| Jackie님의 프로필carpe diem블로그리스트 |  도구  도움말 |
carpe diemMy Occasional Wit, Whimsy, and Wishful Thinking 10월 23일 A Power Tool for GalsOf course I'm talking about a vibrating mascara. What else could it be? For the unenlightened gender among you, mascara is an integral part of a woman's life -- if she only has 30 seconds to put on some makeup before rushing out the door in the morning, she would put on mascara alone. (So next time you see a girl with luxurious long lashes and think she's born with it -- remember what your friend Jackie told you: it's Maybelline.) But what distinguishes this mascara, called "Maybelline Pulse Perfection", is that it has a small built-in motor engine, so when you touch a button, it delivers 7000 vibrations per minute, which promises efficient separation, lengthening, and curling of the lashes. The operating word here is "efficient" -- because who wouldn't want a motor engine to accomplish what you so painfully have to do yourself? I found myself liking this pulsating mascara a lot so thought it would be fun to share.  Oh I almost forgot to add that, according to the newly released yet already much-maligned FTC guidelines for bloggers, I must disclose any money or freebie received for my product reviews, or pay a $11,000 fine. Not that I'm such a popular blogger that companies line up outside my door and wrestle with each other to curry favor with me -- unless my 11 readers yesterday were Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and 9 Saudi princes, any investment in bribing me would result in a very negative ROI. But I did get this mascara quite serendipitously and supposedly for free, and that took quite a story to explain. This past summer, I attended a consortium hosted by L'Oreal at their New York City headquarters, where they invited a bunch of management academics to sit around and talk about their assorted brands such as L'Oreal, Maybelline, Yves Saint Laurent, Garnier and Lancome. And this Maybelline Pulsating Mascara was in the goodie bag I received as a thank-you gift, which also contained miscellaneous bottles of shampoos, hair balms, body lotions and such. Of course I was more than thrilled to receive this treasure-packed bag. Not to mention that last time I was invited to a Google conference on its Mountain View campus, all I walked away with was a Gmail account. But as the Zen master often warns, "don't judge good or bad too quickly", an unforeseen problem soon arose: the next leg of my trip was to fly from NYC to Salt Lake City. Of course there was no way I could pack this pandemonium of toiletries into a quart-size, clear plastic zip-top bag as required by the TSA, so my only option was to check it in with the United Airlines at a price of $20. (By the way, is there any constitutional law attorney who happens to be reading this blog? I have a business proposal: we can file a lawsuit against TSA and major airlines as co-conspirators in sex discrimination. Our argument before the Supreme Court justices would go like this: there is a much higher chance that women have to exceed that quart-size limit in toiletries and therefore compelled to check in their bags with the airlines, who ruthlessly take advantage of this by charging exorbitant luggage fees -- consequently, women on average are forced to pay more than men for air travel. Can't you see how it promises to be a precedent-setting, career-making, money-grabbing case in anti-discrimination laws? Who cares about firefighters in New Haven anyway?) Sorry about the digression -- I guess my work lately has made me a bit litigious. But the bottom line was that I had to pay $40 round-trip for a bag of "freebies" that I would not otherwise pay $40 for at CVS. Hence the irony. The Economist in me wants to quote Milton Friedman, who said "there's no such thing as a free lunch". But the Writer in me wants to quote Sebastian Horsley, who said, "the difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money always costs a lot less." The coolest thing about truth, I feel, is that, rather than a boring fact or dogma set in stone, it is a mutable, oftentimes all-encompassing structure with a sly sense of humor: in this case, you can Ctrl+F "sex" and replace it with "waterproof mascara", and it still holds water! Hmm, thanks to the FTC, now the disclaimer can be so much more fun than the product review itself. 9월 20일 Beautiful PeopleI came to the office to get some work done on Saturday and stepped into a costume party of the new first-year class outside the building. It was a beautiful day -- clean, light, magical, the transition of seasons palpable in the air. On this particular day, you can smell the exuberance of youth, too. To the contrary of popular beliefs, glowingly healthy, good-looking young people don't usually make appealing photography subjects. My teacher used to say, if you really have to photograph people, go for little children and really, really old people. I couldn't understand the rationale behind it. But the method has face validity: flipping through any travel brochure or National Geographic-style magazine, you'll indeed find that those two demographic groups are most often represented, and they often make the most impressive images. But why? Over the years the answer slowly came to me. Little children and the elderly possess the gift of completely immersing themselves in the present moment -- they can be perfectly aligned with the Here and Now, which renders them an integral part of their natural surroundings and activities. And nothing less than that can make a great picture. Often, seeing into their eyes, you feel you almost meet their souls. Susan Sontag once said that to take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability and mutability. And that revelation is what gives both the photographer and the viewer a sense of communion. Young people, on the other hand, are often too self-conscious and occupied with their conceptualized self identity to be completely aligned with the present moment. For instance, they may appear to be fully engrossed in a conversation, but their minds are wandering elsewhere: either searching for the next smart thing to say, or checking their mental Blackberrys for the next stimulus, or being hijacked by an endless stream of thoughts, memories and fantasies. As a result, it is quite typical that in a photograph they often look oddly removed from the surroundings or whatever they appear to be doing. The integrity and authenticity of the moment falls apart. Just look at one of those ubiquitous dentists' ads portraying an attractive Caucasian woman smiling ten sparkling white teeth. She looks as unreal as her staged smile as her porcelain teeth. Pictures of young people, even if unstaged, have the tendency to fall into the same trap: too self-conscious, too tense, hiding more than revealing. The challenge for the photographer, then, is to capture those rare moments when a subject is completely relaxed, unguarded and spontaneous, momentarily lost in the stream of time, lost (or, paradoxically, present) at a place called Here and Now, and then you'll see their true self shining through, in all its quintessential humanness. And that, is what gives a photo -- or life itself -- true vitality. 9월 12일 GardenI grabbed my dust-ridden camera today and shot these flowers in my garden and my neighbors' gardens. I've been watching them for the entire summer, usually sitting on the porch after my daily run, and they taught me so much about how to live a life that's all about the free and creative expression of the timeless and boundless essence of Life, with beauty, uniqueness, and grace. So before they disappear before my eyes, being absorbed into the ever-moving pendulum of time, I took these images in their memory. "To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour." -- William Blake "Auguries of Innocence" 9월 9일 Why Netflix Knows Me Better Than My MotherNo, that's not completely true. What I was trying to say is that Netflix knows me better than my mother, my best friend, and my OB/GYN combined. I've been subscribing to Netflix's service for a few years. Based on what movies I have rent in the past and how I rated them, Netflix makes guesses on what movies I would like and use it to customize its movie recommendations, through a statistical technique called "collaborative filtering." The general premise behind this is -- and ironically, this is exactly what I do for a living -- that each consumer, rather than an individual with unique, idiosyncratic tastes and preferences, is merely a mundane collection of data points to be mathematically analyzed, precisely targeted, and relentlessly exploited, all in the name of better serving you, Ma'am. So through the years Netflix has been assiduously refining its bets given more and more data points from me. In the beginning, it would make