Indicative Characters

being a monkey's uncle

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 18:25:00 +0000

In the beginning of November, I became an uncle for the first time. For those who care for such statistics, my niece weighed 3.3 kg (7 lb, 5 oz) and measured 49 cm (19 1/4") at the time of her birth.

It's strange, this uncle business. You see, before the birth of my niece, my personal universe was an infant-free universe. My siblings are close in age to me, so there are no childhood memories of such paraphernalia as cribs or child safety seats. None of my close friends have any children. I've never dated any one who has had kids. So when, for instance, one of my former roommates would try to explain to me the benefits of hand-made wooden toys versus mass-produced plastic toys for two-year olds, I'd listen politely. But did I truly care? I'd tell myself, "It's not like you actually know any two-year olds. Since when are you ever going to go toy shopping?" When I'd hear new parents talking about things like establishing sleeping schedules for their newborn, it sounded as irrelevant to my life as, say, keeping spiders off a cot in Afghanistan.

Boy, do things change! I've since had a cousin deploy to Afghanistan. (The subject of arachnids never came up in our conversations.) And now, there's a mewling newborn in my life. It is a whole new universe for me. Who knew there is a right way and a wrong way to hold a newborn? Who knew there is a method to change a baby's diaper or to put on a "onesie"? (Even the word "onesie" is new to me.) For now at least, this bachelor is actually enjoying being an uncle. The only thing I'm afraid of? Choosing a Christmas gift for my new niece. If only I could remember the rest of my ex-roommate's advice about children's toys...

a speech from my spider hole

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 01:23:00 +0000

I recently found a website that linked my name to, of all people, Osama bin Laden! That's the sort of thing that gets a person's attention!

I should state that wasn't a comment on my quite ordinary political views. (Perhaps ironically, one of my readers actually set up a website opposed to "aggressive Islam".) No, the truth is quite simple. One of my old high school classmates set up a website to track everyone who graduated with him. So far, he's found about 75% of our graduating class. My name seems to be on the top of his list of those not yet found. While there have been a couple "sightings" of me listed on his website, he hasn't found any concrete evidence of my whereabouts. Hence, the comments about me being as hard to find as the infamous terrorist mastermind.

Have I been truly reclusive since my return from Hong Kong two years ago? That depends. If your only point of contact with me has been this blog, that I must seem like a hermit! Yes my postings have been rare indeed. Finding things to blog about in Hong Kong was almost effortless. Even mundane activities -- like riding a bus -- yielded multiple posts. Compare that to my life here. I have started a lot of posts about the high points of this year for me: my sister's recent wedding and the imminent arrival of my brother's first child. But those posts remain unfinished. There is little of interest for me to say that hasn't been said on either my brother's blog or my sister's wedding website. Sure, I've been to Ottawa, Toronto, and Chicago in the past year or so. But most of my readers have visited or lived in those places too. The mundane activities of my daily life nowadays -- driving in traffic, working in a cubicle -- have so far only inspired entries too negative to ever be posted here. So it's not my being reclusive, but simply the dearth of writing ideas that has made my presence on this blog scarce.

In real life, I've been anything but hard to find. I've seen over a half-dozen graduates from my old high school in the past year or so. Rarely a month goes by without somebody recognizing me at a store, a gas station, or a restaurant. I get plenty of visitors to my cubicle at work. And the amount of time I spend talking on the phone nowadays has to be measured in hours instead of minutes. So it's not like I'm spending all my days in a spider hole, cut off from civilization!

Does that mean I plan to email the webmaster who's looking for me to update him on my whereabouts? I'm not sure yet. I do have a vague curiosity to see how the people I grew up with have turned out. A lot of the people I grew up with must be curious to see how I turned out. If I do email him, it will be at a time convenient to me. Saddam Hussein, of course, had no choice in when to emerge from his spider hole.

we are prepared to experience

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 21:38:00 +0000

Here is the reading I finally found for my sister's wedding. Her wedding is at the end of the month, so not too much time for me to practice. I'll give you the English translation first. To get a sense on how the poem sounds when read aloud, I'll provide pronunciation in two Chinese 'dialects': Cantonese (which I'm using at the wedding) and Mandarin (the dialect of the original poet). I'll end with the original written Chinese.

Sonnet One ~ by Feng Zhi

We are prepared to experience
Unexpected miracles.
After long years a meteor
Or a gust of wind suddenly appears.

At such moments
As in our first embrace,
All past sorrows come before us
And congeal.

We praise those tiny insects
Who, after mating
Or warding off a threat,

Conclude their wondrous lives.
Our entire life is to endure
A gust of wind, the fall of a meteor.

Sonnet One in Cantonese Yale romanization:

Daih yāt sáu

Ngóh mùhn jéun beih jyu sàm sàm deih líhng sauh
Náh sè yi séung bāt dou dīk kèih jīk,
Joih maahn chèuhng dīk seui yuht léuih fāt yìhn yáuh
Waih sing dīk chēut yihn, kwòhng fùng ja héi:

Ngóh mùhn dīk sàng mihng joih je yāt seun gàan,
Fóng fāt joih daih yāt chi dīk yúng póuh léih
Gwo heui dīk bèi fùn fāt yìhn joih ngáahn chìhn
Yìhng git sìhng ngaht yìhn bāt duhng dīk yìhng tái.

Ngóh mùhn jaan juhng náh sè síu gwān chùhng,
Tà mùhn gìng gwo líuh yāt chi gàau gau
Waahk sih dái yuh líuh yāt chi ngàih hím,

Bihn git chūk tà mùhn méih miuh dīk yāt sang.
Ngóh mùhn jíng go dīk sàng mihng joih sìhng sauh
Kwòhng fùng ja héi, waih sing dīk sàng yihn.

