25th anniversary

A prospective applicant asked "when is the department established". (You see here the time of an academic staff is spent on these things.) Fully confident that not more than three people in the department could know the answer, I sent a broadcast email to ask. This led to the discovery that the department is (depending on how you count it) having its 25th anniversary. No one notice that before...

Algorithms textbooks

CLRS has been the standard algorithms textbook for quite many years. Yet in the last minute I decided not to list it as an "essential" textbook. The simple reason is that they refused to give me a free copy (or more precisely, ignored my request). The one I have is a first edition. It's a bit embarassing to fight with students to borrow the library copies, isn't it?

Debit card, issue 2

I never really forget about my personal belongings - haven't even lost a key before. (With a slight exception, that once at a US airport I left behind a bag containing passport and other important things, and walked away only to realize that after two minutes. I rushed back and it's still there. But that's the result of very insufficient sleep.) But within 1 year in UK I've lost my debit card! I think I must have left it behind after paying with it in a supermarket. And I only realize this after a few days. Actually, I felt my wallet being thinner those days, but I just thought it's because "I have no money".

Anyway, the card replacement process is quite smooth and I got my new card today. Except that when I ask the card to be sent to the university branch, they sent it to the city centre branch...

CX 60th anniversary

CX 今年六十週年，我都同佢贈興一下。圖中所見既並唔係個別事件，我一年前就已經親眼見過(雖然唔係呢班/呢架機)，之後亦聽人講過。不佢地成年都唔理個問題，任佢漏水的嗎?

ALGO'06

ALGO'06 is in Zurich, Switzerland this year. An incomplete list of what happened:

(1) It is essentially impossible to get to a flight on time in Heathrow Terminal 4. You go early enough and they won't tell you where to check-in. Self-service check-in machines are hidden behind the fast bag drop queue, which in turn is hidden behind another queue. Before going to security you need to wait outside the airport building. And of course you know the security itself. I went to the gate at 15:52 when the flight was supposed to depart at 15:50. Of course, I could still catch the flight. Half of the people would have missed it if they didn't wait.

(2) Switzerland probably has the most expensive McDonalds among the places I have been to.

(3) As everyone knows, people don't really listen to talks. So they designed something to keep you busy.

(4) Just before my talk, someone looked at my first slide which was already shown on the screen, and asked me "Is Fxxxxxx Cxxx the wife of Andy Yao?"

(5) In a reception, some girls asked me where is the "boy" that was with me. They were referring to Txx-Wxx Lxx. When they knew that he is already a professor, they couldn't close their mouths for a few seconds.

(6) As far as I can remember, I have never been to a conference together with the professor mentioned in (5) above. I should try to do it more in the future. You just hang around with him and some girls will appear and talk to you. I mean, it never happened like this before and it couldn't be me getting more handsome, right?

(7) How many more times do the officers in passport control in London airports like to ask this: "What do you do here?" "Lecturer." "Lecturer! What do you lecture?" How could they sound like surprising when the thing is written on both the visa and the landing card? And should I say "algorithms"?

more applications

Some more interesting applications:

1) A long, long time ago, I told you when you copy assignments, don't put the two copies consecutively into the assignment box. The same holds when you apply to universities. Even when you are applying to different departments.

2) And there is a reason why the Ig Nobel Prize in Literature 2005 is given to people in this country rather than some others.

3) Can anyone tell me how Thailand's calendar works? Is their "September" the 8th month of the year? I don't feel all that comfortable looking at something from future...

香港 vs. 烏茲別克

香港隊做乜忽然咁叻仔，竟然主客兩場都逼和烏茲別克... 雖然出線機會都係好微，但和總好過輸... 范俊業好野!

A new problem in my linux every day

I am using Linux in most of the time with my office PC, and it has just a bit too many nasty problems. Typically they come with no reason and disappear by themselves after several weeks (or months). The PCs are centrally administered and I suppose the technical support people change things every now and then and therefore problems come and go.

The newest invention is that the attachment bar in the bottom of Thunderbird becomes so thin that I can't see and click any attachment in it. And the little plus/minus sign that allows you to expand/collapse the viewing of the complete subject/from/date headers does not work. Well actually it only fails to work for mails with attachment.

Some other problems that get solved by itself included:

1) Chinese characters were displayed normally, then one day all become strange symbols, and then another day the characters came back - with a much better font!