generic suggestions such as "Dramas" or "Critically Acclaimed Movies." Now they are more detailed and nuanced. And as you know, the devil's all in the details. So instead of "Dramas", it would recommend "Witty Dramas with a Strong Female Lead" for Dear Jackie. Do you see the difference? It's like the difference between having "Potato Salad" and having "Potato Salad with Pickled Pearl Onions and Garden Dill with Squire Hill Farm's Ameraucana Hen egg Emulsion", i.e., the potato salad you pay $26 for at Per Se! "Thrillers"? That's too vague. It should be"Romantic Crime Thrillers". "Foreign Movies"? No. We believe that Jackie only likes "Dark Foreign Movies". Wait, that isn't fair. Have YOU ever seen a Foreign Film that Isn't Dark? A "Foreign Slapstick", like a Swedish Ben Stiller or an Iranian version of "American Pie"? Apparently only American movies are blessed with the Eternal Sunshine of the Idiotic Mind. But I have to admit that, overall, the psychological profile depicted below fits the suspect. Who needs a therapist any more? So, my friends, I've bared my soul for you all to see. Take pity. Or go ahead and take advantage of me.  9월 5일 So You Think You Can Eat?No I'm not pitching a new reality TV show about competitive eating. I got the idea for this post after watching the movie "Julie and Julia ". But this post isn't about the movie -- although it's a fantastic movie I'd recommend with all my heart, not the least because every screen minute with Meryl Streep (as Julia Child) and Stanley Tucci (as her husband, Paul) together is such a delight and privilege to watch -- but it is because seeing Julia Child's immense, dynamite, larger-than-life passion for food totally amazed me because I've been losing interest in food over the past months. That may sound like an insane statement, but my behavior is solidly rational, to the extent that a cost-benefit analysis is rational: while I certainly derive pleasure from eating good food, such benefit usually pales in comparison with the cost of shopping for food, preparing it, cooking it, and cleaning up the inevitable mess. Such benefit is often even outweighed by the inconvenience of having to pick up a restaurant take-out. What I mean by cost is, of course, opportunity cost. Granted that I am not single-handedly resuscitating the U.S. health care system or playing beer pong with the Obamas at Martha's Vineyard, I do feel that I could dedicate the food-prep time to more productive pursuits, such as working, reading a good book, star-gazing, bubble-bathing, sleep-walking, or wasting a perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk. Not that I haven't tried. A couple of weeks ago I made a great discovery in my local grocery store. A line of frozen entrees called Ethnic Gourmet. Absolutely fabulous stuff with such varieties as Chicken Biryani, Chicken Tandoori with Spinach, and Pad Thai with Tofu. You just take the packet out of the freezer, throw it in the microwave (and imagine that an Indian or Thai chef lives there with the sole life purpose of pleasing you), and five minutes later you have your exotic tasty dinner! The only problem with this whimsical mini-chef is that, after a few days, my body felt loaded with salt that I was thinking of changing my name to Morton. So I have since reverted to the tried-and-true routine of eating whatever is left in the kitchen cabinet and making occasional minimum-effort concoctions such as "scrambled eggs with silken tofu and sweet peas". While I'm perfectly happy and content to stay this way forever -- or at least until I feel like changing my mind, or physiologically impossible, whichever comes first -- it got me thinking about something more profound, which is the evolutionary perverseness of treating eating as a nuisance. How could the genes associated with it have survived the harsh eon of natural selection? Or, if you don't believe in evolution, as the rest of the 81% of the Americans, such disposition still shall not exist if God had practiced Six Sigma quality control. Someone who ever possessed such a trait should have been eliminated for the betterment of the human race, together with someone who still gets lost in her office building after three years, or someone who could not parallel-park between two cars and gave up the spot, which was immediately and disdainfully occupied by a pickup truck, or someone who spends more time searching for her cell phone than actually using it (Apple's next blockbuster release? iStrap. A device that straps your iPhone to your body 24/7. Literally.) Such people should be theoretically extinct from an evolutionary viewpoint-- especially when they are the same person. Oh isn't life a miracle? So far there are only a couple of minor unforeseen consequences of my voluntary food embargo. The first one is that I might have lost a few pounds. And friends and colleagues are all "Poor Jackie, have you been losing weight?" "Not by choice at least. Well you know I've been training for the New York Marathon," I would reply to everyone who asks. Except my boss, to whom I would say, "Oh. I'm fine, Paul. Just too much work lately." But the kind people of Upper Valley wouldn't just let me be. Suddenly my email box is filled with all kinds of invitations to lunches and dinners, at which the desserts are always strategically positioned so no one could reach them but me. Maybe it's all in my wild imagination. But you can never be sure how the subconscious operates. And this invitation card sitting on my desk to a "pig roast church fundraiser" this Saturday is certainly real. And how could I ever conjure up such a thing as a "pig roast church fundraiser"? The second consequence, which I didn't realize until I read a paper recently, is based on the well-documented phenomenon that people who go into a grocery store when hungry tend to buy more. And the effect goes beyond food. Some kind of overcompensatory mechanism for sensory deprivation. This might explain why I've bought so much stuff lately. For most people living alone, the delight of going home after work every day is defined by the sight of your dog faithfully waiting by the front door and then going all gaga over you as if you were the Pope or the Dalai Lama. For me, it's the sweet sight of that perfectly packed, UPS-delivered corrugated cardboard package from Neiman Marcus quietly waiting for me on the front porch. No, my friends, as of now, I don't accept unsolicited advice or donated food. You can redirect your canned food to the local homeless shelter. As for the unsolicited advice, start your own blog, jeez! 8월 15일 Blue MoonBlue Moon It was getting dark The nocturnal creatures loomed from the thick forest with their bloodshot eyes and bloodthirsty antenna And ceaselessly chased by a big bearded man with a heavy metal club, I was short of breath and came to the edge of a vast ruin perched precariously on an abyss of darkness like a dumbfounded bird awaiting a thunderbolt There I saw the Blue Moon the Mother of Beauty for eternity Who said, it is but that little mental prison of yours the Grand Cathedral of Illusions, Delusions, and False Expectations So, fear no more, my child: Leap, and the net will be there; the Truth is -- (But they say that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't) a mountain top overlooking the emerald lakes glimmering in the charmed fragrance of the sagebrush and the cool moist winds rustling through the tall lodgepole pines -- a corollary of courage, really. (But who am I to negotiate with Fate, or Her personal assistant?) Feeling the heavy, chilling breath of Despair closing in on me, I threw myself in the air, And, sure enough -- Woke up, in warm embracing sunlight smelling coffee and bacon from the kitchen. (a poem from a dream) 7월 15일 To Kill a Wall Street JournalDid you ever have to ask to buy less from a business and be told "no" even if you're willing to pay the current price? And then they tell you, actually there might be an alternative for you to buy less, but you have to pay more than you're paying now? Yeah. Luckily for me, I got to witness this today. Exhibit A of Perverse Pricing Practices. It started with my long overdue action to cancel the physical delivery of the Wall Street Journal. I've found myself spending more and more time perusing the Journal's website rather than reading the print copies. On most days, the print newspaper goes directly from my mailbox to my recycle bin. I cannot bear to think about all the wasted energy, labor, slaughtered trees and elevated landfills as a result of making, mailing, delivering, recycling and eventually decomposing these papers. So I made a mental note to cancel the delivery of the print paper, once and for all. Should be easy, don't you think? In an age of infinite consumer choices and options -- you can order a grande-size Cappuccino from Starbucks with