room with flower all over the place, this flower, that flower, so fresh, so fragrant…. We see no flower, we smell no flower, but the magical music planted the flower in the imaginary space in our mind; and later we imagine how the sacred and beautiful Madam Butterfly lying dead surrounded by so many flowers that she prepared for her eternal love. That is a power of simplicity. However, the simplification of the costume too much exposes the physical imperfectness of the actresses. Each of them is basically wrapped in a piece of cloth, with naked shoulders and arms. Sopranos have to be strong to sing in high pitch for three hours, which, to my understanding, makes a slim figure not preferable; and you don’t expect a 20-year old girl can sing this challenging part. But when the mid-aged soprano is singing shyly that “I’m only a little more than 15” followed by the choir “oh, she is still a child”, we can not but hope there are more cloth to cover her voluminous and hefty upper body from which our eyes have nowhere to escape.

2004-03-04T13:42:00.000-08:00

Importance of context

I am an incurable magazine junkie. Not to mention the more than 10 subscriptions at our home, the fact that I read both Time and Newsweek has made the point. In each issue, the two news magazines each dedicates a page for collection of interesting quotes from people in newsl; sometimes they quote a same piece. last week, in Newsweek's Perspectives page, you will read:

"The NEA is a terroist organization". Education Sectretary Rod Raige, on the 2.7 million-member National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union. He later apologized.

Do you get it? why Mr. Raige will refer to NEA as terrorist? you will find the answer in Time's Notebook page:

"The NEA is a terrorist organization". Rod Raige, Education Sectretary, to Governors at a private White house meeting in response to a question about the National Education Association's opposition to Bush's No Child Left Behind law. After criticism, he apologized for the "poor choice of words".

Now we get it. you are either with us (president), or with them (terrorist). feels like yesterday.

2004-03-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

movie (video/dvd) update

American Splender: God, how could this movie not win any major award (not even "Independent spirit"?) it is almost a flawless movie for me. It is most close to my vision of American life and the type of Americans I like and I want to know more. I like the idea of "everyday life is complex" the complexity rise from our struggle with the banality we created while not be able to change. But seeing through its banality and paleness and extracting its essence, and eventually loving it is a splendor thing. The moment I like: "I don't mind, All American cities are the same depressing to me" Joyce replied to Harvey, when he asked her to move to Cleveland from Delaware, right after their first date.

Lost in translation: God, How could this movie win so many awards? (it doesn't mean I don't like it) I would have liked it better if it not generating so much hype... a vanilla latte for high-browed, bitter and sweet, a little reflection of moral universe. You don't expect it was sold like coca cola, do you? And I don't really appreciate so many stereotypes and condescending.

Swimming pool: a beautiful cinematography leading to no where.

Man on the train: Refined and reserved. tear in the smile. Music is so cool. I like the scene when the old living-in-small- town-poetry-teacher decided to confront a rogue in a restaurant so as to add some heroism to his pale life, the rouge started to recite a love poem with admiration-because he was the old man's former student... really a sharp capture of small-town life.

Nowhere in Africa: A little choppy, but still beautiful and touching. any film made in Africa is beautiful. It is never easy to adapt a memoir to the big screen. Dramatic moment of life is not easy to fit well into the repetitive cycle of daily life. Isn't it so?

Farinelli: splendor, stunning. Indulge yourself in the richness of pure opera art. I've never been so touched by Haydn. The movie reminds me of "farewell My concubine" at some points. It makes me think the value of biological man and art, when they could not coexistent, which should be kept?

Adaptation: ... I know, I watch this film so very late, after another round of Oscar. But what confused me is the ending: is it an intentional mock of the screenwriter's (by Cage) original ideal of "making a movie just about the flower", or is it the moviemaker's habitual conformity to Hollywood ending?

2004-01-28T00:59:00.000-08:00

San Jose, January

If Silicon Valley has been in recovery, I did not feel it in the chilly late January. Monday afternoon at 4:30 at San Jose downtown felt like the first half hour of 28 Days Later. Being aware that the kind of lavish parties thrown at heydays do not come back, we are still appalled at the so called “banquet” that serves only pasta and cheese at SPIE, annual congregation of more than 2000 scientists and technicians. Although it was a conference on image processing, people seem eager to reorient their future research from the traditional subject. The speak of research director from Google attracted more people than the room can accommodate, although she talked nothing more than what I learnt three years ago, except their new attempt on shopping catalogue index and map of business nearby. The second meeting on document image analysis was hold at PARC. Again people talked about text storage and retrieval. It is hard to resist taking a photo in front of podium with letter “PARC”, but everyone knows the glory is not anymore. Palo Alto is a beautiful place, green valley, horses sauntering. But no people moving within your sight- all hide in cars or offices. Plain and big office building looked lifeless rather than a foundation of innovation and creativity.

Met some Bin’s old friends, no one gets fired or bankrupt, neither anyone got rich during the boom. While you are amazed on how many top Chinese students have imported themselves to Silicon Valley, you also felt a kind of sorrow for how few of them have play strategic role, compared to Indians.

The last night we stayed at Marriot at Newark-Fremont. The fire alarm went off abruptly at the middle of the night, waking me straight up screaming like a loony. Luckily it is just a false alarm, but all the fire wagons still whistle over. Outside the window of 4th floor, red and orange lights flashed against the stilled valley. Highway 84 was faintly illuminated by a couple headlights moving along. Removing its glamorous makeup of money and machine, it is just a valley, by all means.

2004-01-19T17:14:00.000-08:00

Richard Florida on Creative class War in the US

"Clinton's whole life is a testimony to the power of education to change class. Bush prides himself on the idea that his Yale education had no effect on how he sees things. Clinton was a famous world traveler, appreciative of foreign cultures and ideas. Bush, throughout his life, has been indifferent if not hostile to all of that. Clinton, especially in the early years of his administration, had the loose, unstructured management style of an academic department or a dot-com -- manic work hours, meetings that went on forever, lots of diffuse power centers, young people running around in casual clothing, and a constant reappraising of plans and strategies. The Bush management style embodies the pre-creative corporate era -- formal, hierarchal, with decision-making concentrated in the hands of only the most senior executives. Clinton was happy in Hollywood and vacationed in Martha's Vineyard. Bush can't wait to get back to Crawford. Clinton reveled in the company of writers, artists, scientists, and members of the intellectual elite. Bush has little tolerance for them. Clinton, in his rhetoric and policies, wanted to bring the gifts of the creative class -- high technology, a tolerant culture -- to the hinterlands. Bush aimed to bring the values and economic priorities of the hinterlands to that ultimate creative center, Washington, D.C. As president, Bush chose a group of senior advisors whose economic backgrounds have a century-old flavor. His vice president is an oil man. His treasury secretary, John Snow, is a railroad man..."

2004-01-03T21:27:00.000-08:00

My kind of movie ranking of year 2003:

1. Dancer upstairs
A movie for intellectual grown-ups. But be sure to watch on DVD with English subtitles, so not to miss the beautiful script muddled in Javier Bardem’s exotic English. A good movie is supposed to teach you something or guide you to learn something: Like I was petrified at Nina Simmone’s voice and song “Who knows where all the time goes” at the beginning and end of the movie and crazily searching her songs, like I started to reread things about Kant to find out his relevance with terrorism.

2. Cold Mountain
Perfectly classical, inspiring at aesthetic point, just smells a little too much Hollywood classic. But Jude Law’s eyes!

3. Lord of rings: return of the king
Why not extend to four episodes, so audience will not keep going to restroom during the 3-hour-something movie?

4. girl with a pearl earring
The movie is an enticing moving picture (literally), extracted from the original Vemeer paintings.

5. mystic river
Shakespeare’s tragedy reappears in modern small town close Boston, the dramatic and poetic tension is no less. Good acting. Not a good choice during holiday season.

6. Pirates of Caribbean
There is nothing wrong about entertainment when you make it in the right way and with right cast, like Jonny Depp!

