December 19, 2008, 3:15pm

I'm done! I'm done! I'm done!!!

December 17, 2008, 8:28am

I have M! What a mess though. This is really not the right timing. Got too much to do before I fly. :D

December 15, 2008, 12:23am

Got out from the lab at 12am... Doing grading. Got to be done tomorrow...

You got to experience it to know what bitterly cold means. It's -16F...

December 9, 2008, 4:59pm

I'm pretty sure this will be one goal for 2009.

Graduate in fall 2009!

What I will need to do then:

• The last course: Global Health
• Writing competency project
• Empirical competency project
• Dissertation

Travel plans
Got a list of places: Yellowstone, Mesa Verde National Park, Atlanta (GSA), and Toronto (APA)

Fun things
Woodwork course

December 9, 2008, 12:42pm

Time for yearly evaluation again.

From 2008:
1. Driving is OK. Got to keep up with it.

So far so good.
2. Want to try yoga. Will look at the rec center schedule and see if I can join some classes.

Well, tried once and my back hurt for a week. Don't think I'll try in the soon future.

3. Well, I'll have four courses next spring. If I can get them all passed, that will be great. But I'll still aim for As.

Yap. Did four courses and got four As. Plus a scholarship and a GSA award. :)

4. Got to get two manuscripts out!

None. Got one badly rejected.

5. Will teach a class in fall, 2008.

Almost done! Keep up with the paper grading!!!

6. Will keep up with exercises. Hopefully yoga will help too.

Skipped the exercises since September. My left ankle hurt too bad. Will need to see the PT when I'm back from Scotland.

7. Make soup.

As usual.

8. Let's see what comes next. No nightmare. Good sleep.

No nightmare for a long long time!

9. Figure out what a family means to me.

Well, not sure yet.

10. Work hard!

Sure!

11. Travel: Scotland and Maryland.

Went to Maryland/DC. Went to my dream place, the Library of Congress!!! Will be in Scotland in less than two weeks! Went to South Dakota, Rhode Island, and Boston in the summer. :D

12. Dissertation proposal by the end of summer 2008.

Oh well, should be done by next February.

Will think about what I should aim at for 2009 in Scotland. :)

November 29, 2008, 5:19pm

• Back from my Maryland and DC trip. Got an award for the poster I presented in the conference. :)
• I've finally visited my dream place. The Library of Congress!
• Moved to my new apartment two weeks ago but I'm still in the organizing and cleaning phase.
• Three more weeks and I will be in Scotland!

November 10, 2008, 6:44pm

I saw a deer in campus last night. I was driving and it was dark. But I did see the horns...

Got to see this as a sign of good luck for the rest of this semester.

September 21, 2008 12:42pm

I'm working in the lab 7 days a week again this semester. I'm burning out. Got to figure out a way to cope better...

September 14, 2008, 12:11pm

Exhausted.

***

M!

September 8, 2008, 5:01pm

Had a nightmare last night. Was diagnosed of having OCD... Woke up in the middle debating with the therapist. I know what the DSM criteria are for the diagnosis and I don't fit into OCD. I was trying to make her to show me how she arrived at this diagnosis. :D

Must be too stressed out with work...

September 6, 2008, 6:40pm

My Indian friend found me in the web! Met her in London. Long time.

Met a professor and her mom yesterday in a seminar. They're Indians. Kind of having connections with Indians again. :)

August, 25, 2008, 8:35pm

My goodness. I'm so tired. Was already in the lab at 7:15am. Was teaching at 9am, then work on I just don't know what until 5:30pm.

This is only the first day of the year. What's going to happen?

***

My colleague just had a 9-pound boy. He's such a giant at birth. :)

August 23, 2008, 6:06pm

Yay! I did it. I got my hunter education card. I don't think I will go hunt anyways. But it's good to learn something different.

August 19, 2008, 5:02pm

Got a chance to learn safe handling of firearms. Well, that is, to learn about where to point, what's the safety, how to open the action etc. But then I got back pain all day. Some of the rifles and shotguns are far too heavy for me to handle!

August 16, 2008, 9:20pm

I really want to defend my dissertation proposal by the end of September. Or I don't see when I can finish it when the teaching load sinks in. Let see what my advisor has to say about my first draft.

Got to work on the statistics part.

August 13, 2008, 2:22am

Was out to see shooting stars again. The moon's brighter so it's harder to see the shooting stars even though my friend and I drove further east tonight. The moon also didn't go down even it's already 2am.

Well, anyways, I saw about 10 shooting stars. I also saw my shadow under the moon. This is the third time I ever see my shadow under the moon. The first time was in Egypt by the Nile. The second time was up in the Rockies ice-fishing. And this time. :)

I never know how it's like seeing the Leonids in Hong Kong in 2001. So many friends told me they saw a lot of shooting stars. But I was in London and I saw nothing. Well, I don't think I would go out in the snow to see the Leonids in Colorado. It's just too cold in November.

