And so I sent off the manuscript to the publisher today yay yay! Ahead of schedule also, by, like, five hours. Was working till half two last night and up at eight this morning, so I went home for a nap.

Been getting really confused by the various clocks and watches I've got and woke up dazed and confused. Well, we used to have several (about 4 or 5 I think) of these Ikea cheapo plastic alarm clocks, at $29 a piece. They worked really well until a while ago when one by one slowly but surely, they start to not work anymore. In one of them, the minute hand has refused to move forward, or only do so very erratically. So that's out of the window. Another one started showing times of different time zones and I thought it was spooked and threw it out. Then my son told me he's been turning the dial at the back 'for fun'. Of course! And then the one that I had next to my bed, the freaking second hand started going BACKWARDS! Now that is truly spooky, I had to toss it in the bin.

I also have another clock we put in the living room above the telly; got that for $9.90 from PnS a few months ago. I can't tell if it is working properly as no one has ever bothered to see if the times on our various computers, phones, fax machines, microwave oven, etc. are properly synchronized.

I have three watches and they all have different times. Okay. My fault I know, but two of them are digital watches and I HATE figuring out how to change the times on those buggers.

And then there is this cool looking little alarm clock which I bought last week. It's pretty cheap, $59 - bought it is a newly opened store in a little alley way near the pub. For the first few days, I swear it was going slower than it should. So I adjusted it. Then I woke up one morning and the time on it says 7am - an ungodly hour - so of course I went back to bed. Three minutes later I heard my watch go beep beep beep - so I looked at it, it's 8am! Now why the hell would this brand new clock go back by a full hour????? spooked??? I was. A little.

So reset it again. And after eight hours it seems to be going FASTER than all the other time pieces in my ownership and it's driving me nuts. Guess time is not on my side and I should just chuck them all out once and for all.

There's no denying the man's a genius.

man i LOVE this tune!!!!!!!!

c'mon pop kids get up and dance!

My dept head sat me down in his office the other day and broke me the great news that the powers that be have decided to offer me the glory of having my ass placed in a newly created administrative post.

He went through all the motions to convince me this is great. Well, it is, in that he will support my application for promotion and substantiation and there will be a lighter teaching load. It's good, he said, to do something new, to take on new responsibilities, and to be acknowledged by 'everyone' as the best candidate for this job. I should be pleased and should accept it, basically.

Now of course things never quite actually resemble the manner in which they are presented to you, especially when you are being cornered in your boss's office.

Of course, everything he said is true (if you qualify 'everyone' being three people in our dept), as he has already said he would support my application for promotion two months ago. I will be in a position of shitloads of extra work and in return I will get a token cash subsidy, a bit less teaching, and animosity from everyone in my dept apart from the three whom he considers as 'everyone' .

I can't say no, but I am afraid to say yes, as I haven't quite figured out the full extent of the conspiracy, yet.

Ｈｏｗ　ｄｏ　ｙｏｕ　ｔｅｌｌ　ｉｆ　ａ　ｄｒｉｅｄ　ｆｉｇ　ｉｓ　ｍｏｕｌｄｙ　ｏｒ　ｎｏｔ？　

ｎｏｔ ｑｕｉｔｅ ｒｉｇｈｔ

There is a big ugly spot on the right side of my forehead. On top of that, I sprained a muscle in my right foot playing tennis on Monday, then sprained a muscle in my right forearm playing on Wednesday, and after yesterday's two hours of play the pain in my right shoulder is creeping back.

It is annoying, to say the least.

People! Write your own bloody essays! Buy your own bloody datasets!

There are lots of emails I never reply to, such as this below:

Hi! I am a student of communication studies at xxx in xxx. I am writing an essay for my course xxxx and I have read about your work and know you are an expert. Can you help me? I would like to interview you on the following questions:

1. Why do young people like to buy brand name goods?
2. Is it a kind of status symbol?
3. How is this phenomenon related to our society?
4. Is this a capitalist phenomenon?
5. Is this a youth problem?
6. Will young people waste a lot of money or get addicted?

Thanks a million! I look forward to your prompt reply. You can call me 6xxxxxxx or email.


And here's another one:

Dear esteemed professor xxxx,

I am a student at xxx and am doing a course on xxx. I come across your writing and am keen to seek your expert advice. I am writing a paper on xxx which is highly relevant to your work. Can you please answer the following questions? You can send it to me as a MS Word file (preferred).

1. How many foreign domestic workers are there in Hong Kong?
2. Why are there so many of them?
3. What are the problems they face when working in Hong Kong?
4. What are the characteristics of their employers?
5. What are the problems faced by the employers of these workers?
6. Do you think these workers are taking away jobs from local women?
7. Do they cause other problems to our society?
8. What do you think about the future of this problem? Will it go away?
9. What other issues can you think of are related to the above questions?

Thank you very much for your time, sorry for causing you trouble. I look forward to your answers. Have a good weekend!

And then there is this below, which I actually made an exception and replied to. Only because I think it is the instructor who is the idiot, not the student:

Dear Professor xxx,

My name is xxx and I am a final year student at xxx university doing a course in xxx. As part of our course assessment we are required to replicate the statistical work in a published journal article. I came across your paper xxxx xxxxx xxx and am very impressed with the methods you use. Can you please kindly send me your original data set so that I can replicate your work? Thank you very much.

I replied as follows:

Dear xxx,

Thank you for your interest in my paper. The data sets I used for the paper you mentioned were purchased from the Census and Statistics department, which cost a total of $xx,xxx dollars. I had to sign an undertaking which specifies that the data is used for academic research only and is not to be duplicated or shared with other parties. Please contact the C&S Dept if you wish to purchase your own set.