7. Whale rider
A little girl’s innocent eyes could light up a prosaic movie.

8. 28 days
I watch it on DVD next day I watched Cold Mountain, I sensed the strong similarity of the implication in the two movies. For many people, war and survival are excuse, human is animal by instinct.

9. Matrix reloaded
It would be wise to shut up when there is no more stories.

Actually, these are all movies I’ve watched last year, not even enough to make a “Top 10” list. So it is just a ranking of movie I've seen.

2003-12-30T01:19:00.000-08:00

Why California has the biggest deficit of all?

In Los Angeles, I do not get as many parking tickets as I used to have in Pittsburgh, but certainly I have to spend much more time here to appeal (for poor people, time is less precious than money). In Pittsburgh, you go to the assigned court any weekday night and the judge made the decision (sometimesplus a joke) in less than 45 seconds (o yes, I counted, I had been there more than five times), then you pay or not pay, everything is settled. The fine is more than 3 times higher in LA, and the whole procedure felt like a felony trial rather than just a parking citation. First scene is the same overwhelming: “what?.. A ticket? ..$50?!.. What?! The sign was saying parking is permitted in Sunday… wait, wait… damn, there is another sign saying permit needed. Damn, it’s confusing..three cars in a row got the tickets. Zeze, Ok, let’s get it waived, we've got good reasons.”

Wait, it is not easy to get it waived, even you have good reasons. First, you have to plea in writing for an administrative review and send it in together with your “evidence”. Well, you have learnt to bring digital camera around and shoot everything for future dispute, so the picture with two confusing signs along the street should be enough, you assumed. Two weeks later, you received a letter telling you that “a field investigation of the location” finds that “the ticket citation is properly posted” (What?! Do you really look at the photo evidence?!). Sure you are entitled to bring your dispute to the court, but not before you pay the fine first, which is said to be refunded if the judge later decides to waive it. Again, you have to request in writing for a hearing, and then you will be informed by mail of your appointment. Hearing ain’t the last stop, you would not hear the judge’s decision at court in the first place, instead the decision will be mailed to you later. (What?! Aren’t all judges verdict at court?)

It doesn’t need high IQ to infer that the city makes it hard for parking violators to have money back, but how much more personals and how much more work have to be involved in this big “money-making industry”? Compared to Pittsburgh where only police officer, judge and cashier handle parking citation, Los Angeles traffic court needs much more cumbersome organization: staff to deal with three or four turns of correspondence if a driver determined to have money back- open and seal mails, file and print out mails; judge’s secretaries to acknowledge judges’ decision by mail; cashiers to process payments and later refund the money…Are all these really necessary? It boiled down to the fact that is taxpayer’s money feeding bureaucracies and running in this bureaucratic procedure. While governors (now and then) have been busy on cutting budget on medical care and public education, why not consider cut off this big fat bureaucracy?

2003-12-22T20:34:00.000-08:00

Me, Starbucks and Blah blah...

Starbucks seems a place that I could not run away and eventually, I don’t know where else to write and read. While I was in Buffalo, there was a Starbucks in the same building as Bin’s office. I loved to study at Bin’s office, bright, spacial, and has a big window with pleasant view. Plus I could talk when I like. However, Bin often threw me out since I was a too annoying distraction to his research. So I end up downstairs to Starbucks. I did my school work there more than at any other place of campus. I had a fixed table by a big window, outside of which is a maple tree, whose size is just enough to make you feel you are hiding behind but see clearly everything outside without trying. By fixed seat, I mean if it is taken, I would strategically sat as near as possible and move my stuff over at moment the taker stood up and ready to leave. It is a popular seat anyway. From the second year I was at school, I could connect to Internet from that Starbucks,which is about 50 feet from Student Union which was equipped with wireless point of access. I swear there’s nothing felt more like Bohemian intellectual of 21st century, than sitting and writing my blog, by the window in snowy day, with the window frame and tree all decorated with falling white. Not only romantic, practical needs could be met too. If I need to pee or go out for fresh air, I would email Bin and he would come down in 2 minutes to watch my notebook.

Then I moved to Los Angeles. In Westwood, Starbucks could be seen every two or three blocks, so as Coffee bean & Tea leaf. Most of Starbucks in this are tiny, with very few or no tables at all, which is more for chatting instead of sitting down doing work. But lucky me, the one two blocks away from my home has four small round table and two square desks. My strategic seat changes to the one at the very end of the hall which leads to narrow passage to restroom, since Bin could not come to watch my notebook anymore. But the seat is still by the window for sure. Here, I see more diversified people come and go, more diversified dogs than ever, more women in casual but expensive active wears and sneakers, more men with babies on stroller or toddlers by side. Well, you start to understand why Jane Jacobs had to sit in coffee shops in Greenwich Village to see and talk to people and were able to write her widely-cited book.

Bin could not understand how could I study somewhere with music, sound of blending and evaporating, people coming and going. I guess I’m a little weird. What I need is a kind of concentration under a non-involving chaos. Being in a crowd but with no obligation to socialize put me in a most comfortable environment. I could not concentrate in an absolute quietness and isolation. No, I could not even concentrate in a relative quietness like in library or home alone. I would start day dreaming, sometime in sleep sometime with eyes open. So I need something other than studying materials to keep me focused. It sounds so contradict; I guessed I’m so used to do multiple things together and my mind can’t help wandering away when it supposed to stayed focus only on one thing. Actually, I never do one thing at one time. My college roommate wrote to me a while a ago saying when she read something about Clinton’s ability of dealing mutli-tasks at the same time, she thought of me instantly. The old me, who prepared for exam at bed while listening to music and chatting with her. I took it as compliment, but I am afraid I really have no ability to stay focused in all my life. If I stay home alone, I could go to reorganize the room or apply for another credit card. I have to run away to avoid wasting time on some nonsense at home. But music in the air (not through earphone) is a necessity for reading and writing. So I end up addicted to Starbucks.

Did I forget to mention the drinks in Starbucks? That seems to be what makes it what it is. I learn all those strange word about coffee from Starbucks. I never tasted any desert as good as caramel source on top of whipped cream until I tried caramel frappuccino at Starbucks. And I never found better caramel anywhere else. But a grande cup of caramel frappuccino everyday is certainly much beyond my spending capacity. Half-coffee-half-decaf and Zen hot tea are the most frequent alternatives for their affordability. But surely from time to time, I reward myself or force bin to reward me a nice treat. Somehow caramel frappuccino became an incentive for a hardworking day.

Thanks to our horrendous relocating expense, my Chase Muster card reward me $100 of gift cards, which I could choose from some big-name merchants. Without too much deliberation, I pick $50 for Gap and $50 for Starbucks, both are my survival package. I felt guilty every time I heard about the protesting against exploitation and greed of big corporate like GAP. But, thinking about Gap save my time on looking for comfortable fashion and Starbucks makes my study a fun thing to do, I could not complain too much. I do love gap and Starbucks, Please don’t stone me.

2003-12-11T13:11:00.000-08:00

Lost in paradise

If LA is a paradise, it is first a paradise for movie. And of course it is paradise for shopping. Before I move over and settled down, I thought I would be in haven because I happend to be big junkie of these two things. Within five miles radius of our home, there are more than 20 cinemas, 5 big shopping malls and numerous fasion stores. But surprisingly, I did not watch any movie or go for mall shopping for once since I moved here. oh, no, I did one mall shopping, not in Los Angeles, but in Scottsdale where Bin participated a conference, and the fashion mall is next to the hotel.

Since last time I was in cinema for Pirates of Carribean, which was almost six months ago, I've survived my curiosity on big hit like "Kill Bill", "Once upon a time in Mexico", "Matrix III", "Gothyca" or "Last samuri" and numerous small independent movies like "Mystic river", "Lost in translation" or "American splender", which are abundently available around my area. I think maybe just because LA has to much more other fun than just sitting in cinema or strolling in all similar shopping malls. And of course, the expense is beyond my expectation.