August 12, 2008, 6:41pm

It was already 1998 when I tried to see the Leonid meteor shower. It sounded like a lot of people saw the shooting stars that year but I couldn't see a thing walking around in the brightly-lit CUHK campus.

I saw about 20 shooting stars last night. Not a lot as I was still in the city limit by the road with cars running around. Yet, I am happy.

I like places with a wide sky. :)

August 12, 2008, 12:29pm

I saw shooting stars last night!!!

August 4, 2008, 2:13am

Finally, I've made 12 salted eggs!

August 2, 2008, 10:11pm

Still in the lab... unbelievable...

August 2, 2008, 3:40pm

Finished Porco Rosso last night. Didn't understand it when I was a kid. Watched it again after don't know how many years. Fantastic animation.

***

Love Andrew Johnston.

July 27, 2008, 11:17pm

Still feeling threatened knowing about the guy shot dead in the campus. What is the intensity level of hatred would lead to the motivation of killing the other person? What is the the level of fear like, to feel like it's necessary to protect oneself by killing the other person?

July 26, 2008, 11:01pm

Creepy. They found a dead man, shot in the chest, in the campus. Was trying to work in the lab but didn't feel safe at all.

***

Just finished Initial D stage 4. :) Want to watch Monster or Gremlins next.

July 25, 2008, 12:11pm

A psych student was struck dead by lightning yesterday. Another was in critical condition. He probably defended his dissertation last Tuesday. Got his Ph.D. for two days and died.

So, having heat stroke last Saturday was nothing afterall.

July 18, 2008, 1:04am

Took me a long time to learn how to cut short the video. :)

July 17, 2008, 11:49pm

Saw the bright full moon out there after dinner. I waited for an hour and finally the cloud's gone.

This view resembles a picture I colored when I was seeing the stupid counselor in Hong Kong. I drew a semi-full moon and a star beside it. She took my picture as evidence that I have too high an expectation for myself that I am picking stars. She also said I have a gloomy view, well, look at the dark background.

I think I said, what's wrong about picking stars? I want to pick stars. There're so many people trying to pick stars.

I remember she said something like, those people pick stars. You don't have to.

I probably said, I want to pick stars. Why am I not the one trying?

She's just picking things to support her opinions of me. I had other pictures of bright colors. Well, yes, there're times you can see the moon in the morning. But what's the problem to draw a prototypical moon with a dark background? I still remember I colored the sky with a dark violet pencil. I didn't even use black.

***

但願人長久, 千里共嬋娟.

***

For that stupid counselor, I wish she'll see a bright full moon in a bright night sky, as bright as the sky at noon.

July 16, 2008, 11:36pm

Finally fixed my computer and got the time to upload this picture. They're from Japan!!! Thanks, Itsumi. 8)

***Also got my Yamaha Dragster Classic 11 finished. I want to remind myself the dissertation is like making each piece one by one and putting them together.

July 2, 2008, 10:15am

The morning before I left Boston, I saw whales, more than 10 of them. I feel like I have seen miracles of the world.

***

I visited a friend's friend's lab. He works in MIT. Students work in the lab Saturday at 9pm and the norm is that they have sleeping bags and pillows in the lab.

I think this is the indicator of the passion for their work and science. I'm thinking of getting a set of linens to use in my lab too. :)

June 26, 2008, 9:41pm

This is the most impressive about the cafeteria here. I can get icecream from the machine myself! I keep doing this almost every meal. :D

***

This is a question for the last lecture. What are we doing? What are we trying to do? Are

we getting there? What do we want to do? What do we want to achieve?

***

I finished the book in the bookstore! No need to pay for it. :D

June 25, 2008, 10:29pm

I skipped the student presentations this afternoon. Was trying to finish a bestseller in the bookstore, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.

June 23, 2008, 10:07pm

Providence has 100% humidity! My goodness. I think I'm used to dry Colorado. It's pretty uncomfortable even though it's only 70F/21C.

June 22, 2008, 12:45am

I was having a break between lectures. Was reading Karl Popper, "The lesson of this century: With two talks on freedom and the democratic state."

Brown is incredibly beautiful. The narrow windows remind me of U. Lib at CUHK. But the view out there is like HKU, yet infinite times more beautiful.

June 21, 2008, 1:30am

This is the State House in Providence, Rhode Island. I really like it here. It's beautiful. :)

Never know what's going on with NBA. Just happen that I was there for the parade. Something like Celtic won the first time in 30 years?

June 17, 2008, 10:51am

My flight's cancelled because of bad weather. Oh, how bad can it be to cancel a flight?