Please tell your course instructor that you can find a list of freely available datasets at this website, which also lists the research published using these sets http://www.xxxxxxx.xxx

photos from qingdao

This is mounted at the entrance of our hotel (well not exactly a hotel as it is only opened to guests invited by the government), very old skool, I'm surprised they haven't taken it down:


Beach on a cold wet day:

View from revolving restaurant:



Old qingdao beer advert - very avant garde:


Funky looking Laoshan:


Laotze - dude who founded taoism, was supposed to have done a david copperfield and passed through this wall:




Sailing regatta and windsurfing events of the 2008 olympics will take place in qingdao, and they've got some flashy wind-powered lights ready for the world to see:


For some reason Godzilla, along with other bandai toys, is featured in the bugs museum inside the qingdao agricultural university:

Had quite a nice walk today from Tai Tam up to Mt Butler and then back down to the reservoir, about 3 hours in all. It was very nice the whole way up until we got down to the reservoir, where there were many jolly 'hikers' blasting their radios, talking too loudly to one another and laughing much too loudly for my liking. I black faced quite a bit when encountered such likes but managed to not pick up a rock to throw at them. Yes I am a terrible person. God help me.

And O stepped on some dog turd. He couldn't stop talking about it whilst we were sitting waiting for the other two.

Stopped by at Festival Walk to buy some new running shoes for the younger one. Really should stay well away from malls at weekends/public holidays. Managed to leave just before it all got too much for me.

And why the hell is this in the news?



Based on a study by the Chinese University, Hong Kong's new born male babies have small winkies by international standards (30mm). On top of the charts are babies from Saudi Arabia and East India (?) (both at 36 mm), followed by 'whites' (?) (34mm) and Canadian born Chinese (31mm). Are you the proud parent of a newborn baby boy? How do you react to such 'statistics'?

Now, why the hell are they measuring the length of newborn babies' penises in the first place?

Doing stupid, is not good

Yesterday I went to Causeway Bay to pick up some stuff then met up with T and P for a coffee. After that I was supposed to meet M for a drink but had some time to kill before that so I decided I'll go and give blood before downing a few pints. I reckoned I could get better value out of the booze as the alcohol would be less diluted in my body, given I'd have less blood! Hah! Which was, as you probably know, a stupid idea.

Well, I didn't seem to think so at the time. But I should have.

I had an insanely early lunch (11:30am) yesterday. This was because a repairman had come to check out the microwave in our pantry, which was reportedly making weird noises. He said he needed to test it using real food and was asked if they could use my lunch which needed reheating anyway. (Why did they need to test it with real food? I don't know. Surely you can turn on a microwave but not microwave anything? )

Anyhow, after lunch I didn'have anything to eat until I got to the pub which was around 7pm, and shared 2 packets of Doritos with M over our drinks. I still had some sense in me and had only 2 bottled Heinies with one tea in between. I still have to drive home later, you see. M and I parted our ways around half nine. I had to take the train back to Kowloon to pick up my car.

I made a bit of a dash towards the train at Admiralty, and almost immediately after the doors closed I felt dizzy and had to crouch down on the floor. I stayed there for a short while before someone offered me a seat. I kept my head between my knees but that didn't seem to help. I tried to get out at TST as I thought I might barf but as I stood up I realized I had to crouch down again (unsurprisingly, my seat was immediately occupied by another butt the second mine left). Someone asked me if I was okay and I told him/her (I couldn't really see this person's face) I was fine just needed to be still.

I must have looked pretty awful as another kind soul offered me his/her seat and someone else started rubbing tiger balm vigorously under my nose and on my temples. I had a vague idea I had to get up and change trains at some point though I was feeling increasingly unwell. As I stood up, I realized I couldn't see anything and I said out loud: "I can't see anything!" Miraculously, at this point two strong arms grabbed me and dragged me out of the train. This was a station attendant and she was helping me sit down. Apparently someone had the good sense to press the buzzer for help. Which I badly needed, as I couldn't walk and was shaking and sweating quite a lot. I was muttering to the attendant: "sorry I am inconveniencing all these people" (as I realized by now that the train had stopped on the platform whilst waiting for them to come get me) and she replied in a matronly manner: "Hey! Don't say that! You are unwell ma! We are here to serve the people!"

And so I was wheelchaired to a small room with a bed and a sink and was looked after by the staff. They asked me what was wrong and I said this must have been caused by me making a mad dash for the train after drinking beer with no food in my stomach after giving 450 cc of blood.

Whilst sitting it out I realized I was extremely hungry. As I started to feel better after God knows how long, I told the staff I felt okay to go. He took my details and escorted me to the platform for my train. I moved slowly and a little unsteadily, but otherwise felt fine by now. Bought myself a massive sandwich at Taste just as it was about to close, went back to my car, sat there, quietly scoffing as much of it as I could, before driving home very, very cautiously - slow lane the whole time.

Speaking as someone with only elementary school level PTH, it is a pain to type Chinese using pinyin.

The deal is, you need to know exactly what a character sounds like in PTH in order to be able to type it out with pinyin.

This is obviously a bit of a problem with me as I don't even bloody well know what most characters are supposed to sound like! So my strategy is to use the good old trial-and-error method. If "que" is not it then try "ce" or "xe" or "zhe" or "che"!

Still, about 400 characters share the same pinyin of "zhe", so even when you get the pinyin right you still need to scroll through line after line of characters to find the one you want. I found this website which is mighty useful for my purposes but still it is a laborious process.

I am pleased that I managed to send off 4/5s of my promised three chapters to the publisher yesterday afternoon. And now I shall need to think about the other three.