I haven't mentioned several theaters in Westwood are the frequent sites for big movie premiere. Last Sunday, when we passed Broxton ave. we found the street was blocked and there are red carpet and stuff in the middle. And we were told Nicole Kidman was inside the "Landmark Regent" for the premire of "Cold Mountain". We did not wait till see her coming out and signing autograph, but I guess I will go to see this movie. I love Minghella's "English Patient" and I think he will be good in "Cold Mountain" too since he is a master in dealing with war and love. I will not be able to neither miss "return of king" and "girl with a pearl earing". I might also go to watch "lost in translation","mystic river" and "21 grams" since they sound really different from those big hit.

2003-11-24T00:04:00.000-08:00

bad-landlord index

About one month ago, I got my deposit back from the former landlord who had attempted to keep my money. After I sent him a registered mail threatening I will sue him for "illegally holding deposit,, intentional fraud and tort of conversion", I got my full deposit back plus $3 of interest. Everyone says it is a miracle: You were three thousand miles away, and he sent you the check? This experience and reaction from friends and lawyer makes me realize the omnipresence of the problem, how easy for landlord to keep the deposit and how difficult for tenant to get money back. Well, since the law is so loose on landlord's liability and could not really protect tenant's benefit, and there is no self-regulation for these landlords, why don't tenants get together to protect themselves?

Few weeks ago I listened to a talk on "oppositional new media", which refers to some cool sites that attempt to fight against, or at least caricature, government and corporations. Then I thought why there is no website targeted on irresponsible landlords. On such a website, people who do not get their deposit back can log on line to enter the name of the landlord, and the list could be indexed alphabetically based on state, city, and name! I guess the list will go fast and long. Other than a outlet for rage and frustration, this online database serves two function: a reference for people looking for housing to check the credibility of landlord, and a Sword of Damocles to remind those landlords that they are being watched. Any tricks the landlord play will win him a place in the black list and people interested in renting will check his name out. He really needs to rethink the consequence if he tries to hold the money.
Sure it might be some legal issue involved in this plan. Will there be any malign or unfairness to the landlord, it is hard to tell. The confirmation of the prosecutor’s identity as well as reiteration of non-involvement to any legal issues is critical to the website’s survival.

2003-11-23T13:56:00.000-08:00

Acquisition and stealing

Having dinner last night with Jiangfeng, one of Bin's old friends. He is working in a high-tech company in Irvine, and he is on his second job in two years. Being retreating to school for so long, we were intrigued by everything we learnt about corporation world. For one that impressed me the most is the strategy in acquiring new technology. In Taiwan, the fist company that have the break-through innovation is the one lose money. Investing a lot in R&D, its product demands a high price to offset its cost. Regardless of high margin, very soon other dozens of companies will be able to manufacture same products at much lower price. How? The general scheme is to steal the key R&D personnel from the old company by promising astounding high salary and fabulous benefit. Once acquiring the key technology, these later companies will be able to produce and market in much lower price. The lacking of IP protection makes almost every pioneer company the victim of the unfair competition. Acer, one of the biggest digital manufacturers even boasted for their spirit of "always compete for the second place".
In US, the situation is different. The omnipresence of IP law made impossible to just use other's technology by stealing the scientist. The most common practice is to buying the whole company. In this way, the new owner can be legitimately enjoy the profit of new technology. Jiangfeng's boss, who is a Taiwanese, had acquired 10 companies or so in past several years, and switched their direction again and again. In conclusion, in High-tech industry, technology marketing is even more important than R&D itself. The early slum of IT industry in California, in large degree, is the result of mass acquisition in a blind way. Unable to finding the right innovators, the company will gamble to buy as many other companies as possible, in order to top others in sense of time to enter the market.

2003-11-14T01:16:00.000-08:00

Immortality and baby

When I started to read Milan Kundera's books, he was so popular in China that I had chance to read all his fictions. It was about 15 years ago, of course I did not understand them all. My favorite Kundera was "Immortality". It does not read like a novel, though there was a consistent storyline through the book. I loved his style: always an observer in a close distance, he observe everyday life and go above to explore its implications. I found some excerpts on line, which I could clearly remember its Chinese translation:

". . . She walked around the pool toward the exit. She passed the lifeguard, and after she had gone some three or four steps beyond him, she turned her head, smiled, and waved to him. At that instant I felt a pang in my heart! That smile and that gesture belonged to a twenty-year-old girl! Her arm rose with bewitching ease. It was as if she were playfully tossing a brightly colored ball to her lover. That smile and that gesture had charm and elegance, while the face and the body no longer had any charm. It was the charm of a gesture drowning in the charmlessness of the body. But the woman, though she must of course have realized that she was no longer beautiful, forgot that for the moment. There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless. In any case, the instant she turned, smiled, and waved to the young lifeguard (who couldn't control himself and burst out laughing), she was unaware of her age. The essence of her charm, independent of time, revealed itself for a second in that gesture and dazzled me. I was strangely moved. And then the word Agnes entered my mind. Agnes. I had never known a woman by that name."

I must say the Chinese translation did a better work than this English version; the latter still feels less reserved and detached. What Kundura discussed in the book is what immortal image an individual would leave in the world when his biological body is worn and gone, and the fear of leaving nothing or leaving an embarrassing one.

The reason I thought about Kundera and his "immortality" was that I were able have time to think about life and future for past several months. When I think about anything far-reaching, I think about death. One insomniatic night when I thought of this destined endeing I was breathless and heartburn, literally. I talk about it with my mother several days later, and she again proposed a baby solution: "when you knew your life is passed on, you will fear no more.” Among thousands of reasons she gave trying to persuade me having baby, this one really gets me. Maybe fear of human being is the extinction of his whole self.

I was reading an interview on Amy Tan, in which she is talking about her choice of no children. Except selfishness and self-efficient reasons (certainly, which elite is not), she explained:

“What's in me that I have wanted to pass on is already in the books”.

Passing yourself on seems quite a primitive motivation for beings, but it seems something people try to accomplish for life, consciously or unconsciously. Go back to Kundera’s accounting of immortality, I would rather believe we had that beauty or charm outside of time for a moment and was observed and remembered by the anonymous ones, instead of making baby or fame to conquer our fears.

2003-11-08T01:04:00.000-08:00

Autumn in LA

I know the title sounds farfetched, but LA did rain, though only for one day, after which LA did have autumn. Trees are still green, but the air is cold and dry. No more fog or mist, we could even see the full shape of sun, from Santa Monica, right before the fire ball sank to ocean.

2003-11-01T12:28:00.000-08:00

stars got blogs

I'm not sure how much juicy detail you will find, but this is definetly an interesting phenomenon: it shows how popular blogging has become and definetly starts to penetrate into popular culture.

2003-10-29T14:05:00.000-08:00

In case...

If the policeman showed up at my door telling me I only have 10 minutes to evacuate and abandon my home, otherwise we will die of the spread fire. Then what will we pack in the car?

passport, visa, I-20
three laptops, two desktops (maybe just hard discs if we have time to take them apart)
photo albums, digital camera (and recharger) and camera
cellphone and recharger
a lot of bottle water, some cookies

Then I don't know, just anything I could grab and squeeze into the car, books and clothes mostly I guess. Bin will want all two boxes of his class notes with him. I don't think I will want any paper go with me. There is this thing called internet and all knowledge might be updated every two months.

Then I realize how little we need to go on living. Maybe when we are Proletariat, we don't have too much that's hard to abnegate. Memory and works seem the only thing we could not throw away at this stage of our life. Food and telecom keep us alive. And something to identify ourselves, the strangers to this land.

2003-10-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

What happens?

The article on NYT discuss the new trend of professional women retreating to home. Some statistics are interesting:

"Fifty percent of the undergraduate class of 2003 at Yale was female; this year's graduating class at Berkeley Law School was 63 percent women; Harvard was 46 percent; Columbia was 51. Nearly 47 percent of medical students are women, as are 50percent of undergraduate business majors (though, interestingly, about 30percent of M.B.A. candidates). They are recruited by top firms in all fields. They start strong out of the gate.