To compensate, I had karaoke with a friend until 3am. :D

Looking at Leslie Cheung, Jacky Cheung, Jimmy Lin... in the 80s and 90s... I'm now older than them in the MTV. Time flies, unnoticeably.

June 8, 2008, 1:58am

Got some pictures from a friend. It was her graduation party three weeks ago. She's already back in Japan.

My Japanese student also graduated and she's now in Florida.

It just doesn't seem real. Time flies so fast. This reminds me when Ann and Bert showed me pictures of them in their 60s. They said, it's like a flash ago. It's more than 20 years ago but it doesn't seem like long ago to them.

I'm getting there. For a while I was expecting that Saturday for the party after my exams. Then, I was working in the morning and I drove there with my Japanese student. I had a great time sitting outdoor. I was having a drink under the bright sun, talking with my friends that Saturday...

It was that Saturday, three weeks ago. Really? Is life that short?

I'll miss this beautiful world when I die. It's a lot of dandelion seeds on the sideway these days. All of them have the potential to have a life. All of them are trying to find a place to root. By chance, some of them live. Most don't. I feel lucky to be living.

It's probably an advantage for survival to love the nature and to love life. Yet, all lives head to death, somehow, someday. It's such a dilemma.

***

大江東去, 浪淘盡, 千古風流人物.

***

I have M!

June 4, 2008, 12:00am

http://www.tiananmenmother.org/

A hyprocrite deceives no one but himself/herself.

June 3, 2008, 11:50pm

19 years ago... If human right is perceived as valuable, this is probably a cohort effect.

***

The sprays and medicine work and my allergy is getting better. Only if I knew about such good things, I wouldn't have those years of sleepless nights.

May 26, 2008, 10:00pm

Got a tornado warning last Thursday. Got to hide in the lecture room in the middle of the building. Sort of scary but everything is fine.

***

Left for South Dakota Friday morning. Seeing wild buffalo was a big hightlight in the trip.

Mt. Rushmore would be another big highlight. But it's so much like the grandiosity of human achievement in modernity.

Haven't seen sunset for quite a while already. The sun disappears behind the forest. Couldn't actually see the sun set in the horizon up in the mountain.


It's difficult to imagine once the mountains were the bottom of the ocean. Got to go back to see the caves and dinasour fossils. Haven't got the chance to see these over the weekend.

Life is great, afterall.

May 22, 2008, 1:52pm

Got a tornado warning and everyone had to be in the middle room of the building.

Well, the tornado watch and thunderstorm warning continue. Let's see what's going to happen.

May 21, 2008 3:25pm

Revisiting this after my finals...



What is growing up exactly? Drop the violin and guitar after CUHK? Get the money to go shopping, dress fancy, get married, and have kids?

Is this age norm? Or Helson's social clock project? Do we allow alternatives? What else do we have in our lives? Or are these things the only things we want in life?

May 21, 2008, 12:54am

If these kids can go to school in such a condition, I cannot see how doing a PhD is difficult.

If the teacher can teach in such a classroom, I cannot see how I can do better than her.

May 19, 2008, 10:25pm

Found a dead mouse behind a chair in the living room... Gross.

My Thai friend brought a guy assistant to take care of it. Got enough excitement for tonight.

I will never like Mickey Mouse in my life. I'm pretty sure.

May 3, 2008, 5:41pm

Unreported World: Chinas Olympic Lie

May 2, 2008, 12:13am

19 years ago, 1 million Hong Kong people wore black to support the student demonstration in Beijing.

Today, they are encouraged to wear red to support the Olympic. Few are allowed to protest against the government.

What has changed? The human right situation in China doesn't seem to have changed in the positive direction.

***

為自由, 不畏強權.

豪情哪裡去了?

May 1, 2008, 12:25am

Will go to the Brown University for a one-week workshop. I'm coming, Rhode Island!!!

***

Inundated with news about the Olympic flame, no one in the Hong Kong media seems to bother about the people related to the free Tibet event, who are sentenced to life imprisonment.

April 27, 2008, 11:34pm

Saw this by accident in a blog...



Somehow I got really touched to see CUHK. Those three years marked the turning point in my life. So many nights I ran from the top of the hill and took the last train around 12:30am.

KCR has been part of my life since then. Going to CUHK, HKIEd, PolyU, and CityU in the weekends to escape from my crazy family. I also took the train to CityU for my GRE psychology exam. I took the ride and somehow I landed here.

Where will I go next?

April 26, 2008, 6:42pm

Got to plan for the summer.

1. Dissertation proposal
2. Books to read:
2a.


2b.


2c.


2d.


2e.


2f.

April 23, 2008, 8:25pm

This is the Aesop's fable that I really like.

