October 18, 2005, 6:15pm

I steamed a shark fillet and it tastes so bad. When I decided to buy it and try, I was thinking, how come when the environmental groups (well, I only read about them in websites and chain emails) protest against Chinese people eating shark fins, yet they can have the shark fillets in the grocery stores? I don't like the fin soup very much but the fillet is simply awful.

Well, perhaps it's because they only have fillets and it tastes so bad, that they can't think of how the Chinese dish can taste a lot better. The sharks simply have no reason to be killed if all I can think of it's to kill them for fillets. The last thing to do is to take the trouble to transport the fillets and get them a price tag in the grocery stores.

I still have another piece in the fridge. Next time when I decide to try something new, I should only buy one and only one. Well, if any of you knows how to make shark fillets to taste good, please help.

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Yesterday morning when I was waiting for the GatorLift after my 8:30am class in the New Engineering Buliding entrance, two men were painting the disabled signs and lines on the ground to make more parking places for people with disabilities.

I felt so much appreciation to them. They swept the leaves away and very carefully painted the blue lines and the blue signs. As far as I have observed, the parking places for people with disabilities are always the nearest to the entrances. Makes sense.

This reminds me how ridiculous the Hong Kong universities are. I saw wheelchair slopes that don't seem to be wide enough for a wheelchair to get through. I remember one in particular, that the slope is in an L-shape. I really doubt if they have tried to measure the width of any wheelchair at all and if a wheelchair can actually turn the corner of 90 degrees. Perhaps it's only a bike in their minds.

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I was in a meeting with my advisor and other colleagues. Somehow he mentioned about rocket science and I said, China just successfully launched a rocket and the astronauts were back safetly after four days.

He said, it's 40 years behind.

True.

But I always have a strong faith in the story about how the tortoise wins the rabbit.