And then, suddenly, they stop. Despite all those women graduating from law school, they comprise only 16 percent of partners in law firms. Although men and women enter corporate training programs in equal numbers, just 16 percent of corporate officers are women, and only eight companies in the Fortune 500 have female C.E.O.'s. Of 435 members of the House of Representatives, 62 are women; there are 14 women in the 100-member Senate. "
So it is not because of gender discrimination at workplace but nature of sex?

"Why don't women run the world?

Maybe it's because they don't want to. "

2003-10-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

How to measure achievement

2003-10-21T16:17:00.000-07:00

Old and sick

Every time I went to hospital for some ailment, doctors would remind me and explained every symptom with same words "see, you are getting old..." no matter to deterioration of eyesight, newly developed allergy to aspirin, migraine (which really did not happen before last year), or to a big and hard acne on face. I never took these words seriously until recently, since my 30th birthday, and since the exhausting moving across country. I got constant backache that needs physical therapy for quite a while; I am attacked by migraine almost every week; Every night after cooking and dinner I had to take a nap, instead of going out for a walk as before; any long or short trip left me lying on bed one or two days afterwards; and since Saturday we came back from Malibu, I was on fever and the tonsillitis almost took away my appetite and voice.... sigh, Not to mention the descending of memory and attention, sounds I'm like 60 instead of 30.
I got a terrible feeling about this. When your heart still feels so young, you find a lot to thing could not be achieved with your physical strength...That is pathetic. And I really did not realized the sign of getting older until now. They say 30 is a kind of threshold for women, that sounds pretty right for me now. The other sign that really bothers me is my slow progress in piano playing. When I was young, I learnt every new piece so quickly; the first time I read the score, I could play it easily with both hands. But now, well, it really feels like a machine is stuck at some joint and the speed of signal transferring from brain to fingers slowed down not just a little. It is frustrating, that means I could not learn to play as much music as I like. I looked myself in the mirror, it is still a young and eager face, where are all the youth and intelligence gone?
Anyway, I'm still a the point of new start of life. I hope California sunshine will cure my illness and bring back energy and health. Anyway, I'm only 30.

2003-10-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

see pictures of our trip to North California and sunset at Malibu

2003-10-17T02:38:00.000-07:00

Weekend at North California

My friend Jeff came to US for business trip and stopped at San Francisco for one day, so Bin and I drove North to meet him. It is our first visit to SF, the best city in the US. Bin was not too impressed, since parking is a big pain on neck to a driver. If we have trouble finding a free parking in LA, there is no parking at all in SF even we are holding 20 bucks and dying to spend it. How about that.

To me, SF is the city confusing me most with movies. I mean it is as good as scenes in movies. Golden Gate Bridge against the sunset; clear sky and peaceful ocean; The sun sinks unto the sea at the horizon; beautiful crowds of people at every corner of the streets; life jazz singers sings blue in dim restaurants; swarm of hansome young marines in shiny whites packed on corner of Broadway and Columbus mingling with gorgeous girls; neon nights blended with champagne and perfume …could not be more cinematic.

After seeing off Jeff the second day, we drove to Palo Alto for a pilgrim of Stanford. Finally, a campus resonates my vision of typical academic institution: red roof under blue sky and quiet like an abbey (their trademarked building is a church, by the way. It is not that it is scarce populated or lack of tourists. Maybe it just happens to be a quiet, lazy and breezy weekend afternoon. We took a bird view at the top of Hoover tower, San Francisco is not too far away, surrounded by SF bay and continuous mountains.

Then we drove to Monterey. We stopped at Pebble Beach to watch sunset and sat by the beach of Carmel by The Sea to listen to the ocean wave under starry sky. Then we had the most breathtaking road trip ever since. The cragged and narrow high way 1 seems to lead nowhere other than the mystery mountains one after another, absolutely dark, no traffic at night at all. Steep cliff and roaring ocean are just under your wheels, but don’t look aside- the road is so winding that you would throw yourself into the sea at a blink. The never-ending winding trip lasts about 2 hour and we got so exhausted and scared. We joked that if a policeman stops us for alcohol check, we are most possibly walking in an S path. Then I realize maybe that’s where those Hollywood car chasing scene were shot, like “Basic Instinct” or “Catch a thief”. I should come back to check, but not at night again, I swear.

I feel like loosing my head when doing descriptive writing in English. Feels like a baby that could not say complete sentence, but piecing together some broken phrases. Maybe I’ve been a graduate student too long. I am trained to write in boring way... Just an excuse.

2003-10-10T16:15:00.000-07:00

Math

the election results showed that 55% of Californians favored recall of Davis and 45% against it. From earlier reports I learnt 30% more voters showe up than before, and most of them are young people. Tha analysts commented that it was a bad sign for Davis, since majority of these kids are Arnold's big fans. And it turns out how right it is.

I understand that people in California expect change and rejuvenation, I just don't see how a popular action star can do it. He could be the one, in big screen, to conquer all and save the world, which, it seems, serve the most effective political campaign in this election. I like Arnold and most of his images in movies, but when I watch him on TV promised to his supporters that "I will fight with the bad guys just like what I do in my movies", I still think both himself and his audience can not tell apart the reality and illusion.

Bin suggested the election reform should include weighting the votes from higher-educated people. While argueing it is against the spririt of democracy and equality, I think it might sounds right to this particular election. Sometimes we do need some reason than craze.

2003-10-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

Time, money, justice

“Baby, oh baby you just need some
You just need some
Time, love and tenderness”
-from Michael Bolton’s song “time love tenderness”

Bin complained that I’m too obsessed with trivial things these days, such as trying to get security deposit back from the greedy and sleek former landlord. “You should concentrate on your work, not the 520 bucks, it is not worthwhile”. He felt hopeless on me

When I called our group legal service, the eloquent lawyer in Brooklyn could not wait till I finished my story: “getting money back from Buffalo while you are in Los Angeles? Forget about it! You will invest much more than 500 hundred dollars! have some common sense!… I did not get my deposit back when I was in college either. Why did you pay him the last-month rent?”

Why? Because we are decent people, we followed what says on the lease which we signed for agreement. And we are punished now for our stupidity? We had to either let it go, or go to small claim court back in Buffalo to ask for judgment. We could lose money and justice, or lose our time and money, but won justice.

Since when everyone has to measure justice with time and money? Yes, To win justice, you need money for good lawyer, or you need to invest time to fight by yourself, if you are not rich enough. So if you happened to be a poor but busy graduate student, you have to let the bad buy get away?! (Baby, oh baby you just need some You just need some time, money and justice.)

The law must have some problem. From the very beginning, we knew what this bad guy trying to do to us, but as we consulted with legal service, nobody could do anything about it, because bad guy has right too. New York State Law do not require landlord to have walk-through inspection before evacuation, and not to return deposit in a “reasonable period of time” (what is it? Lawyer explains it s somewhere between 30 to 60 days). Once you move away, especially to place so far away like California, he possessed our money with no sweat. He knows that, and he knows people would not get themselves into law suit for only 500 bucks.

But, No, I’m going to fight back. My rage and chagrin stole my sleep at night. I would not let him snicker in dream for his easy money, and I would not let myself being taken advantage with my eyes wide open.

Plus I learnt laws in this process. I enjoyed learning all kinds of new things. Losing time? Yes, but I might gain justice back probably, and knowledge and experience, for sure.

2003-10-01T22:39:00.000-07:00

some pictures

Bin put up together some pictures we took at our good-bye party in Buffalo and our roadtrip from Buffalo to LA.

My college friends had a gathering last week. There are six of us graduating from Communication and Journalism department at Xiamen University resided in Los Angeles. I'm the only one left still sticking to communication major, or others switched to MBA or CSE. All exept two brought their sigificant other to the gathering. Except Bin and I, every one have got babies or expect one on the way.

It was a very precious and happy occation. Something you dreamed in detail about when you were young. Back then, when you imagine the life abroad, an old-friend union is a indispensable scene. And when that day comes, you realize it is far less dramatic than you thought.