Sonnet One in Mandarin pinyin:

Dì yī shŏu

Wŏ men zhŭi béi zhe shēn shēn de lĭng shòu
Nà xiē yi xiăng bù dào de qí jì,
Zài màn cháng de suì yuè lĭ hū rán yŏu
Huì xīng de chū xiàn, kuáng fēng zhà qĭ:

Wŏ men de shēng mìng zài zhè yī shun jiān,
Făng fú zài dì yī cì de yōng bào lĭ
Guò qu de bēi huān hū rán zài yăn qián
Níng jié chéng yì rán bù dòng de xíng tĭ.

Wŏ men zàn song nà xiē xiăo kūn chóng,
Tā men jìng guò le yī cì jiāo gòu
Hùo shì dĭ yù le yī cì wēi xiăn,

Biàn jié shù tā men mĕi miào de yī shēng.
Wŏ men zhĕng gé de shēng míng zài chéng shòu
Kuáng fēng zhà qĭ, huì xīng de shēng xiàn.

And the original, in Chinese characters:

第一首

我們準備著深深地領受
那些意想不到的奇蹟，
在漫長的歲月裏忽然有
慧星的出現，狂風乍起：

我們的生命在這一瞬間，
彷彿在第一次的擁抱裡
過去的悲歡忽然在眼前
凝結成屹然不動的形體。

我們讚頌那些小昆蟲，
它們經過了一次交媾
或是抵禦了一次危險，

便結束它們美妙的一生。
我們整個的生命在承受
狂風乍起，慧星的生現。

shielded in my armor

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 20:54:00 +0000

Last August, while looking at a guide to Hong Kong blogs, I found a new blog listed. The author of "The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn..." claimed to be "a nuckin futs Manc girl" who liked to post pics of "muscular men in period costume". This reminded me of one of my old HK classmates who hailed from Manchester. She idolized Aaron Kwok, the Cantopop singer whose concert costumes could come from Elton John's closet. So I decided to click and view the blog. Holy cow! After reading it, I would bet dollars to donuts that it was my old Mancunian classmate's blog. There were several mentions of her job teaching English to young Cantonese children. The blogroll prominently highlighted a Manchester newspaper, a dissident Manchester soccer team -- and an Aaron Kwok fansite that I know she started. Even the domain name of the blog, soup-dragon, could be a play on her pseudonym from class, Tong Siu-je. (The Cantonese word for soup is "tōng".) While I definitely enjoyed reading her blog, I was shocked at how easy it was to connect this supposedly anonymous blogger to a person I once shared fish balls in brown sauce with.

Why am I mentioning this? Because I believed that, unlike her, my blog was much more anonymous. You won't find any mention of my favorite sports teams, political party affiliation, or theological beliefs here. I refuse to pinpoint exactly where I'm living, except to say it's an area outside of Rochester that has plenty of open space. There's no links to web pages I've once posted, no blogroll filled with links to friends' blogs or Myspace pages. I've kept any career-related matters off this page as well. I thought it impossible for someone to find me via my blog. And yet, last Friday, someone was able to do so!

So now I'm starting to think about the idea of privacy, especially privacy and anonymity on the Internet. It's not that I'm doing anything illegal or shameful here! But who'd want someone you've chatted up on a dating site show up unannounced at your house? Would you really want a potential client or coworker to find your posts on a fan site stating how much you're rooting for Pam Beesley and Jim Halpert from The Office to get together? These are the sorts of scenarios I envisioned when I decided to keep my online persona separated -- like an island -- from my daily, offline life.

And yet being found out wasn't an egregious experience. Sure, my initial feeling was shock that someone was able to find this blog by Googling my real name. And my first reaction was to comb thru this blog and make it even better shielded from outsiders. But it's not like being "found out" was unpleasant in the slightest. The person who found me was a classmate from high school. We had a lot of enjoyable discussions in high school and during college breaks. It was wonderful to find out where he ended up and what's he's doing with his life. I'd like to think he also enjoyed reading about the strange path my life has taken in the past few years. If this blog can put a smile on the faces of people I've never thought would read this blog, then perhaps a little loss of anonymity isn't such a bad thing.

october (snow) showers

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 12:41:00 +0000

Last year on this blog, I complained about receiving our first snow fall in mid-November. When I looked outside around 6am this morning, what did I see? Snow! We didn't get the two feet of snow Buffalo got. Since the whole front yard was covered in snow, I know we got a least a couple inches' worth. Part of me knows I shouldn't be so shocked. The leaves have been changing colors early this year, which is usually a sign of an early winter. But still: it's the second week of October. Autumn started three weeks ago. According to the calendar, we shouldn't be seeing snow until it's turkey-shopping time. I know the weather is supposed to be unpredictable in this region of upstate New York, but this is a little much.

spoke too soon...

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 23:19:00 +0000

Considering my last posting: it turns out there's a low-tech solution to the "short people cannot drive this lawn mower" dilemma. By removing the springs under the lawn mower seat, we can trick the seat sensor to think someone is always sitting on the seat. Thus, I'm now able to use the lawn mower without a problem. Without seat springs, the ride isn't exactly comfortable. But if it eliminates the need for litigation, then I'm all for it!

of lawn tractors and legal liabilities

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 21:02:00 +0000

Warmer weather has, for millenia, been linked to the start of new life. My brother and his wife, for instance, bought a unruly cute little puppy-wuppy, yes they did. Scientists have found a link between warm (but not hot) weather and higher rates of human conception. But if you ask local landowners what warmer weather truly heralds, the answer will be unanimous: the need to mow your lawn. Theorize all you want about lawns being an uniquely American obsession, but theories won't stop the grass from growing.