The crab and his mother

An old crab said to her son, "Why do you walk sideways like that, my son? You ought to walk straight." The young crab replied, "Show me how, dear mother, and I'll follow your example." The old crab tried, but tried in vain, and then saw how foolish she had been to find fault with her child.

Example is better than precept.

April 17, 2008, 8:29pm

I have M!!!

April 13, 2008, 1:13pm

Just saw a job ad in Inverness, Scotland. I really want this job... Rural health of older adults in Europe...

Oh, Loch Ness...

April 7, 2008, 9:23am

Nightmare again. Long time. As always, it's an argument with mom full of tension. No idea what that's about. But I don't wake up with intense fear anymore.

April 2, 2008, 10:09pm

I got a mouse in my roommate's bedroom. She was screaming like crazy and I was thinking, what was that? Did you see a ghost? Then she ran out and said it's a mouse.

Life is hilarious. It's her thesis defense tomorrow. It's really stressful. Poor girl.

The drama hasn't ended yet. I called the management people and a guy came trying to catch the mouse. He failed and the mouse is hiding in the dresser or the wardrobe or the kitchen or just somewhere... No idea.

Got to be really prepared for my defense. Just anything can happen. No matter how ridiculous.

March 29, 2008, 11:58pm

Another Japanese friend left. She has her work spirit implanted in me.

March 24, 2008, 8:38pm

I have M. Hurray!!! :DDD

***

Was talking with my roommate about killer whales. Told her about the shock that I found out in a documentary that killer whales really kill. She was shocked about Hoi Wai, the killer whale in Ocean Park who did performance.

It took me quite some time to find Hoi Wai's videos in the internet. Got to prove to her I am not having hallucinations about a friendly killer whale.

Hoi Wai's tricks looked so familiar... It's another shock she died more than 10 years already. Really? 10 years? I still remember the "news" that she's grieving about her lost baby.

March 18, 2008

Just to upload some pics taken right before my head injury...

This is a tough little tree -- the symbol of the circle of life.

***

Calibee~~~ from Leanne. :)

I got a scholarship!!!

March 2, 2008, 10:15am

Still having dizziness and nausea after a week... Brain injury is scary. Feels like I am a different person. Loss of concentration.

My neck hurts pretty bad. Will work hard on the proper posture.

February 23, 2008, 10:42pm

I cannot believe I'm still working in the lab...

February 22, 2008, 9:06pm



This makes me to enjoy driving. :)

February 20, 2008, 9:12pm

It's total lunar eclipse! It's great!!!

February 16, 2008, 8:29pm

Went ice fishing in Colorado State Park. Got three rainbow trout. My first three fish in my life and my first time ever fishing. :D

I miss the stary night. It was half-moon. It's Orion and Big Dipper and others in the sky. I saw Orion in London and Florida, and Big Dipper in Egypt. It feels great to see them again.

It's white everywhere under the moon because of the snow. It's my second time to see my shadow under the moon. The first time was in Egypt by Nile.

It was so cold... I got the first fish at night. My fingers and toes hurt. Got to go back to the cabin.

Then got two more fish in the morning. It got windy after lunch. The snow drifted on the path that the group made to get to the middle of the lake. I couldn't see the holes and fell so many times to get back to the land. My foot also got stuck in the snow.

***

Gave one fish to my roommate. Pan-fried two right away when I got back to my apartment. And shared the fresh fish with Andrea. :)

February 10, 2008, 6:56pm

I sneezed when I was washing my face... So, I banged my head against the faucet. Now I got a bump on my forehead.

***

Perhaps there're things in life that I cannot get through it by banging it against my head. Got to find other strategies.

February 3, 2008, 4:15pm

OK. This is how I'm going to cope with this ridiculous semester.

I feel like I'm a slave working in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Or I'm those tortured victims in the Cultural Revolution.

Just don't trust those bullshit that education is student-centered or whatever. This program sucks.

February 2, 2008, 10:37pm

Was grinding the white radish to make the white radish cake... Cut my thumb right away.

Got to try again. The white radish cake is too stuffy. Too much flour. :(

January 28, 2008, 10:10pm

My roommate forgot to flush the toilet. So, I put one sign on the bathroom door and another sign right outside the bathroom door.

The first sign says, "Please think about the person after you. Thank you for your thought."

The second sign says, "Think twice."

Well, what if someone has no brain?

January 24, 2008, 12:25am

So, I'll have at least 300 pages to read every week. Already got three assignments due next week.

Frustrating.

January 12, 2008, 12:08am

Tried a yoga class this afternoon because my physical therapist told me to. I couldn't do much. It hurt everywhere. Need to talk to my physical therapist whether I should continue.

***

Almost got a heart attack about my data analyses. Was very worried it's a serious problem. It looks like it's not... Not quite sure.

Didn't achieve much in the break. Things didn't go smooth. Very frustrating.