double-shot espresso, soy-based milk, extra foam, and hazelnut-flavored syrup added -- you would expect that changing from a print/online combo to an online-only subscription should not require much more than checking or unchecking a box online, right? Turned out wrong. After fumbling around on their website for such a solution in vain, I called their toll free number, and explained to a customer service rep my request to stop receiving the print paper while maintaining my access to online edition. As I spoke, I imagined that he would say with glee and relief, "No problem! I can do it for you right NOW!" After all, I'm saving money for them (reducing their marginal cost of servicing me to virtually zero) and not even asking for a price cut. But he said there was no way he could do it, the reason being that I have a Students account (for which I'm qualified as a quote-unquote Educator, also covered under the category). "So the account entitles you to both the print and the online editions of the Journal." he said matter-of-factly. Is that an explanation at all? I'm not talking about what I'm entitled to - I'm talking about what I want, which, apparently inconceivable to him, is less than what I'm entitled to. Some explanations are just hilariously ridiculous. Like the cardboard sign hung on the door of the dry-cleaner that I frequent: "Closed on Wednesday due to The Economy." As if the linkage between the temporary closure of a tiny dry cleaner and the throbbing heart of this colossal monster called The Economy were beyond self-evident. Like my imaginary email auto-reply: "Out of the Office due to Modern Man's Existential Dilemma". Hello? Anyway, after much clarification from both sides, it became clear that there is technically no way to stop receiving the physical paper while retaining the online access. A possible alternative, he said, is that I cancel this account and get a regular online-only subscription, at $103 a year. Which is more than what I pay now for the print-online combo. Incredible, isn't it? So I politely asked to speak to his manager. The lady introduced herself to me as a "supervisor", which immediately sank my heart because clearly her role was to supervise those manning the phones rather than to revise the pricing mechanism (let alone the business model) at the Wall Street Journal. So I was not surprised when she gave me the same answer as before. I was tempted to offer her a free lecture on product customization, optimal pricing, or the environmental consequences of frivolous production and consumption. Or how consumers' shifting media consumption patterns (i.e., tomorrow the print newspapers would be what the audio cassettes are today) would demand a fresh new business model for the newspapers and their failure to adapt quickly and radically enough has brought them to the near defunct place where they are now. But I knew it's useless to say anything. Under today's mazz-like corporate structure with thinly sliced departmentalization, asking her to change anything would be like asking your toe to scratch your ear. But I still concluded the conversation by making a kind suggestion, in the vague hope that it could be passed on to the decision-makers (maybe she would date the marketing director some day and mention this bizarre phone call from a nutty customer). So, unable to kill it, I'm still holding on to (or, if you will, recycling) the print newspaper. It just occurred to me that there's another solution: if any of you have the free time to read a physical copy of the Journal (although if you're reading this, you probably have too much time), I can have the thing delivered to you instead! 2월 21일 And the Oscar Goes to... the Dog?This year's Academy Awards ceremony is only a day away. For many years I've stood steadfastly as an apostle of the Oscars despite years of disappointments (see here and here) as fine subtle filmmaking kept giving way to glitz and schmaltz in the Best Picture's category (e.g., The Pianist lost to Chicago in 2003, Mystic River lost to Lord of the Rings in 2004, Brokeback Mountain to Crash in 2006, just to name a few) . Much as I have reconciled myself to this unrequited love with the Academy, this year I'm sensing a particularly dangerous threat. This is a line that must not be crossed. Ok. Let me spell it out: Don't let Slumdog Millionaire win the Best Picture -- Dear Academy, this is as far as I can retreat on the Western Front. This doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the movie. On the contrary, like most people, I enjoyed every minute watching the 2-hour movie while I was at it. The main plot is rather formulaic: boy meets girl (in this case, in the poverty-stricken slums of Mumbai), girl snatched away from boy (first by a brutal begging syndicate and then an abusive Mafia boss), boy rises to the challenge of his destiny (here by contesting in the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire"), and finally boy and girl are happily united (conveniently, he also gets a million dollars to take care of the "ever after" part). If this were a Western version of the formula, it could not possibly have earned 10 Oscar nominations. So the real trick lies in the background of the story, which depicts a panorama of India's urban lower-class life: the squalor and poverty of its slums, sectarian violence, child exploitation, organized crimes, police brutality. Danny Boyle is undeniably a sensualist director: every scene is saturated in light and color and edited in a seamless pace, but despite all the cinematographic felicity, a sense of profound sorrow and grief lingers on your mind as you watch the young Jamal, the protagonist, struggles to survive in a dangerous city of millions in an unsympathetic universe. But in the end it's just another cliche rags-to-riches story, with an improbable fairy-tale-ish plot, and two cardboard-like main characters who are solely characterized by their puppy love for each other. The incongruity between the weight of its background and the frivolity of its theme is staggering. So that's why, after I spent two hours watching this feel-good movie and walked out of the theater, a bad after-taste akin to a gnawing hangover suddenly took over. So much effort for so little purpose! It feels like playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on a grand Steinway next to an ice cream truck to help sell Vanilla Millis. Or treading on a thorn-paved, travail-laden pilgrimage only to find out that the final destination is Disneyland. Well, you get the idea. So, dear Academy, please for once exercise your good judgment and let the Slumdog just be a dog. 11월 6일 Explaining the Blue vs. Red Divide
Why are the Blue States blue and the Red States red? Such was the question that suddenly started to bug me during my solitary lunch hour today. People tend to attribute it to the cultural or ideological differences between the states' residents: hence the Bible Belt, the Rust Belt, the Coastal Liberals, blah blah. But I wondered: to what extent can we explain the election results purely by looking at simple demographic and socioeconomic factors? Curiosity offers rewards but also charges a price, as I've learned from experience. This time I wasted 2 perfectly good hours on this pet research project, first pulling some data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and then developing a statistical model to explain what variables could have predicted whether a state would go to Obama or McCain. The model I used is a pretty straightforward binary logistic regression model. To those statistics geeks among you, the table below shows the estimates. But here is the gist of my findings. In plain terms, the factors that significantly predict a Blue State (vs. a Red State) include, in the order of importance:
Factors that were found to have no bearing on the Blue vs. State difference include: education, poverty level, and the percentage of whites. What really surprised me, however, is the predictive power of the model, which is an astounding 92%. In other words, the model would have correctly predicted the election results of 46 out of 50 states (I left out Missouri since the votes are still being counted as of now). Among the 29 states that went to Obama, 27 are correctly predicted by the model. The two anomalies are Indiana and North Carolina, both of which had narrow margins below 1% of the total votes (Indiana 49.9% vs. 49%, and North Carolina 49.9% vs. 49.5%). Among the 21 states carried by McCain, 19 are correctly predicted - the two exceptions are Arizona, McCain's home state, and North Dakota. (I cannot find an explanation for North Dakota. But it only has 3 electoral votes, so who cares?) Geez. Don't you just love the benefit of hindsight? By the way, my model predicts that Missouri would go to McCain. Let's see whether it pans out.