When your lawn is only a few dozen square feet, maintenance is not such a big deal. Most of my previous landlords could, with a weed whacker, have the lawn cut in under ten minutes. My father's lawn, however, is over 150 thousand square feet (or almost four acres). For the past twenty years, he's used the same small riding mower to cut the lawn. Even with that riding mower, it takes at least six hours to mow the lawn once. So when the mower finally 'gave up the ghost' this past autumn, my father decided that we would start mowing this spring with a brand-new lawn tractor.

My father was fairly open-minded on what type of lawn tractor to buy. His chief criterion: "So long as it has a large mowing deck." Sure enough, he found a mower with a 54" deck for $2,600. Once he selected the model, he then asked me to check the 'Net for any reviews. The only review that I could find criticized his intended mower as being "difficult for small people to use". When we headed to the tractor store, and I sat on the seat, that criticism didn't seem like a big deal. Sure, I had to move the seat all the way forward and sit only on the front half of the seat in order to reach the pedals. But hey, this lawn tractor has lots of new-fangled conveniences, like a cupholder, two armrests, and a gas gauge. And those amenities are worth a slightly less comfortable ride, right?

A couple weeks after the purchase, I finally got the chance to try out the new lawn mower. I turned the key, pulled the lever to turn on the mowing blades, shifted to reverse gear, released the clutch... only for the engine to shut itself off. A second attempt, this time in forward gear, also saw the engine shut itself off. When the blades were off, the engine stayed on. And this doesn't happen when other people use the blades. So what's the problem?

The problem is this: some lawyer is worried that a driver somewhere may fall off their fancy lawn tractor and somehow land into the path of the lawn tractor. Then, instead of getting out of the way of said lawn tractor, this person will even more improbably lay there while the lawn tractor runs them over and then cuts them up. (As if the blades would be set to cut that close to the ground!) To mitigate any legal liabilities that would result from such an unlikely accident, my father's lawn tractor is designed to have its blades shut off whenever it senses a person is no longer sitting on the seat. Just one flaw: if a rider is not sitting all the way back on the seat, the seat sensor thinks no one is on the seat. Thus, the blades automatically shut off whenever I try to run the mower.

I've mentioned before that my height is not something I devote much thought to. Whenever there's a situation where my height is a negative factor, I simply look for a way to adapt to the circumstances and move on from there. But this lawn tractor issue has offended me more than usual. Perhaps it's because, in order to cover a remote legal liability, the designers of this lawn tractor have disinfranchised a whole class of people from using their product. Perhaps it's just strange that I'm too short to ride a lawn mower yet I'm tall enough to drive a car. Regardless, I can't help fantasizing about fighting back in that most American of ways: by suing the manufacturer!

what a gas

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 00:08:00 +0000

Since returning to the States, I have been driving what some people would call a "beater". It's a twenty-year old car which cost me $75. Due to its age, I've given the car the affectionate nickname of "The Flintmobile". While my car has had plenty of mechanical problems these past few months, it had never left me stranded in the middle of a journey. Until yesterday, that is, when it died at a stop sign a mile from the house. Judging from the puddle of gas under my car, I thought there was a problem with the car's gas line. I found out later that I only needed to replace a clip connecting the gas line to the fuel filter. (Phew.)

At one time, a breakdown would have sent me into a panic. Not anymore. Since I always carry a mobile phone with me when I'm driving, the first thing I did was call AAA. (Since I don't have AAA anymore, that phone call didn't do me any good.) After I called someone else to arrange a tow, I put my car into neutral so I could push it onto the shoulder. Within thirty seconds, two guys in a pickup truck pulled up and offered to push my car to the shoulder for me. After those guys pushed my car out of the road and left, no less than six other drivers stopped by to offer their help. All of these drivers were strangers, by the way.

Compare this to the dozen times my previous cars broke down when I lived around Boston. Not once did an ordinary stranger stop by to offer help. Sure, there were times when the police or a "Samaritan van" stopped to help. And plenty of friends and tow-truck drivers stepped up in inconvenient situations. But what disinterested strangers offered wouldn't exactly qualify as assistance. At one particularly memorable breakdown during morning rush hour, I had no less than six passing suburbanites roll down their windows to give me one-fingered salutes and, um, anatomically implausible advice. If I hadn't gotten my car off the road after those five minutes, I shudder to think what else might have happened to me.

After spending so much time living in large cities, some readers have asked me how I could then live in "a backwater" like rural upstate New York. Yes, it's been an adjustment. Yes, there is a lot I miss about life in Hong Kong and Boston. But yesterday's incident help to remind me that not all of the changes in my life have been negative ones.

she just can't be chained

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 22:07:00 +0000

Springtime, and what does a young man's fancy turn to? For me, the answer should be obvious. For my brother (and his wife), the start of spring spurred the purchase of a new puppy. Her name is Ruby [see pic on left]; whether she was named for the programming language or for the Rolling Stones song, I don't know. I do know she's a four-month old Black Lab-Chow Chow mix, and came from the animal shelter near their home. Since Ruby's owners are spending a few days in central Florida, I'm currently dogsitting and housesitting for them. Watching their dog has decidedly been a learning experience for me.

