A Story About A Friend of Mine

I met a friend in University who loves music. (I'm the opposite of him. You play any music to me and I'd think it's a good piece.) He started when he was 6 and music has never left him since then. Coupled with his character of always being stern on himself, his pursuit in the music world can only be described as being higher every time he tries something new.

Being a violinist, it wasn't a surprise that he joined the University's orchestra back in our first year. It was a playground for him to shine but it wasn't good enough for him. In fact, he was tired of the constrains from traditions and maybe somewhat sick of get-it-done-already culture they had. He went through a period of being cynical, a period where nothing is good enough for him. He told me a lot about things he didn't like and how he thought they should be like. It was more criticisms than action so I remember deciding to confront him: "If you really think things should be done differently, why don't you set up your own orchestra?". He looked back at me hollowly and didn't return a word.

Several months later, I bumped into him in the Computer Centre while he was typing out some serious looking document. He told me they were job descriptions of the positions he's going to recruit for his orchestra. My first reaction: "Are you serious?!"

He was. And he proved to me that not only was he serious, he was determined to make it happen. The following six months was a lot of intensive organisation formation, working meetings, marketing and promotion (and a lot of sleepless nights). He started to learn conducting, took courses on music science and went out day and night to find sponsors. Every milestone he achieves, his becomes one step closer to his goal.

Scepticism that initially ran throughout me was slowly replaced with hope and expectation. Everything that seemed like an unachievable challenge at first was overcome, one way or the other. And finally ..

Three days ago, his plan was executed flawlessly right in front of my eyes. I am sure the smile showing on his face when he finally turned around on the conducting stage to bow and to thank the 300 or so audience who witnessed the very first concert by the orchestra he set up, reflected the sense of achievement he had when all his efforts are acknowledged.

So this is a story of my friend who had a passion, realised a problem and made a difference.

Well done, Sean!

University Life: Hall

Phone rang. Picked up. A secretary voice started speaking: "Can you move in this Friday?". ... Wait a second, so I really got accepted for Starr? That phone call marked the beginning of it all.

First year. By the time I moved in and settled down, it was already mid-way through the second semester. The only thing I remember was the plentiful of inter-floor soccer and basketball matches. Thank you James for showing me around. Your presence certainly made my early getting-to-know-everyone-and-everything days easier.

So came the second year. A bunch of freshies moved in revitalising our floor. Room visits, swimming gala, Starr festival, superpass, library diving team, all are part of the memories now. Finally get to experience (in full) what  the Starr traditions are.

Final year. Started off with the information day. Helped out a bit in the orientation camp. When you're here for the 2.5-year, things are predictable. Things get less exciting, but there is still anticipation of how things would work out with different faces. The cycle keeps turning around - people come and go. I go back to the same room, same side, same setting, same roommate. This might sound a bit dull right now, but honestly, even if the above had changed, it wouldn't have made my hall life more exciting if the chemistry between people hadn't change. I enjoy that chemistry.

What do I like most? It's strange, but I just love to see how people change before and after they are here. It's the most interesting thing in Starr, and it never fails to fascinate me. Freshies come in and realise everything is totally new. Many are shocked while some might have heard of stories already. They start to take a look at how people around them behave and try to blend in. Slowly, you form your own view of how things should happen, you change. Sometimes the real change isn't just about the behaviour, it is about the way you think. People come in, they say stuff during room visits, they sometimes make promises, they talk about things they wanted to do. You look at them after one year, how many have realised what they think they wanted to do? How many of them have left their comfort zone and tried something new? I'm in no position to judge others, but it would be interesting to benchmark yourself and ask "Are you still the you you wanted to be?"

So that was my 2.5 years at Starr. Yesterday night I was packing and this thought that almost everything I was doing, things like doing the laundry, taking a shower, sleeping in my bed are going to be the last time I do them - I won't be doing them anytime soon, at least not in Starr. But then I reminded myself that I miss the place not because of all these small trivial things, I miss it because of the time I was here. So, I don't really need to add meanings to the "last" things really.