Table 2: Model Prediction Hit Rates
10월 23일 How to Lose a Job in Ten Days? Lessons from John McCain
In case someone hasn't noticed or pretends not to, let me say it aloud that the election is practically over. And the senior Senator from Arizona will soon retreat to the arms and riches of his multimillionaire wife, and spare the rest of us more insidious attacks, vacuous rhetorics, and sheer embarrassment. The McCain campaign will soon go down in history not only as a political failure but also as a disgracefully run campaign where misguided strategies and poor judgment conspired to send the Republican candidate on a downward-sloping trajectory in the final weeks before the election. The moral caliber of the McCain campaign began to manifest itself when they unleashed the ludicrous batch of attack ads on Barack Obama's character. The McCain campaign took great pains in linking Obama to William Ayers, a former member of Weather Underground, a domestic radical group in the 70s, when it was clear that Obama was just a little kid when the group was active, and when the two men came to meet each other, Ayers was already a well-respected academic and educational reformer in Chicago. Then there was the even more ridiculous ad that claims that Obama advocates sex education for kindergartners, while the truth is that the piece of legislation Obama endorsed was intended to teach kids to recognize inappropriate advances from potential sexual predators. Through the deluge of outright lies and rootless attacks, Obama has the decency to respect his opponent throughout, and the cool-headedness to focus on the important policy issues. John "McNasty" McCain, the self-claimed "maverick" politician, has proven himself to be nothing but another Karl-Rovian hypocrite. Lesson # 2 from John McCain: don't pretend to be an expert on things you have no clue about. At the beginning of the financial perfect storm, McCain labeled himself an economic-policy bigwig and concluded that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong"; and when it became crystal clear that the economy was in a tailspin, he attempted to single-handedly engineer a legislative solution, "suspending" his campaign and (almost) canceling the first presidential debate so he could "focus on the economy." Just posing to be an economics pundit doesn't help, especially when you've confessed that all you know about economics is from Greenspan's book, which looks even more unfortunate when Alan Greenspan himself has confessed that his laissez-faire economic philosophy suffers serious flaws. ` Lesson number 3: don't choose a partner who's both incompetent and totally out of control. Despite her immediate effect to revitalize McCain's eviscerated campaign for a nano-second (especially among extreme right-wing conservatives), she has been a complete bomb. Not only does she sorely lack the knowledge and expertise required for the presidency or vice presidency, she also demonstrates a shocking level of moral absolutism, and self-assertiveness that shuns prudence and basks in one's bliss of ignorance. When you put the two things together, you know you've got a female version of W.. John McCain must have thought that the average voter had a peanut-size brain when he put Palin on the ticket; luckily for America, that presumption is untrue: now one third of the voters consider the choice of Palin a poor reflection on McCain's judgment. To put it plainly, Palin is pain now. So, class -- uh, excuse me, my friends -- these are the lessons we can draw from this election. I wish you all a good weekend, and Senator McCain a peaceful retirement. 10월 15일 Silver Lining
Amidst the recent financial market crisis and the looming economic recession, I've jolted reading fiction and taken to reading the business news with a passion even unknown to myself. Not that I'm particularly worried about my own financial situation (my retirement account has shrunk by 40%, but that's beside the point), but the news coverage of the financial crisis has given rise to some of the most interesting journalistic writings of our time. Here is an example taken from today's Wall Street Journal, on the historic meeting where Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson virtually coerced the nation's top bankers into accepting the government's $250 billion capital injection plan. An excerpt: "The meeting took place in the Treasury secretary's conference room, which faces a courtyard and is outfitted with mahogany chairs, antique wall sconces and chandeliers. " It struck some of those in the room as fortunate that Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo are so far apart in the alphabet. ... at least the heads of the two rivals, Mr. Kovacevich and Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit, wouldn't have to sit next to each other. "After Mr. Kovacevich voiced his concerns [about the necessity of the partial nationalization of banks], Mr. Paulson described the deal starkly. He told the Wells Fargo chairman he could accept the government's money or risk going without the infusion. If the company found it needed capital later and Mr. Kovacevich couldn't raise money privately, Mr. Paulson promised the government wouldn't be so generous the second time around. "Mr. Bernanke said the situation was the worst the country had endured since the Great Depression. He said action was for the collective good, an understated appeal. The room was silent as he described the economy's fragile condition. "Mr. Geithner, whose job as New York Fed chief makes him the central bank's main man on Wall Street, delivered the most sobering news. He described how much preferred stock the government was going to buy from each firm. The government would take $25 billion in Citigroup, $10 billion in Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and so on. ... "The meeting ended at about 4 p.m. By 6:30 p.m., all of the sheets had been turned in and signed by the CEOs. No second meeting was held." What narratives! The article possesses more tension than five John Grisham novels combined, a style as stoically understated as Hemingway, some comic relief, many colorful characters, and a sparing ending that secretly begs sober questions. And all in a short few paragraphs. How could you possibly beat that? I guess reading the newspapers will suffice to entertain me in the next few months -- who can afford to buy books these days anyway? 8월 7일 iLoveSo this is how you can get one of those much-desired and much-envied new iPhone 3Gs in New York: You take a day off work, and get to the Apple store on the Fifth Avenue (or in Soho) in the early morning. Your chances are better if you arrive by 7 a.m. if you are specific about which model (8G or 16G in black or white) you want. Then, outside the store, you will be given a voucher by some orange-uniformed Apple geeks; the vouchers are distributed at every hour from morning to night (or whenever the day's inventory runs out). Then you wait in line, with something ranging from 20 to 200 people in front of you. At some point, you are finally allowed into the iconic store, where you wait some more. Another orange-uniformed Apple staffer will call on you and walk you to a corner at the iPhone service area and process your purchase and the AT&T service contract using a wireless computer. In a short five minutes, you walk out of the Apple store, with the super-slim and ultra-versatile iPhone in your palm feeling like a million bucks. And you don't mind at all that you're $200 poorer, with another $2,000 committed to AT&T in the next two years. You feel like a winner. At least I did. I have to say that I'm not one of those Apple evangelists. My past experience with Apple products isn't quite a wholesome one -- my iPod Mini (remember those?) suffered an irrecoverable crash and even its replacement died in two months; my third-generation 16G iPod has survived to this day, but the battery life is about 20 minutes after a full charge -- so I'm drawn to iPhone not because of but in spite of my past Apple experiences. So what makes me an iSucker again? "I can resist everything except temptation," said Oscar Wilde. And iPhone is just too big a temptation to even attempt resisting: It syncs your emails, contacts, and calendar automatically with Outlook Exchange. Web browsing is an easy surf since websites can be displayed either vertically or horizontally on the screen depending on how you hold it. It has a decent built-in camera and displays high-resolution photo slide shows. It has everything an iPod offers and easy assess to the iTunes store for fetching songs, movies, and TV shows on the move. It also boasts a GPS, a life-saving tool for people like me who are, uhh, should we say, navigationally challenged? And did I mention that it even makes phone calls? (If you want an iPhone without the phone feature. Apple already offers one called iPod Touch.) And iPhone does all of these beautifully, on an elegant, minimalist touch screen the size of a credit card. Once in a while, some company came out of nowhere (like Intel, Google, or Apple), smashed to pieces what was supposed to be the golden rule to success, and built from scratch something so revolutionary, so powerful, that turns the heads, woos the eyes, and wins the hearts. And makes you feel that waiting under the blinding sun for a whole day is a labor of love.  7월 15일 What Books to Bring Aboard
Air travelers are in deep woes these days, with ubiquitous cancellations and delays, ever more cramped legroom, and overpriced, over-refrigerated sandwiches. The only escape, it seems, is to bring a couple of great books on board with you. However, choosing a good airplane companion book is not as simple as you think. Here are several principles of choosing a felicitous air-travel book based on my personal experience and observations.