The type of dog I'm used to is more like my parents' dog, Sam [see pic on right]. Sam has been with my family for eight years now. He has adapted well to country living. He loves being able to, um, "mark" several acres worth of territory. His idea of a comfortable bed is the pile of dirt out in the yard. His idea of exercise is chasing whatever varmints land in our field. His idea of a chew toy is any large bone he can find. (His current favorite is a leg bone from a deer that must have died during the winter.) His idea of a bath... well, actually, he isn't a big fan of baths. But, except for his waking up - and barking - with the sunrise, I find taking care of Sam to be quite straight-forward.

The same cannot be said of Ruby. Taking care of Ruby is a lot like taking care of a newborn baby. (For certain young newly-wed couples, the puppy-baby parallel would be a selling point. For this particular bachelor, not so much.) If me (or her owners) aren't within her line of sight -- even if seperated by only a shower curtain -- she starts to whine incessantly. She's only slightly housetrained, so leaving her unwatched in the house would mean the possibility of (smelly) surprises. As she lives smack-dab in the suburbs, running in the fields and chasing animals would not work. Instead, I get to walk Ruby several times a day. But one more parallel between babies and puppies, I have learned, holds true: the number of young and attractive women who stop and chat with me when I am walking Ruby is much higher than when I walk alone. Who would've fancied that?!

city of the rat?

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 02:35:00 +0000

I was scanning The New York Times on Friday when I found an interesting article on regional accents. This article tried to explain how Boston, Manhattan, Rochester, and Pittsburgh -- all cities close to each other in the Northeast -- developed such divergent accents. I've had plenty of arguments with "massholes" trying to explain why my (slight) upstate accent sounds nothing like how "dem New Yawk City" people talk. This article lays out a more coherent argument than I could in explaining those differences. (Though I'm sceptical of the article's assertion that the Chicago accent and the Rochester accent are the same. Sure, this area has a stronger affinity to Chicago than to NYC, but no one around here talks like Bill Swerski's Super Fans!)

The funniest thing about the article was the claim that the local name for Rochester was "Ratchester". Ratchester?? No, no, no. There are, indeed, some strange pronunciations for local place names. But the usual pronunciation for Rochester is "Rahhchester". There are the more cynical nicknames, such as Rottenchester. But even the cynics don't use the appellation of Ratchester. At least not yet...

it's all fun and games

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 03:43:00 +0000

Weather wise, it's been a strange winter here in rural upstate New York: not enough snow for sledding or skiing, but not warm enough to actually enjoy the outdoors. So I decided to try a couple new activities this past month.

With this region's rapidly greying population, it's no wonder that a most popular pastime here is... bingo. There are four bingo halls within a short drive from here. Every day of the week a church around here has bingo. My mother decided to try to learn this game and asked me to go with her.

The last time I had played bingo was in grade school. Bingo for money is significantly more complicated. For starters, most players play fifteen or more squares in front of them for each round of bingo. The truly hardcore player will rent a special computer to track 50 squares per bingo round. Instead of one straight line to get "bingo", more complicated patterns are needed to attain "bingo". While I wouldn't go so far as to call the other bingo players "a surly, money-addicted bunch of old loons", let's just say my grade school's bingo game was a bit more laid-back. During each bingo game, I was way too busy scanning my paltry six squares (and checking my mother's cards as well) to socialize with other players. While there were some players who do bingo purely for recreation, the players who are there just for the money do put a damper on the atmosphere in the bingo hall.

While most winter activities like skiing or sledding do need snow, there are (thankfully) some cold-weather activities that don't require the white stuff. To wit: gathering maple syrup. Can you believe I had never, during all the time I lived in Boston, driven to Vermont during sugar season? So last weekend, I drove my family to a maple syrup farm where I could finally see how maple syrup was made. The bad part was that you really couldn't see how they made maple syrup. The good part was they had a large dining area where you could sample their syrup -- with as many buckwheat pancakes as you could eat! And really, nothing says "late winter celebration" like gorging yourself on pancakes and real maple syrup.

it's been one year

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 08:02:00 +0000

Can't believe a whole year has passed since I started this blog. My life seems very different today than it did a year ago. These changes are apparent when I compare how I spent the Gregorian and Lunar New Years "celebrations" last year with this year.

I was more jet-lagged than giddy when 2005 started. I spent that New Years sitting in a Japanese suburban hotel room with only an airline-prepared ham sandwich and Japanese TV shows for company. This New Years Eve found me having dinner with my siblings and their significant others. My sister's boyfriend (a part-time chef) prepared coconut-crusted hake with peanut sauce, garlic couscous, and a mixed greens salad. After dinner was time for watching the ball drop on ABC. It may be debatable whether the sight of Mariah Carey singing is more surreal than Japanese wrestling, but there's no debate on which New Years Eve was more enjoyable to me.

Comparing the past two Lunar New Years for me is even a bigger contrast. It's impossible not to notice the start of Chinese New Year in Hong Kong: the pre-holiday shopping, the family visits, and so on. That's not the case in rural upstate New York. There are perhaps 5,000 Chinese-Americans in the Rochester area: a large enough community to have a few grocery stores, but not large enough to support a full range of Chinese goods and services. Since there are no Cantonese butcher shops here, the grocery stores make Cantonese-style freshly-roasted duck available once a year at Chinese New Year. So for many Chinese here, eating roast duck becomes the highlight of the holiday.

