Saving lives

Photo Credit by No one... 

Dad told me when this airplane crashed into the river close to my parent's apartment complex, he was in the bank just next to the river. He saw the breaking news on the TV hanging on the wall in the bank, he turned around and jumped on his scooter, dashing to the river band. It was winter and he saw some survivors climbing out of the airplane standing on the wing/airplane body. His first thought was I need to get to the airplane in the middle of the river to search for other survivors who might be trapped by the seatbelts.
He took off his jacket, dawn vest, and shoes. As he was about to take his trousers off, the police officer came over to stop him, saying they have enough people to work on, it is no good if they have to get Dad out of the water.

English

Freaky Ryokan in Ise coast

Some media described Clinton as "elite" because she used the big words that average Americans will not use. Having 5 or 6 times of vocabularies over normal English speakers, seems to be the must-have if you want to be recognized as the upper class. Churchill was said to have roughly 40,000 words he can use at ease whereas average Joe uses about 4,000. I suppose language is a tool for critical thinking. Only when we can precisely describe an issue, we can put together a list of accurate questions to ask, issues to solve.

For example, when someone says "NO", that could mean:
-I do not understand what you are talking about
-I am not ready to agree with you
-I need some more information before agreeing with you
-You are making me feeling uncomfortable
-I need to discuss this with others
-I do not think I can provide what you want

Language provides the tool to describe different possible reasons.  A "NO" means a lot more than an rejection if we are not being scared away by the rejection.   Wow, it is sooooooo powerful.  English is pretty unambiguous and logical.  It is create for business, used by civilians.  There is no special rules depending on hierarchy.  It is solid, flat, and factual language.  It also creates new vocabularies more than other language. 

When someone has any ambiguity in his/her wordings, you can catch the mistake immediately.  Hence it is great tool for independent thinking.   Wow, I am really inspiring myself to study English a bit better just now.

Wet hair

Girls with long hair look more feminine, pretty and delicate - I just cannot help but dislike those who cannot be bothered to tidy up their hair on weekday morning on their way to work(weekend is a mini holiday, no need to look professional). I always think women should not look delicate and feminine during the day, unless your profession requires you to look that way, which I cannot think of many.
Many wash their hair before going to work, why going out with damp hair? I feel that look is extremely inappropriate anywhere but swimming pool or beach.
I am not against being feminine. But a Chinese girl (I am using "girl" to refer to those who has no children, once you become a mum, you can do anything) will be criticized "you are such a boy" if you are not slim, not graceful or not having white complexion. Being a girl means you should not enjoy outdoor sports, should not be outspoken, should not be assertive, hate to get tanned and likes to go shopping.
Basically if you put together these "being a girl" qualities together you get a woman I do not want to hang out with. I suppose that's why I find being feminine during the day so distasteful.

Not working at the moment

Trip to Kyoto to meet with Jen and Eric

I resigned this July after working for this company for more than 9 years. I decided to give myself a break, a break that I have never had since leaving university. I spent August in 200 hour Yoga teacher training course which was part of the American Yoga Alliance certificate program. It was very interesting to become a student learning from 8 to 5 daily again after almost 20 years. After the teacher training course, I spend time in Taipei and started to teach yoga twice a week in the dance studio in our apartment complex. When in Hong Kong, I work in the food waste-recycling kitchen chopping veggie 3 hours a day, the organization collects roughly 4000 kg nearly-expired food ingredients and transform them into 6000 meals daily. Of course, going to 1 or 2 yoga classes when I am not working.

People say...

My family doesn't believe in taking any food supplements to replenish our body or shocking diet recipes for body energizing/weight-loss/rejuvenating. I am not sure whether this is because we are in general pretty healthy, or because we are just blindly confident about our own idea about how human should eat. Mum buys veggies from different stalls in wet market (Mum never shops in super market - the produce looks sad she said), changing the rice brand every 3 months - the idea is to take different toxin matters, she has created the new meaning of balanced diet. She thinks those remedies for high blood pressure, or weight-loss diet recipes were all nonsense. I had to agree with her in this. We both politely listen to Mum's friend talking about their new breakfast idea - blending the raw sweet potato's leaves with milk, and say to each other how crazy it is after getting home. Dad also doesn't believe in any supplements - although he is always given those as gifts. He accepts them with great smiles and forgets about them until I come to his apartment with a mission to clean up the long forgotten closet and throw them away years later.