1. The Rule of Engagement
Air travel is not a good time to push the boundaries of your literary tastes. Only bring books that are interesting and engaging. No matter how enchanting is the fantasy of relishing, say, James Joyce's "Ulysses", or Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment", at an altitude of 20,000 feet, if you did pack such books in your carry-on bag, you would quickly find yourself either snoring away, ordering from SkyMall, or chatting with the old lady next seat about each of her grandchildren. So leave your literary ambitions at home, together with the IRS Guide to Tax Preparation.
2. The Power of the Lightness
Thick books are a no-go. The cash-strapped airlines have long been charging for (lousy) food, (barely stereo) earphones, (ancient) pay-per-view movies; several have recently added a fee for all checked-in baggage, and it's widely rumored that they will soon charge for carry-on luggage as well as pillows and blankets, or even set fares according to each passenger's body weight, or charge a landing fee to let you off the plane.
Under such circumstances, thou shalt not bring the 1296-page "War and Peace" when traveling. Besides, in the case that you decide to read Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" in the air, the TSA officers may not let you go through the security point, since the seven-volume monster can potentially be used as lethal weapons.
3. The Middle-Seat Factor
The third principle, according to my own experience, is most often neglected. With its unusual physical and mental confinement, air travel strips from its passengers both their right to and their respect for privacy. After sitting next to a fellow passenger for six hours and recycling each other's breathing air, you are often wondering whether you know him better than his best friend: what he does for a living, what he typed away on his laptop, what type of onion and garlic he had for lunch, and, of course, what book he read on the flight.
So I believe we all have a social obligation not to offend our next-seat passengers with the books we read. Sure it could be embarrassing that the book you read may subjugate you to sneer and snicker (e.g., the cover says "Now a Major Motion Picture"), but it's far worse if your book sends others into embarrassment, fear, or even panic. For instance, in the post-9/11 world, it can be more than a little disturbing to others if you are seen reading a book in Arabic. Especially if you also have a habit of talking to yourself with eyes closed.
Since you often cannot predict who you'll be sitting next to, it is an advisable habit to eliminate certain usual suspects. If you're sitting next to a mother with a ten-year-old girl, you'll regret having brought "Lolita". Or, if your fellow passenger's mid-section unfortunately hangs over the armrest, I bet you don't dare to take "The Obesity Epidemic" out of your suitcase.
Once I was on a coast-to-coast flight, and sitting next to me was a nice-looking young guy who seemed rather bored. For a moment I thought he looked my way and wanted to say something, but then he didn't. For the rest of the flight, he devoted himself to reading the safety instructions. It wasn't until the plane touched down that I realized what actually happened: for the whole time I was reading Maureen Dowd's feminist tirade "Are Men Necessary?"
Poor guy. He must be thinking that a woman reading such a book is quickly metamorphosizing into a dangerous feline, complete with claws and fangs. I hope he was not seriously preparing himself for the emergency exit. 7월 7일 WALL-E (2008) is a Bad MovieAll right. I know what I just said may be hugely unpopular: The average viewer rating of the movie on IMDB has surpassed Casablanca (1942) and Star Wars (1977). Even all the usually blockbuster-busting critics including Roger Elbert of the Chicago Sun-Times and Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal are chanting unanimous eulogies. It seems like animations, especially the ones made by Pixar, have the power, by evoking the little child deeply hidden in all of us, to win our hearts while secretly insulting our intelligence.
The story happens 700 years in the future, when the humans have deserted the trash-covered earth, leaving (perhaps inadvertently) a forlorn garbage-collecting robot, WALL-E (acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), roaming the planet and piling up garbage cubes into skyscrapers. No doubt that's a lonely life. Until one day he watches another robot, Eve, sleek and all-powerful, descending from the sky. Too bad our robotic protagonist can neither speak nor read Shakespeare; otherwise, he would know the perfect thing to say to her, "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty until tonight." Apparently, the filmmakers did not think android romance alone would do justice to their world-class creativity. So the next thing you see: the robot lovers are on a journey to salvage the fate of the humankind.
I found the movie incredibly annoying. Tactically, it's awkward to watch robots fall in love (not the ones that look like humans or animals but the chunky-clunky kind of robot).Maybe it's just me. If you can happily imagine yourself watching your Roomba vacuum cleaner and your iPod spending hours trying to figure out how to hold hands and actually holding hands, you will probably find the movie intensely gratifying. Because that's basically what the movie is. (The sleek and minimalist Eve looks eerily like an iPod. I somehow got the feeling that the movie is a homage to Mr. Steve Jobs of Apple Inc., who also founded Pixar.)
But the movie is even more flawed on a fundamental level. Should children even be watching animations about robots (as apposed to animals and fairies?) In the past Pixar has produced deeply human tales such as Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and Ratatouille. In WALL-E, the robots are intelligent, sensitive, and courageous; the humans are obese and imbecile at their best, manipulative and evil at their worst. The concept of a social satire disguised as a children's animation is as disgusting as a vanilla ice cream with a topping of foie gras gone sour.