The irony here is that, for traditionalists, it's bad luck to eat meat on Chinese New Years Day. That's because using sharp objects (um, knives) will cut off good fortune -- and since traditionalists prefer their food as fresh as possible, how do you kill your dinner without a knife? [My grandparents got around this last year by sending me to McDonalds for dinner. They figure nothing at McDonalds is 'properly' fresh, including the meat.] But this didn't matter to my mother. After going a whole year without roast duck, no 'bad luck' was standing between her and a duck for Chinese New Year dinner. And she wasn't alone: the queue for roast duck at the grocery store we went to was 90 minutes. It was only after we emerged with our roast ducks that my brother called. He had found a local Sino-Vietnamese restaurant that prepares and sells whole roast ducks (for takeaway!) throughout the year. Only after finding that my brother's duck tasted more 'authentic' than her duck did my mother then start muttering about bad luck!

the folks from just north of Whoville

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 04:13:00 +0000

Everybody seems to be working on an accelerated schedule this Christmas. Not only are Christmas lights going up early this year, but the anti-Christmas folks are also already appearing. Perhaps their caves north of Whoville are more uncomfortable than usual this year?

A most popular tactic this year is to advocate a new holiday to replace or supplement Christmas. There is Newtonmas, a secular celebration of science on December 25 featuring a decorated apple tree. There is Festivus, with its unadorned aluminum pole and other Seinfeld-derived traditions, observed on December 23. (I assumed this was a joke, but even Rochester is starting to see Festivus celebrations.) There is Jewsmas, an attempt to keep Hannukah pure of Christmas influence. There is Chrismukkah, an attempt to give Christmas a Hannukah influence. And there's that 'old' standby, Kwanzaa, celebrated the week after Christmas.

It is tempting to view these opponents of Christmas as part of some vast left-wing conspiracy, or at least political correctness gone amok. Several conservative and a few liberal pudits claim as much. Some 'atheist activists' openly profess that their attacks on Christmas are part of their war against Christianity. Other anti-Christmas folk are more disingenuous. The founder of Kwanzaa supports the religious aspect of Christmas, but is fighting the "European cultural accretions" of the day. The Chrismukkah site claims to support 'interfaith dialogue' yet list radical atheist and secularist sites among 'websites [they] admire'. Even the term people use for those who dislike Christmas -- "grinch" -- originally came from an editorial cartoonist for a Communist-funded left-wing tabloid! (While that cartoonist eventually became a writer of children's books, he still "really never cared for Christmas".)

But reading all of those sites at one sitting, I get a different impression than that of some conspiracy. Taken together, the common theme seems to be that of "feeling left out", not being allowed to join the majority of American society in this happiest season of the year. The tone of those sites mirrors that of Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes), an excluded boy who then starts his own 'secret club' so he himself can exclude others. Any American who stays in HK thru Chinese New Year festivities can surely relate to the exclusion the anti-Christmas folks feel. But creating a new holiday for Christmas makes as little sense as creating a new holiday for Chinese New Year.

A better solution than a new holiday is simply including others in your own Christmas fun -- and to join in others' holiday activities when invited. Twice in Boston, I lived with non-observant Jews. One year, when I had to work Christmas morning, my roommate invited me to (in his words) "celebrate the holiday Jew-style": eating Chinese food and watching movies. The next year me and my Gentile roommates made an agreement with a different Jewish roommate. If we agreed to light a menorah and spin the dreidel with her, she would then feel guilt-free enough to celebrate Christmas with us. I have never seen someone so joyful about Christmas as she was! Having only observed other people doing Christmas activities, she insisted we did every possible Christmas activity that (in her words) "doesn't invoke the name of that baby God": buying a fresh-cut tree, decorating the living room with tinsel and lights, sewing personalized stockings, singing Christmas songs, baking cookies, and buying gifts. She even offered to wrap my Christmas gifts! After seeing that kind of Christmas enthusiasm, I know these pseudo-Christmas rituals like the Festivus Feats of Strength or the Jewsmas Dreidel Drinking Game appear awfully skimpy by comparison. Why abolish Christmas in favor of (to paraphrase Seinfeld) "holidays about nothing"?

let there be lights

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 01:25:00 +0000

Rural life, it is said, differs from the pace of life in urban areas. The rhythms of rural life are supposed to based on the cycle of seasons: it is the calendar, not the wristwatch, that dictates the activities of rural folk. In this annual cycle, it appears that when the turkey leftovers are put in the fridge, out comes... the Christmas lights?

Christmas lights of course aren't new; they've been around since an electric company executive put them on his tree in 1882. Nor are Christmas lights limited to rural areas. There are a few places in Boston with lights. But living in small apartments limits the scale of Christmas light displays. Hong Kong, with its love affair of neon, has embraced the idea of Xmas lights for its commercial spaces. It was jarring to see even the skyscrapers owned by the Communist Chinese government proudly displaying a flashing Santa Claus in his sled. (Unlike New Years decorations, only a few Christian and expatriate households in HK decorate for Christmas.)

What's new for me is the passion that people around here have for Christmas lights. Several neighbors already have their lights up! Seeing this, my parents have decided they have to start setting up their Christmas lights. So after buying a balsam fir on Sunday, we started putting up lights on Monday. Instead of putting up all the lights at one time, we're installing individual installments each day: lighted candy canes on Monday, a plastic snowman yesterday, moving reindeer today. It's like an Advent calendar, but instead of receiving candy we're installing lights! I doubt my family's display will reach Tim "the Toolman" Taylor proportions, but the number of lights so far is at least in the hundreds. When (if?) we finish, I'll try to post some pics here.

three little words

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 13:37:00 +0000

Except for the initial few days, my adjustment from living in urban Hong Kong to rural upstate New York has been un-noteworthy. Sure, mass transit here is so unpopular that Rochester actually abandoned their subway system. Breathing clean air and seeing stars at night: that's something I enjoyed getting used to again. But in the past couple months, there has been nothing so extraordinary that warranted a blog entry. Most of my audience is American, so what is there for me to discuss that would be new to you?