Now that I've checked out, I know would miss the people, a lot. We'd all have to move on one day, but be in touch. :D

年輕人之間流行的核心價值

香港的年輕人之間流行的「核心價值」，大抵可以分幾類。首先「競爭族」，他們相信競爭，相信遊戲規則不可改變的中產價值，情況就像那些被大學各學系吹捧出來的傑出畢業生——一畢業後就加入投資銀行，賺4萬多元月薪那種。他們認為，社會是不可被改變的，所以你要不就留下來跟這個社會死過，要不就自動的離開。而且，他們沒有對或錯，只有成功和失敗。他們認為，只要你夠成功，做什麼錯事都不會有事。你看看？李永達曾在立法會中說過：買叉燒呃秤都要畀人拉，買樓呃秤就冇人理。只要你夠大，就沒有什麼可以說。林海峰在電台節目中說，看到陳志雲的新聞，想：「為什麼是陳志雲？」其中一個「競爭族」的友人跟我說：「陳志雲為什麼會被ＩＣＡＣ搞（他用搞，不用拉，或拘捕）？因為他不是政協囉！」對啊對啊，對啊對啊，競爭族相信，他們都相信if you are big enough, bad enough，做什麼都可以。

—— 節錄自健吾於明報刊登之歲月偷走的價值

Do people with 競爭族 (competition-oriented believers) characteristics exist among us? Competition fosters motivation, encourages humans to work hard(er) and improves efficiency. This theory holds true under the assumption that the system is entirely driven by the market and only by the market itself. Whenever there is a system in place to regulate market forces, it then must do equity by ensuring the society is operating under full meritocracy.

Shouldn't we learn to look beyond beating the system and learn to work on improving it, shaping it the way that is better for everyone?

New Theme

The Blogger Template Designer was launched on Thursday to make customising the look and layout of blogs way more simple. So I decided to give it a try. It was so simple that I was pretty soon addicted and got stuck between several themes that I really liked. After switching back and forth for a while, I've finally, I made up my mind - maple leaves for 楓, orange as a warm colour for vibrant.

How do you like the new theme?

The Darkroom

Sight does not live in any eye.

Insight can dawn on every mind.

75 minutes in complete darkness is too short to truly understand what it means to live without vision but the experience shall be memorable long enough. I do not intend to stir up too much hype here, but the exhibition at Dialogue in the Dark is definitely worth trying.

Here is what you can expect:

Total darkness - you can try put your hand right in front of your face and you won't be able to see a thing, but you'd feel it. I gave up trying to 'see' what is around me after 5 minutes, for most of the time, I closed my eyes and opened my long lost sensory.

Insecurity - For most of the time, you'd be following the walls as you walk in the dark but once you're in the middle of no where, you can feel rather helpless. But don't worry, the exhibition is a totally protected environment sealed from the outside evil.

Spatial awareness - For some reason, you won't bump into each other that often. There is something that tells you there is someone next to you, or in front of you. You're more aware of the distance between others.

Fun - You would love the experience and want more. No doubt about it.

Outside the exhibition hall.

Know ye not that ye are gods

Warning: This post contains spoilers of "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown. Do not proceed if you do not wish to know the content of the book.

The ending reiterates of the holistic theme surrounding the entire book (or even Brown's own personal beliefs) - 'Know ye not that ye are gods?'. With the source of life and the universe adequately covered in Angels and Demons, Apocalypse is "explained", i.e. the future of the human civilization.

"The Apocalypse is not the end of the word, but rather it is the end of the world as we know it. The prophecy of the Apocalypse is just one of the Bible's beautiful messages that has been distorted."

According to the book, instead of the created, humans are the creator, we create the world. We are the gods of ourselves. Our minds are the most powerful machine ever created that is capable of shaping our 'new world'. While the detailed reasoning can be found in the storyline, I do find the book rather encouraging as an agnostics (for obvious reasons). A meaningful read for a new year's commencement! Make the most out of  2010 (I insist it being read twenty-ten), everyone!

Internal Censorship

Image credit: Andréia

I was shocked when I learnt that many secondary schools in Hong Kong vigorously exercise certain degree of "supervision" over various school publications. Students were asked to "make sure that articles about the School Improvement Project is positive and glamorous“ or that comments on school policies "not to be too critical". Articles which fail to meet such "criteria" would be barred from publication or need to be re-drafted.

