I think I have caught the China travel bug.

I've been from a 11-day trip to the remote parts of Sichuan and Yunnan for more than a week, and yet I am still unable to focus on work. My mind is flooded with images of mountains that soar into a perfectly blue sky, valleys that hold in an exuberance of greenery and never-ending rivers, people who are genuinely content with their life and happy to meet strangers. It was a way of living that relies entirely on mother nature.



I'll be posting pictures and thoughts to Flickr over the coming weeks.

It was a life changing experience. Human beings are nothing in the face of nature. Our lives and thoughts and believes and emotions are fleeting moments in human history. Everything that may affect a man's sense of self-importance - 是非、成敗 - is trivial. The sole goal of life is to be happy and to make people around you happy.

Where shall I go next?

一个挺旧的帖子，我今天才看到。

国家要推广普通话，浙江宁波某县县委书记、县长积极响应国家号召，决定在全县农村工作会议上用普通话发表讲话，带个好头。

县委书记：“兔子们，虾米们，猪尾巴！不要酱瓜啦，咸菜太贵啦！”
（翻译：同志们，乡民们，注意啦！不要讲话了，现在开会了！）

县委书记讲完后，主持人说：“咸菜请香肠酱瓜！”
（翻译：现在请县长讲话！）

县长说：“兔子们，今天的饭狗吃了，大家都是大王八！”
（翻译：同志们，今天的饭够吃了，大家都使大碗吧！）

“不要酱瓜啦，我捡个狗屎给你们舔舔·····”
（翻译：不要讲话了，我讲个故事给你们听听······）

“这个狗屎有人可能吃到。吃不到的也不要着急。”
（翻译：这个故事有人可能知道。知不到的也不要着急。）

“我现在就给你们拉——”

How can they say that??? Are they human beings??? I do not understand what kind of political calculus would encourage this kind of utterance. Everyday vocabulary like "outrageous", "moronic", and "disturbing" cannot being to describe the Japanese official stance, which is maddeningly senseless, insulting and simply evil.

日內閣指沒證據強逼慰安婦

日本共同社報道，日本政府內閣經評估後，認為沒有證據顯示二戰時皇軍或政府逼婦女當慰安婦。

報道指，政府內閣回應反對派國會議員質詢，現政府就1993年時任內閣官房長官河野洋平為慰安婦問題道歉的看法時，提交了一份評估文件，指沒有任何紀錄顯示政府或軍方有強逼婦女當慰安婦。

In lieu of my weekly gym session, I worked out for half an hour following the New York City Ballet Workout this morning. (This is not the first time I do so.) The weight of various parts of my body started making themselves known half way in to the first warm-up exercise, and I could barely breathe at the end of the half hour.

It is one of those eternal mysteries in life that, during adolescence, I managed to get fat while doing 5 hours of ballet a week. Mind you, those sessions weren't just for fun. They were under the strict tutelage of a strict ballet mistress. Aaah, the good ol' days.

Watch this now, before the various stripes of hypocrites rob us of this ingenious music video.

前天看了爾冬陞的《門徒》。這是一套認真的片，值得入場去看。

故事很簡單，沒有多餘的愛情綫或twists，基本上都在預料之内。可是爾冬陞的長處就在於用情景、性格來説故事。新不了情、忘不了、旺角黑夜亦如是。故事由每個人，各有不同的性格，在同一個環境下的想法、選擇和行動而帶動。這樣的格局，其實與你我的日常生活沒有多大的分別，也即是你我差一點就是戲内的主角。我覺得，這是他的電影扣人心弦的主要原因。

你可以批評選角的問題（古天樂、張靜初這樣的俊男美女，哪有一丁點像道友呢？），但不可以因爲這些無可避免的商業元素而抹殺了他的認真。以毒品作爲題材的影片中外皆有，但資料搜集做得這麽詳細的恐怕不多。有這些資料作爲back up，導演帶我們進入毒品的這個探險就順暢得多。

吸毒有什麽感覺？毒品從哪裏來？我們應怎樣對待上了癮的人？戒毒真是這麽難嗎？究竟,爲什麽人要吸毒？

說到底，這就是一個關於人的故事，毒品只是導演今次拈手而來而又運用的出神入化的工具。

很期待爾大導的下一件作品...

p.s. 今天看到報紙娛樂版，驚詫新年檔期的港產片票房慘淡，除《門徒》外，《雙子神偷》、《心想事成》都非常不賣座。 - 天呀，請別繼續把全港六百萬市民都當作是白痴了。求求其其、馬馬虎虎的電影，省掉吧！

I was greeted by this headline from Yahoo! in the first morning back to work. Not a bad start to the new year!



恭喜發財！新年快樂！ :)

Leveraged Buyouts

You have two cows. You come home from the fields one day to find Henry Kravis chatting to your spouse at the dining-room table. Two days later, you have no spouse, no farm, and no table. Two guys the size of sumo wrestlers have saddled up the cows and are riding them around the farmyard.

Hedge Funds

You have two cows. A guy in an open-necked shirt drives up in his Bentley and offers to take care of them for you in return for a year's supply of steak and 50 percent of their milk. They won't be allowed to leave his compound for two years.

Six months later, you have half a cow, producing sour milk. ``You have to be willing to lose rump today to get rib-eye tomorrow,'' the hedge-fund guy mumbles through a mouthful of sirloin and champagne.

Commodities

You have lots of stocks and bonds, but no cows. Are you crazy? Cows are the hot new market. Here, buy this exchange- traded cow futures contract. It can't lose. It gained 40 percent in the past six months.

Carbon-Emissions Trading

You have two cows. They produce 1.2 tons of methane gas per day. After a hefty donation to the re-election campaign of your local representative, the government gives you enough emission permits for six cows. You sell three permits, buy another cow, and apply for a European Commission grant to build a methane-gas power station.

ROME, Italy (AP) -- It could be humanity's oldest story of doomed love.

Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period locked in a tender embrace and buried outside Mantua. The site is just 25 miles south of Verona, the romantic city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of "Romeo and Juliet."

Buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric pair are believed to have been a man and a woman and are thought to have died young, as their teeth were found intact, said Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig.

Although the Mantua pair strike a rare and touching pose, archaeologists have found prehistoric burials in which the dead hold hands or have other contact, said Luca Bondioli, an anthropologist at Rome's National Prehistoric and Ethnographic Museum.

The find has "more of an emotional than a scientific value." But it does highlight how the relationship people have with each other and with death has not changed much from the period in which humanity first settled in villages, learning to farm the land and tame animals, he said.