The answer has just three little words: lake effect snow.

Sure, most of the Northeast gets snow... in the winter! Right now, it's mid-autumn! The leaves literally just changed color; due to the 'mild' weather, this year's leaves stayed green longer than in past years. (I've seen snow in Colorado and the Adirondacks in early November, but those places saw their leaves change color weeks before we did.) I guess there's no better reminder that indeed I am not in Hong Kong -- or in Boston -- any more than seeing snow before Thanksgiving. The forecast calls for up to six inches of lake effect snow, and I did drive through more than a dusting of snow tonight.

back in the USA

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 03:25:00 +0000

It's been a quiet few days for me back in the States. I'm just now starting to adjust back to an American lifestyle. Except for a brief Christmas visit, I have been away from America for one whole year. I thought that reading news websites kept me up-to-date on American life. But there still were a few surprises waiting for me.

One shock, of course, happened when I stopped at a gas station. Last August, the price of gas in Boston was below $1.60. Yesterday, the local gas station was selling gas for $2.64! What a difference a year makes...

TV shows have also changed over the past year. Imagine my surprise when I turned on the TV and saw -- of all things -- a ballroom dance contest! Geez, did FOX run out of fake millionaires or something?

One positive note: no commercials for the Atkins or South Beach diets. It appears the low-carb craze is no more. Time to break out the potato chips.

the longest day

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 16:04:00 +0000

Today's the day I'm returning to America! Woo hoo!

Today is going to be a loooong day. A friend of my uncle drives a taxi on the overnight shift. So right before he turns in his taxi for the night, he's agreed to drive me to the airport. My flight departs Hong Kong at 11:30 am HK time -- and lands at Newark at 3:00 pm. (I will change to a smaller plane and land in Rochester at 6:30 pm.) Due to time differences, that means my 16-hour flight occurs during one calendar day. So my day today should last 36 hours instead of the typical 24 hours.

shut yer mouths!

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 18:11:00 +0000

It's past two in the morning, and the people outside my windows are shouting slogans. No, I'm not stuck in some Cultural Revolution time-warp -- it's O-Camp time for the incoming freshmen.

Since moving to the dorms in June, I started to notice a weird phenomenon. Every once in a while, groups of friends would stand in a circle, chant a pair of four-word idioms, and applaud each other wildly. I also noticed that many Announcements in the Public Interest (the equivalent to Public Service Announcements in the US) would end with a group of people chanting a two-line catchphrase. The two-line proverb is very popular among the Chinese, it seems.

But with the start of Orientation Camp (O-Camp) this weekend, this chanting of slogans has become an obsession among the new students outside my windows. Even though my room is on the twelfth floor, the noise of their squawking carries up to my room all too well. Most of the slogans are in Chinese, so I'm not sure what they are shouting about. But at least once they had to shout in English. After hearing twenty people chant "My Bonnie lies over the ocean! My Bonnie lies over the sea! My Bonnie lies over the ocean! Oh bring back my Bonnie to me!", perhaps I don't want to know what they are cheering about.

the long and short of it

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 03:06:00 +0000

Last night, while boarding a green minibus, I had a slightly disconcerting experience. I sat down at the first empty seat... and my feet couldn't touch the ground! It was the first time during my stay in Hong Kong that the issue of height has had any impact on me personally.

For those of you who haven't met me in person: I am, by US standards, "vertically challenged". My height is several inches shorter than that of the average adult American. I am not a dwarf or a midget, but I can usually count on being 'the shortest guy (if not shortest person) in the room' in any situation in the States. No surprise then that items designed to fit 'typical Americans' are typically slightly too big for my frame. At my last job in Boston, for instance, my ergonomic office chair was a smaller version of the chairs everyone else used. The bus seats in Boston also left my legs dangling. In fact, I was so used to too-high chairs that I rarely gave the matter any thought while I lived in the US.

I rarely give the matter of too-high chairs any thought in HK. Actually, the matter of my height almost never comes up here! Certainly, I am shorter than the typical Hong Kong guy of my generation. But am I the shortest person in a typical room here? Goodness no. For instance, when I go out to dinner with my grandparents and their domestic helper, I am actually the tallest person at the table. My Western classmates are taller than me, it is true, but some of my Vietnamese classmates are not. There are plenty of other 'short' people in Hong Kong, so my height draws little notice.

The height difference between America and Hong Kong is hard to quantify or to rationalize. The statistics on average height are provided by each individual country, so Hong Kong's statistics are lumped with China's. Since the average northern Chinese is several inches taller than the average southern Chinese (HK is in the south of China), the Chinese (male) national average of 5'6.5" should be a few inches taller than Hong Kong's average male height. And while Vietnamese and Hong Kong peoples have similar body types, economic differences between the two countries should result in Vietnamese people having less-abundant diets and thus shorter heights. So Hong Kong's average male height should be taller than Vietnam's 5'4".

So what does all of this have to do with minibus seats? The height differences of succeeding generations of Hong Kongers, and the height differences between Chinese people and Westerners, are evident in public transit throughout Hong Kong. The oldest form of transit here is the tram (see pic). The height of the tramcar was set early in the last century - and was designed using the average heights of people from early last century. Even I have to watch my head when I ride the tramcars! As each new mode of transport makes its debut, the size of the seats have to fit taller and taller people. To accomodate Westerners, the newest minibuses have a couple seats taller than the rest. So when I boarded the crowded minibus last night and rushed to the only open seats, I ended up sitting in the first too-tall seats I've seen in Hong Kong.

doesn't every celebration need some music?