10월 2일 Life Comes at You FastLeaves are changing. And I can feel that I'm changing too, and I was quick to dub the symptoms as SDLA (Season-related Drowsiness and Loss of Appetite). First, for the past couple of weeks, it's been increasingly difficult to pull myself out of bed in the morning. 7 a.m. became the earliest victim. Soon, 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. were practical impossibility -- despite all the alarm clocks put to use out of desperation, I would rather give up a limb than get out of bed when they went off in unison. Before long, when I don't have meetings or classes in the morning, I find myself happily waking up at eleven. And all attempts to make up for the lost productivity by working late proves futile, as an irresistible voice inside me would remind me that I'm already tired and should go back home and rest. What's more, I feel like I'm pretty much done with the whole business of eating. I'm in a constant state of starvation in all my waking hours, but even an innocent toasted bagel would smell nauseating to me, and the smell of a cheese burger makes me want to throw up on the spot. I wandered absently in the school dining hall the other day. Nothing seemed even remotely edible -- not the beef barley soup, not the hummus and spinach wrap, not the curry chicken and cous cous, certainty not the steak swiss sub. My survival instinct took over in the end, and I walked away with a small scoop of ice cream for dinner. What the heck is wrong with me? I thought, maybe I got a brain tumor. I need to get it checked up when I have time. Only that when I indeed have time, I sleep more. Last Friday afternoon, I walked across the Hanover Green to get some errands done. It was a beautiful autumnal day, clear, brisk, sunny. A toddler playing on the lawn looked up from her dog and stared at me. She had loose blonde hair and adorable dimples. I made a face at her. She burst into a rocking laughter, almost falling to the ground. There and then, I had an epiphany. Maybe I'm not having a brain tumor; maybe I'm having a baby. I was ten days late, after all. I took a deep breath: don't panic before the verdict is in. I called my secretary to cancel my afternoon appointments, walked to the CVS store downtown, bought three different brands of pregnancy tests, and went home. All three turned out positive. I did some quick math in my head: since their packages all claim "99% Accurate!", assuming these are independent tests, what's the chance of me not being pregnant? One in a million. I sat on my bathroom mat, stunned and defenseless, like someone caught with the murder weapon in her hand, her fingerprints all over the crime scene, plus a motive as salient as daylight. But at least in this case I'm not the sole perpetrator. I had an accomplice. I called the daddy-to-be and explained the situation. In a short three minutes, I saw my husband undergo the Five Stages of Grief on the phone: "Whaaaat? Are you sure? No, that can't be true. It wasn't even theoretically possible. (Denial) Agghh, damn it! (Anger) This comes too fast... we're not ready. Well, eventually we'll have children, but... this is too soon. What about our Europe trip next year? This could be so much nicer if it happens in a few years from now, you know, when we could be together, you know? (Bargaining) Well, what can I do about it? Nope. (Depression) ... Hmmm, maybe it's not that bad. We're gonna have a baby... I'll be a dad!! (Acceptance)" Putting down the phone, I sat down, trying to make sense of the thousands of thoughts and feelings all tangled up in my head like a Jackson Pollack's painting. What does this uninvited little intruder mean to my life? I'm 27. I have a fabulous job and a cool life. I wear Armani suits and drive a BMW. I'm starting to travel the world. I cherish my freedom as my fundamental right (so much so that I've moved to a state whose license plate proclaims "Live Free or Die"). Why should this unsympathetic imp pop up out of thin air and suddenly change everything? Do I deserve to deal with all the baby howling, sleepless diaper-changing nights, pediatrician's visits, last-minute canceled conference trips due to 'family emergency'? What about me? Wait. Maybe it's not just all about me, me, me. There is a small person growing inside me. Now it's probably only as small as a coffee bean, but soon it'll develop a brain, eyes and ears, arms and legs, fingers and nails. It'll start to feel and think. Isn't that a small miracle? And this little life has nobody to rely on but me. Maybe I should start thinking for 'us'. True this was not planned for, but how many significant events and people in our lives are planned anyway? No matter how good a master planner you are, life still remains an uncharted river, flowing in unexpected directions and through unforeseen terrains. So the best swimmers in life are those who face every twirl and turn with courage and strength, follow their hearts, and hope for the best. "Us" would be a different life; it could be an exciting and engaging one nevertheless, with endless possibilities and new challenges. And I decide that I don't have to cease to be me for the sake of us. I'll be a cool mom. I'll go surfing and parachuting with her; she would brag to her friends, "My mom has six different iPods!"; I'll buy her a Double Scotch on the Rocks on her 21st birthday; and if she ever wants to go to a b-school, we'll gossip about all her professors with vivid details on the phone. I have no idea whether it's gonna be a boy or a girl, but it really doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that we'll make each other happy and proud. I promise us. Just with that thought, my heart suddenly started palpitating in a strange way. I think I just felt a second heartbeat. 9월 21일 Along Came a SpiderI was working in front of my computer this afternoon when the unthinkable happened. A black spider, the size of a thumb nail, suddenly emerged out of nowhere and swiftly descended from mid-air, half-way between me and the computer screen. It was presumably gliding down an invisible thread, with the deftness and determination only paralleled by a well-trained member of the elite counter-terrorism squad. Awed and frozen like a terrorist who was momentarily paralyzed by the sudden assault from the special unit and couldn't decide whether to shoot at them or the hostages, I sat still, looking at the spider land on my keyboard, quietly and unscathed. As smug as the gravity-defying Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. The whole scene took place in less than five seconds. Then I reclaimed my consciousness, realizing that I should catch and kill the spider as a cool, collected, grown-up woman would do, rather than like a screaming silly teenage girl. However, as if it had read my mind, the spider quickly disappeared beneath "F5". Great. Now I had a giant spider living inside my keyboard. I anxiously waited, hoping that it might find the inside of the keyboard too industrial and claustrophobic and decide to get out. But it didn't. Five minutes. Ten minutes. An hour. Now I was at the crossroads: (a) I could either forget about the fact that there was a living spider inside my keyboard -- a situation astoundingly unfit for physical and mental hygiene -- and resume working, or, (b) I could wait for the fugitive to surrender itself, though it might take a long time, or, it might even claim permanent residency to its new-found home. Then I understood better what Paulo Coelho, one of my favorite contemporary writers, once said, "Forgetting is painful. Waiting is painful. But not knowing which one to do is the worst suffering of all." I was tempted to call Tech Support and told them, "Well, I have a hardware-related problem here and need immediate attention." But I dismissed the thought because there was little they could do. You can't set a mouse-trap inside the keyboard. And you can't spray Raid all over it and turn my office into a gas chamber. So I did what I figured was the best thing to do: I called it a day and went home. Tomorrow, it'll be resolutely easier to convince myself that the spider has abandoned its trench and sought alternative shelters. Who knows? I later came to ponder that maybe the spider possesses some dark magic power. Like the snail fairy in my mom's bedtime stories who could cook and do your housework while you're away, the spider might turn out to be my ghostwriter-in-residence, working diligently from my keyboard, finishing my papers, debugging my codes, writing my reviews, designing my lectures. Now, I cannot wait to see what shows up on my computer tomorrow. 