Ideal Wife

A beer glass wife is the ideal wife |O|

Party for 11 hours

Mother's Day Present

 

Mum wanted to go to Singapore for ages because she wants to try the black paper crabs, which was shown in every foodie program when talking about SGP.

91st Birthday

Coo coo coo (5)

After the great Famine in the 60s, great culture revolution started, the family was broken up.  I am not yet too sure what happened to my grand mother and uncles - too much to ask.  But Dad was moved back to his home town.  He needed to be re-educated by the farmers, the political movement that no one can say no to.  He was given a small shed, which is next to his old house.  However, he is not allowed to go in, he said, even a look to the front door would get him a beat up treatment. 

The maid who used to work for Liao's family is still around.  She was the suppressed, the victim by definition, hence the communist power gave her relatively more freedom.  She came to Dad's shed, brought him a pot, a rice bowl, chopsticks, some grains and a puppy.  The minimum he needed to start to live in the simple shed.  Dad took the puppy everywhere, even when he worked in the field.  Puppy sat at the side waiting.  He took the puppy in the rice stalk basket carrying the puppy home, he let the dog sleep with him at night.  Dad had nothing left in his life.  His family and belongings were taken away from him, he was seen as a criminal no one wanted to be associated with.  They were keeping each other company. 

The low productivity in the field can hardly feed the villagers - the planned farming didn't help anyone.  The whole village was half starved while keeping to work on the field.  Dad managed to feed the puppy with some of his ration, both of them were struggling to survive. 

He came home one day seeing a bowl of meat stew.  No puppy.  His neighbor's wife came to his shed explained she cannot see him keeping feeding the puppy, Dad was seriously emaciated while keeping up with the heavy laboring work.  Both of them will die.  She said she knew Dad will not be able to do this so she had to. 

Development

I heard the story about the monks in monastery in mountains.  The young monk asked the old monk what sort of advancement you have achieved over the 40-year training.  The old monk said "I meditated, ate meals and swept the floor when I started.  40 years later, I meditate, eat meals and sweep the floor now".  "What have you achieved?"

Replied the old monk "40 years ago, when I meditated, I think about my meal; when I ate, I think about the work I need to do later; when I clean the floor, I think about meditation" "Now, when I meditate, I do meditate, when I eat, I just eat and when I clean the floor, I only clean the floor".

I remember this stupid story when seeing people looking at their phone when walking.  Not to be judgmental, why is it hard not to respond?  I still do not have a smartphone, perhaps that's why I do not understand.

Coo coo coo (4)

Dad settled in the shed by the farm, and the family is responsible for feeding the pigs, which belonged to the farming union.  The pigs were to be slaughtered at Chinese New Year.  When food was scarce, Dad's family could barely get enough to eat.  They discovered the barn shipped over to farm meant as pig food contained some starch, if washing the barns in water. 

The family managed to scraped enough carbohydrates to survive the famine.  But the pigs were not so well fed, they were so trim and lean that they jumped over the fence, so fit and powerful just like a greyhound, instead of a big fat beast that we normally think a pig looks like. 

Dad cannot stop giggling when telling me this story.   

Picture of Omi

 

Coo coo coo (3)

I am planning to keep a record of Dad's memories, his life stories, etc..  Some of those are sad, and depressing, some are the happy memories of his childhood or even adulthood.  All very good stories, worth keeping in the cyber space - they might be of interest of some.