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 09:46:00 +0000

Well, final exams are done with. I decided to celebrate in true Hong Kong fashion: I went shopping.

Before you worry that someone has replaced the real 狄樂禮 with someone who actually enjoys shopping, let me assure you there was a good reason why I had to head to the mall. At the end of June, I was given HK$800 [about US$100] in gift certificates to a local electronics chain. Since these certificates expired in July, that left me a short time-frame to use them.

I showed up at the store with a long wish list. I knew that in the States one can buy affordable digital cameras for US$100, so could I buy a similarly-cheap camera here? Ha! The cheapest digicams I saw cost over HK$2000. Then I thought: perhaps I can get some computer software or music CDs? Nope, software and hardware are sold seperately in Hong Kong. How about a replacement for my worn-out portable radio, like a Walkman or CD player? Not stocked, since those items have, in HK at least, gone the way of the eight-track player. The "portable audio" department of the store consisted entirely of mp3 players, or mp3/combo devices. Okaaay. It looked like the only way I could get music on the go was to (wait for it) get a mp3 player.

Because I view shopping as a chore, I usually do a lot of research before making major purchases. (For my last car purchase I kept a binder with product reviews and pricing details.) Not so this time. I asked the salesclerk which 1 GB mp3 player was the cheapest and I bought it. It just so happens that the iPod Shuffle is over HK$300 cheaper than its Chinese and international rivals. (The fact that it goes well with trips to Starbucks and other yuppie endeavors -- well we can ignore that part, can't we?)

Nor am I far from alone in buying an iPod. How do I know? One of the features of iTunes, the software that goes with an iPod, is the ability to share one's iPod music collection with other people using your internet connection. While this was designed for households with multiple computers, this is especially cool when a dormitory is on the same network. Every time I boot up my software, a different person's music collection shows up on my PC. Someone in my building is a Christian worship leader - or just digs such tunes as "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High". Someone else like Chinese rap, which I didn't even know existed before I saw the playlist. A third person has a British club music collection. (Gorillaz, anyone?) For a portable music device, I seem to be using this thing quite a lot at home...

i want my baby-back, baby-back...

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 06:48:00 +0000

It's July, the time of year where my parents fire up the grill on a regular basis. While my brain knows I am in Hong Kong and not in the States, my stomach doesn't know better. Hence, I've been getting these strong cravings for such American items as hot dogs, steaks, and corn on the cob. Chinese people have been eating corn on the cob for a few centuries now, so any vegetable market here sells that. Since my favorite hot dog (at least while growing up) isn't sold even in Boston - different regions of America having their own hot dog preferences - my stomach knows not to be too finicky when it comes to mechanically separated meat. The big question for me was: can I find a decent steak or some barbequed meat at an affordable price?

One of my teachers recommended that I should head over to a cha chaan teng to order a steak. (The term "cha chaan teng", which literally means "tea meal chamber", is meant to evoke the English term "luncheonette". Luncheonettes are a type of sit-down fast-food restaurant: more formal than a cafeteria, less formal than a diner. Except for Waffle Houses or Howard Johnson's, most luncheonettes in America were killed off by the rise of drive-thru fast food chains.) I had never went to a cha chaan teng before, figuring these places merely served Chinese food in a Westernized lunch-counter setting. I was told: "No, they also serve Westernized food to Chinese locals at affordable prices. You need to try a cha chaan teng at least once - they're a unique part of Hong Kong."

The first cha chaan teng I went to had no menus in English, just Chinese. Menu item names in Chinese are notoriously complicated: "phoenix claws" are actually "chicken's feet", "mandarin duck" is actually a half-tea/half-coffee beverage. Even native Chinese can have trouble matching the highfalutin item names to the actual dishes! So even with my knowledge of 800 characters, the menu still confused me. As I started to grab my phrase book, the waitress sprang toward my seat, said "No, no, no!" (pointing to the phrase book and menu), pointed to the four daily specials (listed as A, B, C, and D) on the marker-board, and walked away. Thirty seconds later, after I had looked up all of two characters from that board, she returned to ask me, insistently, "A, B, C, D? A, B, C, D?" Since item C had a character meaning "beef", I hoped the characters I didn't know meant "steak". Nope, I ended up ordering a dish of beef with flat rice noodles. Tasty, but it wasn't steak.

The next day, I went to a cha chaan teng that had an English name. Once I sat down, I grabbed the English menu that was on the table -- only to have the waiter sprint to my table and take the menu out of my hands! "Sorry, that's only for lunch and dinner" he said. "Between two and five, you have to use this afternoon tea menu." Afternoon tea in Hong Kong, I should note, is not dim sum (morning tea), but a quick Western snack. Steaks are not considered snack food, even in Texas. So when the waiter handed me the Chinese-only menu for afternoon tea, I didn't bother looking for barbeque. Instead I ordered (what I thought was) toast and tea, and was pleasantly surprised when the waiter brought butter, syrup, and a mammoth slice of deep-fried cinnamon French toast to my table. Another tasty meal, but not what I was craving.