2003-09-29T00:25:00.000-07:00

An afternoon at LACMA

We went there for French masterworks from Pushkin Museum, Moscow. See some Matisse for the first time, like Gold fish and La Dance-unbelievable combination of colors, rushing all blood into your brain. By the way, my favorite Matisse so far is in Buffalo! Also some decent collection of impressionism, including this one, this one, and this one. Well, if you've seen a lot of French paintings at Louvre, Orsay or Washington Art Gallery, you would feel this exhibition is a great addition to your experience of impressionism. And of course, no exhibition should go without Picasso and Van Gogh. We see this one, this one and this one today. There are also some old french school at show, like some paintings from Poussin and Jacques-Louis David. The exhibition reminds me of the close western tie Russians used to possess. Zealous aristocrats and Patrons not only collected French paintings, but even had those French painters come over to St. Petersrburg to draw for them. Think about it, going across Siberia! I trully believe art is a universal form of communication.

The other special exhibition ended today is works of Modigliani and his poor artist friends in Montaparnasse (Left Bank in Paris) at the beginning of the last century. Amedeo Modigliani
was an Italian-born Jew, and learnt classical painting in Italy, then came to Paris and mingled himself with this interntational circle. His numerous portrait works, heavily influenced by African primitive art, have long faces, long noses and blank eyes or one-open-one-close eyes, which are very alien-look, to me. However, it gave all paintings a strong surreal, dream-like touch, though his models were from such a low stratum like cleaning woman, circus clown, servant or peasant. He makes you realize human being, regardless of economic and social class, are all so beautiful in nature. Reportedly, in Picasso's deathbed 60 years later, the name was murmured again and again is "Amedeo Modigliani". Picasso also used to be an active member in Montparnasse, together with Diego Rivera, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Matisse and Chaim Soutine. And that's where Cubism, constructivism, and Fauvism were coming to being. You think French are so avant-garde in everything? Acturally, almost all these modern art forms are innovations of xeno-artists from Italy, Spain, Russia and Mexico. But without Paris, I doubt if they can make it.

LACMA was the most unlike museum I ever went. Huge outdoor cafteria crowded with thousands of people, life Jazz performance brings in the spirit of carnival since it is so loud and hilarious. You would think you come to a park or beach for sunshine instead of to a museum.

Poor people's luxury life

2003-09-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

Poor people's luxury life

In the weekend, we went to Redondo Beach. Sitting on cozy armchair against the ocean and sunset, we sipped hot and fragrant Chinese tea. In our stylish sunglasses and light jazz music, Bin worked on his new sleek notebook and I flipped through "City in Civilization". Later we started to call friends far away from our new Sprint cellphones, and telling them we were enjoying sunshine on beach at this moment. One friend just gave birth to her first baby days ago and was struggling with breast-feeding and the other told us how cold and stormy Buffalo had become. And they both were so green with envy on what I'm enjoing, " what a luxury life you have!" they sighed.

Ok, here is the story behind the scene - how the luxury moment was built up?

first, to avoid paying $7 of parking fee by the beach, we drove our car around the area for half an hour and finally found a small residence street with free parking. Now we had to carry all our stuff and walked a while to the beach. Following is the equipment needed to build right atmosphere

hot tea on thermos (to keep us warm), bottle water (for healthy) and soda (for fun), so not to pay over-priced drinks on beach;
medium-size radio (with powerful speaker) to play easy jazz channel;
two portable canvas arm chair (must have cup holder!);
big bag for notebook computer, Papers for reference, 1169-page "City in civilization", electronic dictionary;
a large and thick blanket to lay out on beach to place stuff on, so things would not touch sand;
two heavy coats to keep us warm (it is late September, and it is not always pleasant breeze on the beach!)

So before the spotlight was on and we entered the romantic scenes, you will see two persons (Bin and me), carrying load of things looked like bedrolls, bottles, shabby bags and old coats, staggered towards the beach. Well, you could not but shaking your heads: oh, poor God, not another two homeless people!

2003-09-19T00:41:00.000-07:00

I want a lawer

Since we moved to LA, I haven't got much time to do my study. No, I' m not busy in basking in the sun or strolling on beach, nor being indulged in fancy mall or food. I have been engaged in calling and writing to complain. We have to complain our cellphone companay who overcharge us, we have to complain our credit card company whose agents gave inconsistent information result in our finacial loss, we have to complain our former landlord who tries to withhold our security deposit, and we have to complain our current landloard who failed to fix plumbings in time.... And these things are so time-consuming and frustrating that I only wished Bin could make enough money to hire a personal lawer. However, I've become so quick and fluent in filing complaint letter and I almost started to enjoy this kind of writing, here is one I just finished tonight, for your pleasure:

To Whom It May Concern:

We are tenants of *** Ave, Apt.* and we just moved in 20 days ago. We write to acknowledge you of our very unpleasant experience in past two days and demand a certain way of compensation.

On the evening of Sep. 16th, around 7 o’clock, we found the sink in our washroom was clogged; furthermore, there was filthy water slopping over from nowhere into the sink. We called David, the maintenance man, and were told the waste water come from other apartments in the building. Since he was badly injured that day, he told us he would call up a plumber. David called again at about 8:00pm, and said the plumber would come in the evening. But as we waited and waited, nobody showed up. Meanwhile, we had to scoop the dirty water out of the small sink once it was filled. We kept our eyes on the sink until 3:30 in the morning and went to sleep. At 7 o’clock in the next morning (Sept. 17th) we were waken up by sound of drippings, and it was already too late-the toilet table, the floors of washroom and bathroom were flooded with waste water from other apartments (we were told later by the plumber that four households share the pipe). Everything (Jia’s contact lenses, lenses solutions, accessories, jewelry, cosmetics, headwear, new towels and tissues, some medicines, unused shampoos, and laundry) in the drawers and closets are soaked in the dirty yet still warm water. While feeling extremely sickening, we had to clean them immediately with our clean towels and bare hands, not to mention we had to stand in the dirty water on our bare foot. We called David again and were told the plumber would come in half an hour, but nobody showed up, as usual. We called Michelle at 9 o’clock; she said she would find a plumber ASAP. We did not hear anything until 11:30 when Asieh, another manager called to tell us a plumber would be here in 20 minutes, but he did not make his appearance until 1:30 pm. It had been 18 and half an hour since we reported the problem, and we had been in panic and been sickened for more than 18 hours, not to mention our anger and depress by our damaged belongings.

We feel we are entitled in every sense to some compensation. First, it is not us who made the pipe clogged and we were totally victims in this incident, which might be caused by the old plumbing in disrepair per se. Second, though we reported the problem as soon as we found it, we waited so long to have it fixed, while we were promised again and again that the plumber was coming ASAP; we could have had called for a plumbing service. Third, many of our personal belongings are damaged because of the delay; for items we did not feel to throw away, we had to spend a lot of time to clean them. Fourth and the most importantly, we suffered from this extremely sickening situation, both physically and mentally, for 18 hours, we totally lost our appetite for that day and Bin caught cold because of dealing with water in the morning.

We fully trust our property managers, who are from decent and credible **** company, would understand our sufferings and give us a proper compensation. If you need any further questions, please contact us at ***-****. We are looking forward to your response.

Your attention and consideration will be highly appreciated

Sincerely
Bin Zhang, Ph.D
Jia Lin

2003-09-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

What's on your ads?