Dad is the oldest son and he went to make a living in the Guangzhou - also because he went to high school there before China was liberated by communist.  He somehow got a "hukou", the right to stay in the city and worked for meager wages.  Because of his background, he cannot get a good job such as joining the communist party or become a government official.  Not to mentioned that he is under constant threat if there is any political movement.  I suppose that's the famine in early 60s, dad was 20 something and the villagers sent his 2 younger brothers (8 and 10 years old) on the train to Guangzhou.  When dad saw those 2, he cannot believe how emaciated they were.  In the rural country side, it seems like food is even harder to get.  He recalled that the youngest uncle not only very skinny but started to grow hair all over his body like monkey.  He took them in.  Later I suppose my aunt got married to a some guy who can provide food for her, and managed to arrange Dad to live in a barn next to a farm by the edge of city center.  Grand mum also came to live with Dad. 

The first paycheck Dad got, he could buy some meat but he decided to buy a air gun.  That is the start of this bird hunting years.  Before he went to the steel factory for work every morning, he went around the farm and forest to shoot some fowls, birds, anything that flew and his air gun can take down.  The catch were taken home for Grand mum to cook for the whole family.  

He constantly feels guilty about those birds he killed.  He talks about birds all the time when we were growing up, how pretty they are, how graceful they look, how the daddy/mummy bird feed their young ones. 

Flash boys, is it really flashy (3)?

There is also no concrete evidence such as any HFT company's financial report.  I suppose if the capital gain via stock trading is taxable, it should be available if you look hard enough.  I know the HFT programmer's market price, it is definitely a tiny percentage of Brad Katsuyama's 2 million annual salary RBC was paying him.  I only wish Lewis can explain why Brad should be compensated this way. 

Flash Boys, is it really flashy? (2)

The book is not very clear about how HFT makes money (or rig the market).  One of the theories is Front Running.  The HFT trader finds out that you are going to buy 1000 shares, he buys those and sells them back to you in a higher price to be profited by the margin.  However, there is no way to know the size of an order.  You see trade data published by exchanges, but not the intention of buying/selling stocks and their quantities. 

Market makers stick their neck out to tell the world the bid and ask prices for a certain quantity of a stock, not the average traders trading on exchanges.  How HFT profits from front running? 

In addition, market price is a moving thing.  The price feed you see is always the price of a trade that was done in the past, no one can accurately tells you a real-time price now.  Regulators are trying their best to come up with some solution such as the NMS,  national market system, order protection rule and the SIP- security information processor - which takes the price quotes submitted by exchanges and comes up with the closest to real-time price of a security.  This is not perfect but perhaps it is the best we can do to make sure an investor is not ripped off by his/her brokers. Because the bid/ask price should have the SIP prices as the benchmark. 

NMS is working to keep the market functioning reasonably smooth.  For example, after the flash crash in 2010, SEC and CFTC are contemplating the possibility of shutting down trading for 10 minutes to restore sanity.  This might effectively stop HFT trading algorithm to dump shares without considering the price when volatility is high. 

Flash Boys, is it really flashy? (1)

Michael Lewis is obviously a good writer, his book sells!  He was invited to give a talk on TV, his work has turned into a movie "The big short".  I bought the book "Flash Boys, Not so Fast" by Peter Kovac by accident, instead of Lewis' work "Flash Boy".  It was quite an eye opener.

Lewis is very good story teller, the whole book is condemning HFT traders (or firms), explaining they are rigging the market.  However, there is no concrete evidence or data proving his theory.  Every single trade done in any exchange should be logged.  I do not think it is impossible to find the data to show how much damage HFT has done.  But there is no such supporting document in his book.  All we know is he said "the profit HFT made over the years could be billions".  But from where?  How he reached this conclusion? 

People questioned regulators are part of the game hence they have more incentive to cover up with HFT.  I tend to disagree with this.  If regulators want to make money, they should ban HFT and keep the limited licenses for brokers and market makers (also insists all orders and matching should be done by human beings, human beings who they can have deal with, rather than servers).  That can maximize their profit greatly.  However, the result will be US stock markets lose liquidity and transparency.  No investments would want to get in, and slow down of the capital market movement.  The result no one wants to see.  Although I think regulators and governments are short sighted and greedy crooks, I suppose building a better, faster, more efficient market actually benefit themselves in a way that outweighs short-term gain.  For example, the recognition, sense of achievement and praise/envies from other capital market practitioners. 