9월 11일 Five Years...Five years ago, I landed on the American soil, spent two months in the magic New York City, with whom I instantly fell in love, and, then, one morning, I turned on TV, and watched, in real time, how a catastrophe befell the city and its people, leaving a scar that would never fully heal. On such a black anniversary, all words fail. So I'm posting a link to a song instead. It's Sting's performance of 'Fragile' on September 11, 2001. He was scheduled to give a concert that evening. Due to what happend in the morning, the band performed that single song and shut off the concert and the Webcast. It seems to me that nothing would fit the mood of the day better. May the lost rest in peace. "If blood will flow When flesh and steel are one Drying in the color of the evening sun Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away But something in our minds always stay On and on the rain will fall Perhaps this final act was meant To clinch a lifetimes argument That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could For all those born beneath an angry star Lest we forget how fragile we are On and on the rain will fall Like tears from a star like tears from a star On and on the rain will say How fragile we are how fragile we are"  9월 3일 "Little Miss Sunshine"A surprisingly funny and heartwarming indie comedy. Honest-to-goodness and free of all Hollywood-style pretensions. Like the breath of fresh air you take when stepping out of a bar. It's an ensemble movie about a clearly dysfunctional family: all members have their frustrations, quirks, neuroses, yet all managed to hop in an old VW bus on a journey to California, in support of Olive, the seven-year-old daughter, to realize her dream of winning the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Olive's father, Richard (Greg Kinnear), is a motivational speaker who invented a nine-step program for success but has been mostly a disappointment himself. Richard and his wife, Sheryl, have just taken under their roof Sheryl's brother, Frank (Steve Carell), the number-one Marcel Proust scholar in the U.S., who fell in love with a male graduate student and recently attempted suicide when the student lept into the bed of the number-two Proust scholar. Olive's brother, Dwayne, a troubled, Niesche-adoring teenager, has taken a vow of silence and not spoken a word for months. Olive also has a drug-snorting, porn-loving grandpa (Alan Arkin) who coaches her on the dance routine. Given these colorful characters, it is not surprising their bus tour to California would be an eventful one. But what is amazing is how the director Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris made their life-size drama realistic, human, and hypnotically charming. The script is hilarious, but not a single line is out of character. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. And there are also moments of struggle and love that would make you cry (which I nevertheless refrained from doing in the theater, for it'd appear rather pathetic to sob when you watch a movie by yourself on a Saturday night). You'll end up loving all the characters despite their flaws. And you'll feel you've been in that bus too, stuck with failure, crushed dreams, and the realization that you were probably not one of the Beauty Queens of the world, but, fortunately, you still have the unconditional love from the people who are called your family. Trailer here. 9월 1일 Plutonic LoveMy scientific literacy development ground to a halt by elementary school. Whatever I learned afterwards about science and nature was emptied out of my brain regularly, typically after quizzes, midterms and finals, which runs parallel to my current compulsive cleaning-up of my computer's recycle bin once a day. I never felt the need to update. Because what we learned in the science textbooks in elementary school seems to be the absolute, indisputable truths. Heat expands, cold contracts. Stuff breaks down to molecules, which then break down to atoms, and, then, electrons and protons and neutrons. We live in the solar system, in which nine planets orbit around the sun. Oops. We've got a problem here. Last week, the International Astronomical Union met in Prague, passed a new definition of the planet, effectively demoting Pluto from the status of a planet to that of a "dwarf planet." So now, there are only eight of them; Pluto, being ridiculed for being too small, was stripped of his epaulettes and kicked out of the planet club. For one thing, such a taxonomic fluff doesn't make sense to me -- scientists should have better things to do than shuffling labels around with Post-it's. Moreover, I took this personally. Pluto is, or was, my favorite planet. True, Pluto doesn't seem to belong in the country club. It's too cool for the other eight. It's idiosyncratic, mysterious, private, too distant from the Earth to be landed with a voyeuristic robot; it has a bizarrely oblong orbit of 247 years' worth of revolution cycle, part of which intersects with Neptune's orbit; it has a large moon, Charon, which looks almost like its twin. But should we ostracize Pluto because it's eccentric? And what about people like me who love Pluto? And me being a Scorpio, Pluto is supposed to be my ruling planet. Now my horoscope is shut; I'm denied of cosmic guidance. Should I still call Pluto my ruling planet-like/thing? And, what if some linguistic pundits were to meet in some former Soviet colony and vote 'q', the least used English letter, off the alphabet, maintaining that 'q', in fact, is just a 'dwarf letter', or 'assistant letter'? Sure it'd help to make the whole 'Iraq' headache evaporate. But what happens to someone named 'Jacqueline'? Just because something appears off the center stage doesn't mean it is inconsequential. The astronomers argued that if Pluto were counted a planet, then some other small icy rocks and asteroids, like Xena, Sedna and Ceres, would also qualify as planets. My take? Give me back my Pluto, and I'll try to tolerate all his boorish relatives. Can't everyone see that Pluto is way out of their league? Just look at the names. Ceres, Xena, Sedna -- these sound like off-the-rack names for Toyota's next car model. Pluto is the God of the Underworld. And labeling it a dwarf planet doesn't make it a demigod. So that's the catch: amidst all this academic squabble, my insouciant Pluto doesn't care a bit what they said. 8월 18일 FallOn my way to work this morning, I was almost shocked by what I saw: leaves -- golden, orange, red, some still green -- are falling from the trees. Summer is nearing an end. Why was I still thinking summer just started? I've had a maddening work schedule for a couple of months, and whatever time I could spare, I tried to spend indoors on the piano, grappling with Chopin's Etudes in an attempt to restore my stiff fingers and rusty memory to some slight resemblance of virtuosity. So, before I realized it, between the mathematical and musical notes, the scenery outside my windows was surreptitiously changing, and summer sneaked away without a trace. It felt like a momentary metamorphosis, like the scene in the movie "Once Upon a Time in America": a young and handsome "Noodles" (Robert de Niro) looked into the mirror and the shot got blurred; when the camera re-focused, his face in the mirror was wrinkled, eyes dim, hair grey -- twenty or so years flashed by in a blink. Such is the quiet yet certain flow of time -- the most overt and the best hidden truth of the universe. Its power lies in its paradox. Time is the best teacher, but it kills all its students; it is the panacea for all wounds and heartaches, but its own damage is beyond cure. I picked up a fallen leaf and tucked it in my notebook. It was almost perfectly symmetric, green on the outer rim, deep red in the center, surrounded by a golden halo -- a dainty souvenir, remotely reminiscent of a sprightly spring and an exuberant summer. And I could not help but think of Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay": "Nature's first green is gold. Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower. But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief. So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay." In memoriam.  8월 11일 Legal NegligenceSo the saying goes that only two things are certain in life: death and taxes. But if you're living in the U.S., sooner or later there's a third unavoidable: jury duty. I've heard my friends complaining about this unpleasant and time-consuming civil duty, but I had never thought -- since I'm not a US citizen-- that I would ever get summoned for juror service. Well, that was until a few weeks ago, when I got a notice from the Jury Administrator of the State of Connecticut Judicial Branch, ordering me to report for jury duty on July 19, 2006 at the New Haven Superior (not Supreme) Court. Fortunately, the enclosed form listed a few items that can exempt me from jury duty, including one that states I'm not a U.S. citizen. I could also be happily exempted if I were older than 70 years old (This doesn't make sense to me at all -- first, I've seen plenty of perfectly healthy elderly people; second, elderly people have the amplest amount of free time, which would make them ideal candidates for jurors), or if I didn't understand English (Uh huh... How am I supposed to read the instruction if I don't understand English? And, how could any U.S. citizen possibly not understand English?), or if I were incapable of serving due to physical or mental disability (which I'd be tempted to take advantage of if no other excuse should work), or if I had been convicted of a felony within the past seven years (Only seven years?), or if I were currently in prison (which totally makes sense), among others. So I assiduously checked the box "Not a U.S. citizen" and mailed it back. However, I got another letter today with a bone-chilling heading of "WARNING": "You failed to appear for juror service on 07/19/2006. Failure to report for jury duty is a violation of Connecticut State Law. If you do not appear for jury duty or satisfy a condition listed below, you will be subject to legal action." Apparently, they either didn't receive or didn't properly process my previous reply. (There goes my belief in big governments -- am I turning a Republican or an anarchist?) From the same list of exceptions provided, I checked once again the not-a-US-citizen box. And, this time, I also checked the not-a-Connecticut-resident box, since I've moved to another state. Runaway juror? 