My Cingular cell phone does not get any signal at all in my new apartment. So I decide to switch to Sprint since I was told by Bestbuy guy that I must get good Sprint signal if I could not get any from Cingular.
While I was waiting for activation of my phone in a sprint store, I tried to be friend with the sales girl, so I asked her who was the guy in their ads poster.
"oh, nobody. Just a Sprint man. Why?" She shrugged.
"I thought he is a comedian or something. Is he on TV commercial too?" I asked.
"147;not really"
"So what's on your TV ads? Is it the one with a jerk holding a cellphone walking around asking 'can you hear me now?'";
"no, not that one".
"oh, then it must be the one with Catherine Zeta Jones!"
"nah, not that one neither." She got a little disappointed.
"I'm so sorry, so what's on sprint commercial?" Now I get really curious.
"the one about Monkey getting cold you know, the monkey..."
courseoo..the monkey, of couse I remember. It was a quite a while ago..." I do remember that TV ads, but I just never noticed it was for Sprint. Just like I remember Catherine Zeta jones representing some cell phone, but never relate her to T-mobile at all. And I was so impressed by the "Can you hear me now" guy, but I still don't know which wireless phone he works for.
I'm sorry for these telecom companies who spent so much on advertising campaign,and who produce creative ads and entertain audience. Unfortunately, it is the brand, the most important thing, could not implant in audience' mind.
So how do I decide which cellphone I choose? From where I get information? Personal channels, mostly. From My friends who get cellphone earlier, salesman in Bestbuy or Circuit city and of course, Internet! What will make me buying? only two things: clear signal in my apartment and cheap plan. From "diffusion of innovation" perspective, I have to be the not-so-cool early or late majority. But still, I represent the majorit who can not remember whether it is the monkey or Catherine Zeta Jones represent Sprint or T-mobile.

Welcome to LA

2003-09-12T02:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome to LA

The first person knocking on our door since we moved in was our neighbor next building. The only thing separated our narrow patios is a thin red wood fence with a couple of slits. Primed by traditional movies, I thought a welcome from neighborhood would be some fruit basket or home-made muffin. However, the mid-aged lady looked really troubled. Here is exactly what she said:

“You moved in last Sunday. Every night, you came back after midnight. I could hear the talk, music, phone-ring…I am an accountant…I got up earlier…but now I could not sleep every night…the people upstairs also complain about you”

Bin and I got very nervous. We’ve never been complained by neighborhood whatsoever since we came to this country. And we felt so guilty to make this lady look so tired. I swear we did not do anything fancy or yelling at each other (We did it a few times after midnight in Buffalo, but no one complained). But our normal movement troubled her. Then our promise to her sound so funny:

“I'm very sorry...We will come home earlier and go to sleep earlier…ok, we will keep our window closed…”

After we saw her off, after we blamed each other for making the accused noise, we came to realize how ridiculous it is. Who she is that want to change our life style because of her weak nerve? Then I got guiltier, am I becoming the merciless city people?

The second day I got relieved when David, our maintenance man told me the lady complained around a lot. He asked me if I told her there is no such “shitty house made of paper in Buffalo, (House in California built in light material to prevent damage from earthquake)

When we were in small city, when there is not too much excitement (come home early, sleep early), privacy costs nothing because the sturdy building and ample space. But in LA, such a liberal and exciting place while people valued privacy; we can not enjoy carefree life, because so many neighborhoods share this small and vulnerable space. We tried to keep our doors, windows and blinds closed most of time, but still we hear the people talking, toilet flushing, glasses and bowls clinking. This is a very good neighborhood, people are well disciplined, so as babies and pets. Cats never mew, dogs never bark, babies only cry at daytime. It is so quiet most of time that any normal sound turns out so noticeable. We kept our voice down, I only played my new Kawai (piano) when I stepping on the muffler pedal, and I cook Chinese food in microwave (losing all flavor). I wonder sometime if that’s the city life I want. Fun and privacy do not come together, unless you are rich, I guess.

When we drove on I-405 towards South last night at 8:00, the traffic moved at about 25mph. When we drove on I-10 towards East tonight at 7:30, the traffic move at about 5mph. Bin decided never drive out of Westwood again except in weekends. I said we were the inmates of Westwood during Weekdays, Saturday is our parole.

Prisoners of the city: now I taste the helplessness. When we were in Buffalo, we can drive wherever we want, however there is not much to go. LA, there are so much to see, so many friends to visit, we could not go anywhere most of time. Freedom and fun does not go together, unless you have a personal chopper, I guess.

2003-08-23T00:22:00.000-07:00

Hitting the road

See you next weekend.

2003-08-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

memo

I'm certainly bitching too much recently. But there are things I must put down here, so I will not make the same mistake in the future, so as the people who happen to read this blog.

# asking about landlord's reputation before moving in. Taperecording every telephone conversation with the landlord if he not trustful.

# asking for written statement for every oral deal you made, including selling your used items, piano, fixing cars, getting permission from police office...
our piano store change their mind four days before we move, and only willing to pay $800 instead of promised $1000 to buy back our piano.

# never tell these people you are moving far away, so they know you can not come back to sue them and take advantage of you.

# Start everything earlier, we would not hadve lost money in moving quote (lose $300 because early quote expired), fixing cars, getting better AAA service (the "plus membership" from which you can have free tow for 100 miles, will not take effective until ten days)

#Sell everything (we spend $1000 on movoing service just because we don't want to get rid of bed, computer chair and TV, not a good deal)

#don't shop before you really settle down

#

2003-08-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

rising fame

Four monthes ago, I had to flilp to third page of Google index to find my blog page when I typed my name (Jia Lin or Lin Jia is such a common Chinese name). Now, My blog is ranked No. one when inputing either "Jia Lin" or "Lin Jia". What does it mean? I beat all people share the same name wtih me? I am "Jia Lin" number one?! Or, I'm the most famous "Jia Lin" in the world (if "Jia Lin" is a type of species) ? Sounds exciting. Fame is such an interesting thing, by all means. Googlel makes me one. I guess I'm more vain than I thought.

2003-08-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

What's the name of the law..?

...to describe eveything going wrong all at the same time?

• The car collapse when we will have 3000-mile road trip to go in one week. Engine or suspension, to fix or not to fix? Neither of them cost less $600. Can only afford one.

• Long-planed pilgrim to Lucile Ball’s hometown-Jamestown (the last place I want to go before leave East Coast) only finds a few pieces of her costume (not even the famous outlook) in the museum.

• Notebook is attacked by Blaster worm, and shut down automatically every 5 minutes. And it comes back after I thought I kill it.

• Being told we have to pay and build an 8*9 square feet bulkhead wall and move furniture up and down to and from a 4-feet-tall trailer (with no ramp) all by ourselves, after we sign $1000 contract and paid $75 deposit with Help-u move.

• Air conditioner is shut down in the afternoon of 87 degree due to electricity outage.

• Constant migraine for two days and a party of 40 is on the corner.

• Self-screener of Adult ADD found " your symptoms may be consistent with Adult ADD", and that explains the following:

• Researcher’s block: Only have fewer than 20 pages of writing when proposal defense is due, and the adviser comments “that was the way you were going”

Can't I at least have a blessing of "Happy birthday" today?

2003-08-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

lightening strike? I don't believe it.

They say the blackout is caused by lightening in Niagara power plant. I'm in Niagara county. I swear it was as sunny as never before when my air conditioner, computer and refrigirator were suddenly gone dead. The call-in program in NPR tonight received several calls from niagra fall area, and people said the worst weather there today is that "the sun's blazed".

The DHS should give some better explanation.

2003-08-12T00:02:00.000-07:00

What is Jazz dance?

Jazz dance is interesting. There is this international jazz dance world congress hold in UB last week. We watched one of the 4 shows on Friday. A performance of top dancing companies nationwide, it is really amazing. I used to equalize jazz dance to tap dance, or it is, in my mind, no more than something like “Fosse”. But the variety of dance numbers presented at that night makes me realize it is actually embracing any type of modern dance, anything but classical. And all music but classical: Pop, new age, jazz (of course), Samba, African drums, Peking Opera all sound fine with the modern choreography. The distinction between male and female are faded in this kind of dance, men should be as soft and flexible as women, and women should not be less strong and dominant than men. And that’s the essential of modernism. In classical ballet, woman is the lightless object that is heaved and tossed exquisitely by muscular man. I don’t see much of this lifting in this jazz dancing. Male and female dance in the exact same movements most of time, and I did not realize the presence of male dancers for quite a while. It is pleasant to see the women of modern dance are generally tall and curvy, opposed to those skinny and frail ballerinas in my memory (I don’t see much ballet in my adulthood) .