In addition to the regulator side, I think exchanges, brokers and market makers are also have good incentive to comply.  It gets harder and harder to cheat since every single trade is logged and price information is so readily available for everyone.  There is no big profit to gain by cheating, why take the risk of losing your license. 

Coo coo coo (2)

Dad seems to like birds a lot, he has special communication with them that no one understands.  When my cousins visited Taipei years ago, Dad came up with a new game for the 2 young kids to play after we exhausted all possible activities.  He shut the windows and doors, let out the myna we have kept in a cage, gave each kid a water gun, the hunting began.  The bird was so frightened and flying around the living room at the same time shouting some language.  Kids were so entertained.

Dad once kept the pigeon in the shoe cupboard and when we got home, he is like, oh listen, I hear something.  And proudly opened the cupboard door to present the pigeon "why is the pigeon here!!" he exclaimed.  Of course, every one knew he put it the box.  I think that happened when I was in my uni age.  That's really beyond me why Dad thinks it is funny.  My mum went nuts, I think that's the last straw on the camel, Dad was kicked out.

Just recently years, Dad reduced the number of pigeons he keeps due to the neighbor pressure.  But the pigeon who has followed him for nearly 15 years is still around.  She recently become single and appears very bored.  She walks around Dad's living room, following Dad around the apartment.  Dad thinks she is depressed so decided to take her out for a ride.  He put her in a box with a screen, and drove around to make sure she has some exposure to the outside world.  Most of my friends smack their hands on the forehead when hearing this. 

We have another picture!

Where do you stand after getting into the lift (4)

I am normally the first one getting into the lift in yoga studio because everyone is staring at her/his smartphone.  I am the only one staring at the walls, wasting time proudly.  I walked straight into the lift and parked myself at the back, facing the door.  On the side note, I always wonder why people do not do that, I suppose that's the lift etiquette that every city dweller should know?  That gesture gives a group of strangers that are forced to share a tiny box some privacy and personal space.  Anyways, people just want to stare at their phones - scr*w people around me I do not care.

There was the girl stepped into the lift last, who was not holding a smart phone.  The door opened again a floor below, someone tried to get in.  Though there is space behind her, she stared ahead with blank face standing still.  The guy had to maneuver around her to get into the space behind her.  After the door closed, she started to check her eye make up on her reflection on the lift door.  Were I the guy trying to get into the lift, I shall push her in.

Yoga doesn't burn calories!!!

I just learned that yoga practice doesn't help burning more calories - I think it is time to go back to the running machine... 

Frederick Forsyth

Funny I am only starting to read about his work just now.  I started with the day of the Jackal, huh, very good, I started to work on his books, the dogs of war, the forth protocol, the Odessa file, the cobra, the Afghan, Icon, short stories, etc.  I will need to get hold of the rest of his work!

Finally we have some pictures

Scrutinizing

I was reading an article on the Taiwanese web based media - the last name of the person the story was about was printed incorrectly a number of times.  No one ever proof-read the articles before publishing it?  I was so upset that I wrote to the editor right away.

I used to subscribe a famous Taiwanese paper magazine to send to Dad and I can read their articles online.  I happened to be back and picked up an old issue, the magazine is missing pages from 127 to 136!!!  I was furious wanting to call their editor but that's the weekend.  This is so unacceptable.  I didn't renew my subscription. 

Why is it so difficult to be professional and proud of what you do?  Is it because you are short of hands or the company is going through the cost cutting phase?   Either way it is basically telling your readers that you cannot care less about them. 

Suffocating

I spent years living in Tokyo.  My apartment in Tokyo is about 2 kilometers away from Tokyo station.  It was a new and modern building.  I can easily bike to work in the finan cial center of Tokyo, which is Otemachi and Marunochi by Tokyo station.  Just a couple minute walk away is the imperial palace's huge garden.  Running around the imperial palace is still one of the best memories I have in Tokyo - it is exactly 5.92 km for one loop, I think I did it once within 25 minutes (wow, those good old times - I have been pondering to pick up jogging again after 3 years). 
 