I understand the reasons for putting a teacher in charge of various school publications which are mainly run by students to provide generic guidance and to offer advice when needed. But to teach our youths to write articles in favour of the school when students do not generically buy into such ideas is certainly detrimental to their learning. I do not see any harm in allowing our students to write whatever they think is true, given that they truly believe so. Schools should be a place that tolerate mistakes and provide for an environment where multilateral ideas are accepted and respected. I see no justification why a school's image should, in any case, be placed before the right to freedom of expression. After all, we do not want schools that produces loudspeakers that speaks for those in power.

Do not blame our younger generation for accepting the status quo when our schools are teaching us to do so.

Logic Question

Apparently this question was asked in a job interview for Google. Try your computation power and see if you could get a job at Google.

There are 100 floors in a building. You have two eggs. If the eggs will only break once it is thrown from a height beyond a particular floor. In what pattern would you throw the eggs off the building in order to locate that particular floor with the least amount of throws.

For example, if you throw an egg beginning from the first floor until you reach the particular floor, it would take you 99 times if the particular floor the eggs would break is 99th floor. Which obviously, is not the most efficient pattern of experiment.

Highlight the text below to see the answer:
Divide building into ten intervals. Throw an egg on each interval beginning from the ground floor until it breaks. Then start throwing the remaining egg from the immediate lower interval, floor by floor, in ascending order. When the egg breaks, you've got the particular floor.


For instance, if the particular floor is 78, you'd throw an egg at 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75 ,76, 77, 78th floor in order, where bold are the floors in which the eggs would break. So it would take you at most, 18 throws to locate that particular floor (no matter where within the 100th floor it is located), assuming that the egg must break on one of the 100th floors.


Thanks to Joe for bring my attention to this question.

Is Migrating Data Online Safe?

That was the gist of question I asked Google's CEO Eric Schmidt earlier on. The answer (now featured at the Times Online) I got back from him was as follows:

Keith,

Let me say first that cloud computing is the future. But the concerns that people have about security in cloud computing are understandable: some people like to be able to see their computer server to know that's exactly where their data is. It's somewhat parallel to the banking system: early on, people believed that their money was safer under their mattress than in a bank, but all the systems and rules that have evolved over time do not support that belief.

You can look at cloud computing in a similar way. We have built and continue to build a lot of security protection into our applications to protect your privacy and your information. Consider also that if you put your data on one drive in your home and it gets stolen or damaged, then you have lost it permanently - I remember reading various articles in the British press about government officials losing sensitive data on laptops, CDs, memory sticks and the like.

As well as trying very hard to ensure your data is kept private and secure, we also recognize that you want to own your own data. We actually have an initiative called Data Liberation that is dedicated to making sure you can export your personal information — your mail, contacts, photos and so forth — from any Google property anytime you want, and take it with you to another service.

The original question was: "Cloud computer is seen as the future of computing but many are still not convinced by the security measures taken by companies to protect data privacy. How do you think the web can be more made secure and safe for everyone to migrate data online?"

Orientation (Again)

The season for orientations have begun. You would see people dressed with the same colour t-shirt (often bright and this year, a new trend of having a towel wrapped around their necks) wandering on the streets, some running some sweating some following. They would shout for seemingly no reason, do bizarre things that pass-byers cannot comprehend, but they know this is probably the only chance they can get to make friends, so they did it. I was one of them - two years ago.

I have nothing against orientations. Fact is, you do get to know more people. And I know the organisers have put in tremendous amount of efforts and plenty sleepless nights to make it happen, it's exhilarating.

But to those who are still out there trying to pack as many orientation days, camps or nights into your August, if you ever fear you won't be able to make friends without attending them, rest assure, orientations is just one of the many other means. There is much more in University life which opens you up to great people. It was true for me. In fact, 95% of the people I am closest to now (and probably for the rest of my life), were met during various coincidences outside the orientation period for the simple reason that I believe artificial groupings is foreign to our social skills. Orientations are often designed with the idea to create memories in mind. According to Cambridge Dictionary, this is "made by people, often as a copy of something natural", i.e. artificial.

It'd be scary at first, but have faith in yourself, you'd find the right ones very soon. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

BEA Orientation Day 2009.
If you see nothing here, it's because the photo owner has decided to make this public picture private.