The subjects are quite fascinating. The first number by 5 pairs of men and women seemed depicting night dating rituals in metropolis. The second is a solo tap dance and monologue of a man in military suit. He occasionally cursing war and politics in brief words while he pose from a long tip-tap; the third number was my favorite. Eight girls dress like a burning phoenix, bouncing and gamboling at mysterious drumbeat. The way they skipped was so swift and lightsome, shoot from one side of stage to the other, like flying birds. Ephemeral birds. Then there was this number called “moon over the great wall”. Against all my imagination, it was presenting various forms of animals’ night life. Five girls in dark dress rolling and twisting themselves violently on the floor to mimic insect’s or reptile, and then creep like wolf or cats, and finally they can stand on their foot and seemed they evolve into mankind. I guess "evolution in the moonlight" will be a better fit. Final number was called “rain”, and consisted of three Jewel’s songs about raining. Maybe it was because the group is from Utah, the choreography was elegant, balance but conventional. However, it has its moment: at the end, artificial rain poring down on the stage, and the dancers get all wet and stomping crazily, so went the audience. Clapping, screaming and stomping together. When we walk out of the theater, it was really raining cats and dogs.

2003-08-07T23:53:00.000-07:00

sense of leaving

I did not have sense of leaving until this week, when we started to meet friends and say goodbye this week.

Wow, we are going to LA! It is sooo far away, 3000 miles! We can't meet friends very often from now on, though we don't meet each other for several months while we are in the same city. But it is 3000 miles away now!

We had a lunch with Marc, Mary and Ruth (Marc's manager in China) at Ponderosa yesterday. Today, Leila took us to a very lovely restraurant where California cuisine is served. Apart from as expensive as those fancy restaurants in California, the restaurant even has a name of California city called "Sonoma". Also I notice they have something I've never seen in any of other Buffalo restaurants-valet parking. That is quite California to me. I met Pijun in the department today and could not help asking her and Zhijie for another dinner-even we just did it two weeks ago. Le will again sleep over for this weekend. She is the only one with whom I can do the girlish thing, like gossiping, window shopping and cooking stuff.

Bin and I will host a get-together-before-goodbye party on next Sunday (8/17) at Mayer's park, where we had our wedding ceremony two years ago. Everyone who reads my blog is welcome to come at 4:30pm- if you can make it (sorry I can't offord tickets from Colon or Sydney yet). We don't have many close friends left in Buffalo now- we have stayed here so long (since spring 1999 when Bin came first) and we've seen so many friends come and go. Every parting left us wonder when we would be seen off. And finally it is time.

2003-08-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

Gazette: Birth of Dr. Zhang

Bin Zhang passed his defense 30 minutes ago in conference room of CEDAR, University at Buffalo. His presentation "Pattern matching and retrieval with binary features" lasts 90 minutes with 88 slides (his committee had to remind him twice to watch out the time), but everyone seemed very interested in his work. Totally 19 people (including me, the cameraman) attended his defense, even the director of CSE graduate school showed up (which is very rare case) at the last few minutes. Senior research scientists in CEDAR endorsed Bin's presentation as the best Doctoral defense in years.

In past 18 years, Bin had been at school for 4 completed degrees. He enjoyed his time at schools and labs, and now he is moving towards the highest degree-postdoctoral in UCLA, if it can be considered as an educational degree.

Editorial: I'm so proud of him.

2003-07-31T12:47:00.000-07:00

What did I read last night

In the past issue (July 14 & 21) of The New Yorker, A Chinese Blogger in New York is introduced in "talk of town". Unfortunately, it is not me, no matter how much I wish my little blog could be paid attention to someday. Simon Song, a former journalist for XinHua New Agency, now is an intern in New York Daily News. He uses "off-kilter English" along with example of his photography to chronicle his encounter with the city "full of surprise and wonders", and he transform "our (New-Yorkers') more mundane comings and goings into exotic objects of anthropology". It is the first time I ever saw an article in The New Yorker featureing weblog, and I'm so glad its solo protagonist is a Chinese native, regardless the fact that I frowned a little bit when I read about sentence like "he was in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989" before mentioning his blog entry on "attending an anti-police rally at City Hall Park". Well, the touch of political spice makes me a little doubted about the motive for singling out this Chinese blogger.

Another article in the same issue recounts a Pop conference titled “Skip a Beat: Rewriting the story of popular music” in Seattle. How do you like the scene with a herd of eggheads, from discipline like history, philosophy, anthropology etc, consult seriously about subject like “ Interrogating Bruce Springsteen’s butt (as seen on the cover of Born in the U.S.A)”, “lo-fi ideology of nineties indie rock”, “trailblazing transsexual punk of Wayne/Jayne country”, or “does Justin Timberlake really write Cry me a River by himself”? To me, it reveals a puzzle dom that is faced by social science: we are apt to making simple things complex, looking in vain for sanity in irrational things, and most of time cheers of significant findings are shrugged off with a snort of “who cares?” Nonetheless, there is one theory that catches my attention: MP3, a music consuming form “with no images attached-no videos, no TV appearances, not even album jackets”, rejuvenate the notion about a world of “purely musical”, that proposed by Eduar Hanslick, a 19th century Vinnese Critic.

2003-07-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

Not another scary movie

We decided that we are estranged from our Chinese peers too long, so we went for a dinner party last night. Most of the conversation is surrounding job market, gossip about CSE Depts. as always. There was an exception that night: a story told by a hapless couple freaked us all out:

In April, when checking their banking account on line, the wife found their registered home phone number was changed and she could not changed it back, she thought it was just a system error.

In May, an officemate of the wife got a suspicious phone call and the caller claimed to call from a credit card company to confirm the wife’s employment status. The vigilant officemate asked the man to send an official letter, which did not came for ever.

In June, the husband got a phone call from a credit card company asking if they change their address to Florida. It was until then they sensed something wrong, and they check their credit report on line: Gasted! There were 23 credit cards they never applied, with balance of $40,000. However, minimum payment had been made for several months.

Then they called all these credit card company and cancelled all cards; the second day, one of the cards called again asking if they re-open the account…then start the Tom and Jerry game: they have to call the 23 credit cards again and add a password for re-open. For several weeks, the wife did nothing but making phone calls to credit card companies and credit report bureaus.

It is not scary if the story just ends here. Soon the couple started to receive, from both home and offices, strange phone calls, including one screaming at them and commanded them to reopen those credit accounts, otherwise “we are coming to visit you”. So they had to deal with police officer now, and one day they were visited by two “extremely friendly” FBI agents who provides them no solution but spiritual support.

Those crazy calls are still coming in almost everyday. They stop picking up phones and install Caller ID and recorder. Most of calls were from Florida. Callers have unusual accents, such as pronouncing “L” as “H”. When told one day that they would be “visited” on the Independence Day, our poor friends ran out of town to Boston for a week. When they came back, they really received a message from their “old friend” in the answering machine. The Caller ID shows the phone call was from Buffalo area!

And the story is not over yet. One afternoon when the husband went to their bank, the representative mentioned casually that they had changed their address to Florida for him this morning. The husband went pale and checked the recent transaction. Thank God, the money was all there. However, there was a withdrawal request weeks ago from New York City, but it did not go through since the signature didn’t fit. As remedy, the desperate couple hasted to place the security check to top level: no money could be withdrawn from any ATMs, nor any other branch of the bank. Now, they only drove to one designated bank branch every week to get some cash from one designated bank representative. Of course, no credit cards whatsoever.

The husband got a teaching Job in Georgia and leaving soon. The frail wife had to move out of their home and find a hidden place to finish her degree, while she was alone in this city.

When Bin and I left the party for home, the first thing we did was to call and close14 of our credit card accounts. We decided never to apply any new card and stick to our remaining 11 cards.

2003-07-25T10:49:00.000-07:00

Why not?