After those two attempts, I decided to swallow my pride and go to an American-style joint in the tourist ghetto. Dan Ryan's is Hong Kong owned, but tries really hard to appeal to Americans. Few other places would open at 7 am on a Monday morning just so people can watch some obscure game. So I knew, even before I opened the bilingual menu, that my quest for summer grub was about to end. It may have been the most expensive half-rack of baby-back ribs I ever ate (HK$165!), but it was also among the most satisfying half-rack of ribs I ever ate.

the calm before the storm

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 14:44:00 +0000

In case you're wondering why I haven't posted in the past couple weeks: year-end final exams for my Cantonese program start tomorrow. For the past couple weeks I've been a bit busy reviewing my notes in preparation. These exams count for 70% of my yearly grade for this program. Three semesters of work only count for 30% of my yearly grade. Since I have five days of exams, one exam counts more than one semester of schoolwork, tests, and so on. I'm told the Brits are to blame for this. Their universities also weigh the final examinations to a degree unheard of in American schools. I suppose I could also blame the ancient Chinese examination system for this. The mere mention of the Chinese word for "exam" brings smiles and nods of respect from people I meet. Anywho, back to the books...

moving on up...

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 08:04:00 +0000

...not to the East Side, but "suburban" Pokfulam.

Until Monday, I lived in the Sai Wan, or Western District of Hong Kong Island, neighborhood with my grandfather. Sai Wan is a typical urban district in Hong Kong, with lots of tall apartment blocks. Street life is busy - and noisy - with lots of small shops and eateries catering to the local Chinese population. A few tourists take the tram or double-decker bus to visit the neighborhood, but English is not widely spoken. This aerial picture, while not specifically of Sai Wan, does capture the density of a typical urban neighborhood in Hong Kong.

When I told people of my move from Sai Wan to Pokfulam, the typical reaction was "Waah! You're going to be in the middle of nowhere! And it's going to be so quiet!" My new residence is only three kilometers from my last one, yet there is no street life to speak of: no restaurants, and only a 7-Eleven for shopping. Only a couple buses and no tram cars pass nearby. Yet does it really look like I'm living in the middle of nowhere?

As for being "so quiet"? Um, did I mention my new residence is a student dormitory? For some strange reason, there isn't much demand for dorm rooms in the summer. As a result, these rooms are available to rent - and at quite a discount. Maybe I'm showing my age here, but I had forgotten how loud 20 year-old college guys can be! Especially at 3 o'clock in the morning, when us older folk tend to be, um, sleeping...

the character issue

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 11:12:00 +0000

It seems strange that on a blog titled "Indicative Characters" there is almost nothing on this site on Chinese characters. There does seem to be a fascination with Chinese characters back in America, as witnessed by Americans with Chinese tatoos. So this blog entry will deal with the question of Chinese characters.

Despite Western perceptions to the contrary, there is a logic to Chinese characters. [This logic would not convert well if English used characters, btw.] The most basic Chinese characters are pictographs and ideographs (also called, ahem, indicative characters) which are meant to depict an actual object or idea: a flame to represent "fire"(火), a box with a line through the middle to represent "center"(中). Most other Chinese characters combine two or more basic characters to create a new character. Many combinations are based on pronunciation. For instance, "horse" and "mother" are both pronounced ma; so the character for mother (媽) combines the already-invented characters for "woman" (女) and "horse"(馬). A person seeing this character would think "the ma that has to do with woman... that must be mother!"

Although there is a logic to Chinese characters, this does not mean these characters are logical. Chinese, like any writing system 'perfected' two millenia ago, will have problems in modern-day usage. Try to type Chinese on a keyboard - it isn't pretty! Since words tend to change pronunciation over time, the majority of pronunication-based combinations are no longer accurate. (Compare these two characters.) Some individual characters had new meanings evolve, yet retain their old meanings in certain phrases. For instance, the original symbol for "sun" (日) now means "day" -- but the (日) in (日本) still means "[land of the] rising sun" (thus, Japan). And it's not only Westerners that have realized these flaws. Every language which once imported Chinese characters for its own use -- Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Jurchen (early Manchurian) -- has since developed more logical ways to write its language.

For those of you who would like to learn more, there is a new sidebar/button on the website. Every few minutes this button will give a different character with a condensed explanation of that character's logic. Clicking on the button will take you to one of the best English-Chinese dictionary websites, which has an in-depth explanation on the history of Chinese characters.

what's cooler than being cool?

noreply@blogger.com (larry) — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 10:53:00 +0000

It's only the beginning of June, and the temperature in HK topped 93 degrees today. So naturally, a popular topic of conversation around here is air-conditioning.

A widely-held belief is that Hong Kong people just love their air-con. There was a study released this week claiming HK office temperatures are the coldest in the world. (Letterman studio guests might disagree.) Environmentalists recommend a summertime setting of 78 degrees, but found some offices here were as cool as 64 degrees. (The average was found to be 72 degrees.) Many non-environmentalists also complain about how high people crank their a/c. A majority of my classmates keep scarves or pashminas in their bags in case they have to visit certain chilly public places. Public buses are a notorious example. They are extremely cold year-round since, according to an old regulation, a bus offering a/c can charge higher fares than a bus not offering a/c.

But would I agree that Hong Kongers are mad about keeping chill? Not really. First, Hong Kong is more humid than many other cities. A 78 degree office is more than reasonable in many cities, but in a city as humid as this? Second, ordinary homes and businesses definitely don't keep their thermostat as low as centrally-cooled offices. They can't afford to do otherwise! I know my uncle keeps the public part of his store at 75 degrees, and the backrooms a bit warmer. My relatives, who all grew up before a/c became widespread here, are used to warm weather. They take a perverse pride in not using their a/c. Third, and most importantly, I myself do not have a/c in my room here. I'd like to think that, as my stay here in HK has grown longer, my tolerance to heat and humidity has grown stronger. But then how could I explain why, in hot weather, I seem to ride buses much more often?