I enjoyed my life in Tokyo.  My Japanese is good enough to order food and drink (my knowledge of alcohol and how to pronounce them in Japan amazed my Japanese teacher), can have simple conversations with skating mates.  Pretty much hassle free to live in this big city - dealing with the bank, sending out a post, sorting out tax issues in local ward office, taking taxi (it was fun to chat to taxi driver especially when I was half pissed) were not a big problem.  Tokyo is clean, orderly, safe and comfortable in every aspect.  Japanese had worked together to eliminate uncertainties for centuries.  There are written or unspoken rules which regulate everyone's behavior and life.  They have done it so well by Japanese-nizing immigrants, being xenophobia to foreigners (or things that are not Japanese origin), drawing a clear line between in and out. 

It is an efficient way to eliminate conflicts so people can focus their energy for something else, but the questions are, for what?  Better living?  More fancy gadgets?  What's the purpose of this society and where it is heading?  I wouldn't say Tokyo has achieved the perfect balance, it has problems on its own.  But the staleness and conservative mindset have suffocated any sparks that could possibly lead to changes.  Take the woman status issue as an example, why the women are still hard-done by in today's Japanese society?  Everyone sees it but no one seems to be able to do anything about it.  

Foreigners will have a good life in Tokyo because you are never being scrutinized as a Japanese,  hence, less pressure.  And at the same time, you get to enjoy the convenience of the super city.  Nevertheless, you are never considered to be in, or be part of the community.  I guess the answer to that anxiety (some probably would not agree) is to have more drinks in the foreigner wonderland Roponggi. 

Coo coo coo (1)

Last winter there were a couple of doves (very similar to pigeons but smaller) flew to my tiny balcony and I started to grow affection to these little creatures.  I put out some bird feed that Dad insisted I took back to Hong Kong to treat my little friends on the railing but they were too cautious to take any.  As the results, they had grown into a 3 feet tall sorghum plant which I harvested last December.  I was always excited to see them stopping by, walking along the railing.  Jon always comments "like father like daughter". 

My dad has a pigeon friend who has been hanging around with Dad for more than 15 years.  Some more pigeon stories to come...

Where do you want to stand when getting into the lift (3)

The restaurant staff reached over to collect our plates while we are still chatting to each other and eating our food.  Old grand ma cut in front of us in the taxi queue (being a Brit - Jon firmly stopped her from getting the taxi), people blocking the escalator (although I am not convinced sometimes it is not a bad thing to stand in both side of the escalator).  In some local shops - especially those shops around your neighborhood, it is considered very weird if you are acting too politely.  Welcome to Hong Kong!

Although I do not think people are obnoxious or rude, they are just thinking about what's the most convenient way to get what I want or get to where I want to go.  

Where do you stand after getting into the lift (2)

Chatting to friends who also relocated to Hong Kong a few years back, they have also discovered the mindlessly selfish act in many areas in Hong Kong. 

Door game - you walk toward the door and the person in front of you cannot be bothered to hold the door for you.  Most of them will sneak in quickly before the door shuts.  I think this is because people do not want to touch the door handle, rather than being nasty to people behind you.

Lift door game - your neighbor stares at his/her iPhone and press the "close" button to shut the door while you run towards the closing door.  I think Hong Kong people just do not want to show any affection to their neighbor, that's understandable.

Subway space game - people stuck at the door area refusing to move in.  Ok, I have no explanation for this - I pushed my way through to show them the consequence not to move in and create space for others.

Toilet Revolulation in China

I have double posted comments about toilet - it is so obvious this thing really bothers me.  Statistically speaking (number of nasty bacteria per unit area), the most dirty area in any household, regardless the culture or level of modernization, is the washing clothes.  Toilet seat is relatively clean!  So girls, please wipe clean the public toilet seat and sit down to pee.