An article from Newsweek talks about the beauty parlors and spas today has targeted preteens. There are two photos with text; a girl of 11 or 12 year old gets makeover in a beauty salon and proudly looked into the mirror. The fact of young girls of 12, 13, or 14 from rich families being frequent customers to these luxurious treatments makes me more jealous than surprised. More than twice older, I’ve never enjoyed spa, manicures, pedicures, acne-fighting facials, scalp massage, or body exfoliation. The only professional make-up I received was for my wedding ceremony back home, and I ended up in a hospital to receive anti-biotic injection at midnight, since I was allergic to their pricey powder.
Time has changed; I don’t want to make moral judgment should a girl should be exposed to material luxuriousness in early teens. But I believe it is a good thing to promote the economy, especially under current dreadful situation. Expansion of consumer to preteens definitely brings bigger market, and loyal customers of lifetime. The job opportunity that promised by the President will be increasing without touch of the taxpayer’s money. And certainly the needs for cosmetic products, spa apparels and Jacuzzi for little girls can, to some degree, promote the manufacture industry. Then we need more medical expert for teenagers’ skin care, acne treatment, and facial skin damaged by applying makeover of too early. Hey, there should be handbook, videotape, CD on “how to lead a healthy (decent, fabulous, beautiful…whatever) life as a pre-teenager” stuff. Wow, what a huge industry will be emerging! And all women will lock fabulous through lifetime. The revolution can start from the rich spoiled kids, and then diffuse to all social layers, with the market competition and everyone can afford it in the end. Hey, Who doesn’t want to look fabulous, to live like a princess? Wanna cultivating a consumer with better taste? You’d better start it when they are young.

2003-07-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

Ph.D candidate

I passed my oral preliminary exam yesterday, and one more step closer to my Ph.D degree. It was tough, tougher than I expected. I rewarded myself a long sleep till noon. The dream is very rewarding: I went back to Paris!

2003-07-19T21:38:00.000-07:00

Ruled by the rich

Though I never doubt the truth on the slogan above, I'm still shocked after reading this research about political donation and legislation votes.

2003-07-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

Become a Twin Peaks fan

Borrow the first season of Twin Peaks from public library after watching the movie Fire walk with me. Then I realized I watch them in wrong order: the movie replayed how the murder happens, while the TV records how the case is investigated. Well, now I have to watch the investigation while knowing who the murderer is. But it still keeps me watching attentively, for its weird characters and quant milieu. Well, actually, the TV show is far less as spooky as the movie, since, I guess, the latter is directed by David Lynch, who only did the screenplay for the TV. The way the story was laid out in the TV has a strong sense of day-time soap opera, you know, those long, blank stare accompanied by tempting background music(and the theme song! perfect conflation of jazz, new age and soap opera). But you can still glean some David Lynch form time to time: the red-room dream, the bird (same as in “blue velvet”), talking log, mysterious smirking and apperception all of sudden…And Kyle MacLachlan (he often reminds me some extraterrestrial life, )
I love the “Tibet” scene, which is the coolest whodunit analysis I’ve every seen. Bearing in mind that the series is a creation of early 1990s in TV networks, you could not but feel sorry for the loss of idiosyncrasy, style, wit and profoundity in today's popular shows after more than one decade.

The ending of the first season is really driving me crazy, because I could not find the second season from any public library around. Maybe the DVD collection has not been released yet.

Yesterday when I organized our album, I found a photo I took for Bin somewhere in the way we drove from Spokane to Seattle, and it creep me out: the mountain behind him, I believe, is the famous "Twin Peak", as shown at start of every show.

2003-07-18T13:52:00.000-07:00

The affair is so french.

2003-07-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

What's in my purse?

I've seen many movies and sitcoms make fun of woman's purse, which is like magician's box that contain numerous unexpected items. I happen to have one of those boxes. Different from Magicians, I, maybe together with other women, can never grasp the right item I need at the first, or several attempts.

Since I decided to carry my new digital camera with me everyday, I decide to organize (in vain) my purse so to give a comfortable room for my new pal. And that's when I come to realize how many things my small purse is capable of holding:

my huge wallet with more than 30 cards (credit, bank, shopping, libraries, license, ID, insurance, name cards)
my frame glasses case, my sunglasses case, and my contact lens case ( I could not wear contact whole day, I could not recognize any person walking by without glasses, and I will ugly squint my eyes in sunlight without sunglasses)
pens (two blueprint, one black print, one pencil, two highlighters) and a rubber eraser
planner notebook and address book
bottle water (8 fl oz)
one lipstick and one lip balm
one save pin
two bandages
one bottle of “tiger balm” (one of those oriental all-purpose lotion)
one Star-buck teabag (I always buy two and keep one)
one zip disc (so I can work in all computers)
two post-its (one bubble pink, one yellow)
serveral hair bands (I pull down my hair for good looks, then I have to pull it up for working; and I keep losing them)
one candy (maybe a souvenir from a dinning-out long time ago)
huge key chains, with 7 keys, 4 shopping cards, and Bin’s picture frame)
my cell phone and earphone (I could never reach it every time before it stops ringing! sorry my friends who call me)

My awesome purse! My poor purse…

I believe most of men have huge pant pockets so they don't carry any bag whenever they go out (going to office may be a little different). However, the stuff in my bag might still need every pocket of a Titan's pants and jacket.

So why woman has to bring lots of things with her while Men can sashay around with free hands and sholders? Sense of security? or women are really born fussy? My friend Jennifer, who use to carry something like a sports bag around every day had a very good reason: "God, I don't know what I'm going to need!" I used to laugh, now I realize how true it is.

2003-07-12T22:24:00.000-07:00

a new pal

I will bring you wherever I go. This is my solemn promise to my little friend.

Hmm, now I'm thinking about upgrade to blogger pro, so I can post my digital photos to spice up the text.

2003-07-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

Counting

Which movies did I watch more than 7 times?

Roman Holiday
Out of Africa
Age of Innocence
Shawshank redemption

Which movies did I watch more than 5 times?
Breakfast at Tiffany
Four weddings and a funeral
The firm
The professional
Die hard (first one)
Sense and sensibility
Dangerous liaison
A streetcar named desire

Which movies did I watch more than 3 times?
quills, gladiator (like Phoenix not Russel), The fugitive, interview with vampire, Notting hill, A room with a view, A few good man, American beauty, The witness, Sleepy hollow, speed, LA confidencial, Matrix (the first episode please!), Sleepless in Seattle, Forrest Gump, Pretty woman, Shrek, Point of no return, Face off, The mask,

Which movies did I watch twice?
(Too many)
Spellbound, Con air, wild at heart, Amilie, Briget Jones' Diary, Pulp fiction, Unbearable lightness of life, Bullet over Broadway, Anne Hall, overboard, Housekeeper, Chicago, High fidelity, American Beauty, Perfect murder, Almoust famous, Bourne Idendity, Memento, Exorcist, roadtip, evolution, Love letter.

What movies did I watch once but would like to watch again?
Pirates of Caribbean (it is so hilarious!)
The pianist
stock, lock and two smoking barrels
Frida
Moholland drive

Findings:
I had less and less patience with new movies- look, the movies I watched again and again are so old! And even I think very hard, ver few new movies come into my mind that I like to take a second look.

I do like action movies! I thought I'm quite against violence. I was wrong.

Although thriller is my favorite genre, but it is not very possible I will watch the same movie second time.

What is good drama? lovers are seperated by fate. If they end up being together, I will not watch them more than 7 times

2003-07-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

How man and woman write differently

2003-07-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

Best barbecue ever

Finally done with his dissertation,
Bin takes me out vacationing.
Though only one short afternoon,
from Dionysus happiness we stealing.
Together with friends we loved, heading
we towards Letchworth, for meeting
of forest, creek and sunshine.
Beneath the running falls we sitting
upon the grass of green green green.

Music from far away, mixing
with breeze smells like rose wine.
Breathing breathing, intoxicated we're being,
not to mention sirloin and shrimp sizzling.
Music, food, nature and friends, what more
I'm expecting from God, who from above smiling.

Smiling prettier are my dear friends
and the prettiest is my own darling.
From thick glasses his eyes beaming,
laughing like boy in his teen.
Oh, God, I'm wishing one more little thing:
Let me have a digital camera of my own,
I can catch each moment of enlightening.

2003-07-03T01:01:00.000-07:00

How to do a Ph.D research...

I used to think this only happens in TVMA (mature adience only) movies shown on Cinimax Friday after midnight.