8월 10일 "The Devil Wears Prada" (2006)The movie, based on Lauren Weisberger's best-selling debut novel, feels like the high fashion that saturates the movie: glamorous, lightweight, superficial and deliciously entertaining. (Trailer here.) Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), a bright yet naive young girl, comes to New York City and lands a job -- one that "a million girls would kill for" -- as assistant to Miranda Priesley (Meryl Streep), editor-in-chief of the leading fashion magazine, Runway. (It helps to know that Ms. Weisberger briefly worked as assistant to Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue.) Miranda is on top of her profession, powerful, celebrated, talented, razor-sharp, but she is also career-obsessed, selfish, manipulative, impossibly demanding and emotionally abusive -- a demonic boss in all senses. The story, for Andy, is one of transformation and reclamation. At the start of her job, she is a well-grounded, high-minded girl aspiring to be a journalist and barely knows anything about fashion. (She asks, "How do you spell Gabbana?" when taking a phone message. And her outfit on the first working day -- an Oxford blouse under a blue cable-knit sweater matched by a blue-and-grey argyle skirt -- is ridiculed by her coworkers -- Emily, Miranda's other assistant asks her, "do you have some prior commitment? Like some hideous skirt convention you have to go to?") But as Andy learns to survive in the fashion world and put up with Miranda's sadistic demands, she becomes a glossy girl snugly dressed in Chanel and Gucci and heeled with Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik, basks in the electrifying glamour of the fashion world, and gradually distances herself from her love, friendship, and, most importantly, her true self. As Miranda makes it increasingly clear to Andy that she has to compromise her principles to gain a professional edge, Andy realizes that to become another Miranda, despite the power and glamour that tempt her, would cost her integrity, loyalty, and personal relationships -- a price she cannot afford to pay. So the moral of the story is: the question of what you do is not as important as that of who you are, and it ultimately comes down to personal choices to stay true to oneself. It belongs to a school of urban coming-of-age stories -- an innocent and aspirant youth comes to a big city, becomes the protege of a powerful figure, who represents worldly success, corruption and evil, and eventually turns against his/her master when morally tormented. Another cinematic example would be Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), a much deeper and darker film than The Devil Wears Prada. But haute coutures and fashion models obviously look more appealing onscreen than stock indices, and this makes The Devil Wears Prada a more sartorially pleasing and cinematographically gratifying entertainment for a summer night -- not to mention that the director David Frankel and costume designer Patricia Field are both veterans of HBO's Sex and the City. The true highlight of the movie, though, is the stunning performance by Meryl Streep, who, with her silver hair, refined features, whispery speech, aristocratic gracefulness and impeccable poise, gives the female Mephistopheles a measure of sophistication, magnetism and humanity, and renders this movie - an otherwise gaudy showcase of shiny designer clothes, mannequins, and montages - clever, charming and enjoyable. 7월 25일 North of BostonLanguage is a world of proud organic beings. A word or an expression remains cold, silent and lifeless, like a stuffed animal in the museum, until you rediscover it, or rather, enliven it, at a magic moment of experiential connection: then it suddenly lights up, warms up, flutters its wings across the mysterious cultural space that we share with the interesting minds of the past, and becomes a living creature with color, sound, and texture, and most important of all, reveals a meaning of order and significance -- not so much for itself as for our own existence in a chaotic universe. I have recently relocated from New Haven, CT, to Hanover, NH, a town with a population of 10,000 on the Connecticut River bordering New Hampshire and Vermont. The physical act of moving to a new place always entails a certain feeling of dislocation: it is not really an annoyance or inconvenience of any kind; it is more of a stranger's detachment, like living in a big, transparent bubble that isolates you from truly immersing yourself in the new environment. And one symptom of that appeared to be: I couldn't found the right words to describe where I am now -- Any exact geographical description just sounds pale: merely saying that "I live in San Francisco." or "I'm from Provence." is sufficient to bring out all the rich associations embodied by the name of the place, but saying that "I live in Hanover, New Hampshire" means little. The other day, I was driving on I-89 North from Boston towards home, when the title of Robert Frost's 1915 poetry collection suddenly flashed in my mind: North of Boston. The phrase had appeared so ordinary to me, an understatement even for the self-effacing poet. But now, out of the blue, I was able to imbibe thoroughly the weight and flavor of these three simple words, geographically, meteorologically, culturally, psychologically. It was as if I finally found a meaningful axis for my new life. Sometimes words are like fugitives: I searched for them in vain, and came upon them in the most unlikely places, much like how I found the right tempo for Beethoven's piano sonata No. 8 from a purring dysfunctional air-conditioner. North of Boston. So that's where I am now. 6월 29일 Hong Kong ImpressionI'm scribbling this piece down onboard Cathay Pacific Flight 830 departing Hong Kong. 35,000 feet in altitude. 8,600 miles -- or fifteen hours -- away from New York City. Tori Amos's song "China" naturally came to mind: "China, all the way to New York./ I can feel the distance getting close..." The summer in Hong Kong is irritatingly muggy, with the heat and the humidity chasing each other to new heights like a double helix -- walking outdoors is not much different from pacing around in a tiny, ill-ventilated bathroom after you have taken a long, hot shower. My hotel room looks out to the Victoria Harbour as well as the splendid skyline on the Hong Kong Island. At night, the skyscrapers standing on the rolling hills are densely lit against a velvet blue sky, with a few boats ferrying between Kowloon and the Island in the dark, glistening water. At that moment, Hong Kong transforms from her loud, vivacious, short-tempered and somewhat insecure daytime self, which exudes an awkward ambivalence towards her double cultural identity as a Western-Asian, to a self-assured and mysterious femme fatale who charms at every glimpse and whisper. My last day in Hong Kong was the free-roaming day. Done with my conference talk, bored by the endless sessions, and running out of local friends to hang out with, I realized that only one thing could salvage my otherwise bogged stay in Hong Kong: Shopping. The Harbour City Shopping Center is a formidable mammoth. If you think trudging in the block-long Macy's is a pain, imagine it multiplying itself by four or six -- exhaustive search is the first principle to be forgone after half an hour of hopeless marching. The Canton Road, a busy thoroughfare patched with scaffolds and construction sites --when you walk on the sidewalk, water from air-conditioners on higher floors drips on your head -- feels like Chinatown marrying the Fifth Avenue: architectural dumpsters house boutiques such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Burberry, Cartier, and Salvatore Ferragamo. If you're willing to comb between and beyond these ubiquitous, self-congratulatory global brands, you'll be able to discover some lesser-known Asian and European designer brands that are marked with more originality and are more sensibly priced. These are the true gems on the Hong Kong shopping scene. Talking about serendipity! After plunging into a buying spree that fueled itself with energy and ingenuity, I came to the enlightenment that shopping in an unfamiliar currency offers unusual freedom: when you are spending in, say, HK dollars, it is rather easy to forget (or willfully ignore) the difference between 600 and 6,000. (Given the jarring ferocity of my splurge in a foreign city, I would not scruple to dump my Citi credit card if its identity-theft detection department doesn't call me in the next few days.) The gentleman sitting next to me on the plane, after knowing that I was visiting Hong Kong for the first time, asked me whether I liked it. I told him I did: Hong Kong is culturally diverse, convenient, and highly livable -- great food, superb service, easy access to other Asian metropolises. But my feeling towards Hong Kong is more mixed than clear-cut, especially given the possibility of settling down there. Every city, I think, offers two distinct qualities: reality and illusion. Reality is about the convenience, comfort, and variety of day-to-day living. Illusion is about the impractical, larger-than-life aspects of a city's physical and cultural character: idealism, beauty, inspiration, and aspiration. Hong Kong, for me, excels in the former and somewhat lacks in the latter.     |
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