2) Gnome refused to work properly; after the machine was up for a while then gpdf, ggv, gedit, g-whatever all cannot get started. So the very first thing I did after the machine was booted up was to open some pdf or ps files... then it would stay fine.

3) On a few occasions the clock was fast by exactly one hour. Although this one goes away easily (just a reboot).

Bank holiday

OK, I know this is bank holiday, but it is not the only bank holiday, huh? everyone is away this two weeks? The HoD, ex-HoD, ex-ex-HoD, my research mentor, teaching mentor and basically everyone directly "above" me are away...

DODOON 2006

(1) COCOON 主辦單位安排的 tour 其中一站是參觀故宮博物院。Prof. Dxxx Xxxxxxx 在某個商周時期的鼎內刻著的古代文字中，發現了一個「D」字，即場向工作人員詢問相當於今天的那一個字...

(2) 晚上的 conference banquet 變成了唱 K 大會，或者正確點說是 Dr. D X Xxx 的個人演唱會... 另有笑話指某 postdoc 靠唱歌揾到工...

劉江華

左口左面嘅劉議員大發偉論，表示「你話係走狗又好，係朝廷鷹犬又好，係維護香港治安穩定嘅警犬也好，我地始終係一隻狗，就係一塊狗餅都唔可以放過，就係唔可以俾反對派破壞狗糧供應得逞。」發言時個樣型到哩...

其實佢以前係我個區嘅區議員，我冇選過佢，因為佢次次都自動當選。後來唔知黐左邊條線走去空降挑戰某師奶，點知輸左。仲有人整張 banner 賀佢...

「三」號風球

天文台次次掛風球都俾人插，但今次實在太過份，我適逢其會都要鬧埋一份。我唔知天文台風力幾強，我剩係知馬鞍山風力俾好多次八號風球都要強。唔該阿天文台台長唔好係到 X up, 自己行出去睇吓，冧左幾多棵樹，海陸空交通受幾大影響。咁既天氣點可以安全返工返學？根據佢地既解釋，「維港風力怎樣怎樣．．．」而家咁多高樓大廈擋晒 D 風，應該以後都唔會有八號風球．．．

睇黎確保恐怖極權偷聽法例順利立法似乎係唯一合理解釋．．．

另請看你知道天文台欺騙了你嗎？

Coming back

After surviving the heat without air conditioning, I'm on the way back. The train strike is supposed to be cancelled, but still my train is delayed somewhat. At the airport, they are overbooking and can't give me a seat until the very last minute. Just too many people are travelling in the summer... An aisle seat, it turns out.

The aircraft just waits and occasionally moves around on the runway for a whole hour before it finally takes off. But then it arrives half an hour earlier than scheduled...

The purpose of a library

I seldom go to the library here. It has practically none of the books that I want (for example, no book about online algorithms). Last time the department is soliciting book requests for the library to buy, and I managed to trick them to buy some, although they did it just a bit weirdly - now a module has more copies of a reference book stocked than the main text, and an online algorithms book with a chop "received 1998" appears when I'm absolutely sure it wasn't there before.

But this is not the point of this post. This library is among the few places in the campus to have air-conditioning. Looking forward to a 35 degrees Celsius tomorrow, the library suddenly becomes a very nice place.

network rail

I don't know what I did wrongly, but the people at Network Rail simply don't like me and always choose to have a strike only when I need it. Last time the tube was also on strike but it was better - no one collected money for the Heathrow-London Central journey...

So it finally ended

今屆世界杯真係一個字：精采，包括：三黃一紅、批「爭」爆缸、眼底「紅卜卜」嘅 C 朗拿度對你單眼、大量演技粗糙嘅插水與痛苦表情、大陸評述員「偉大的意大利左後衛」事件、葡萄牙荷蘭表演暴力足球、瑞士十二碼全部唔入、巴夫斯排球 手...... 當然重有「施丹鐵頭功」。唔講都唔知世界杯原來係踢波嘅......

England is out

So finally, England is out. It would be a miracle if a team like this can get the World Cup. The primary reason, of course, is Sven-Goran Eriksson:

1. Four strikers. Chose only four strikers, including one who was injured (at that time), one just recovered from injury (at that time), one who can do anything except scoring, and one Eriksson himself don't dare to use. (More about strikers below.)

2. Theo Walcott. I become more or more believed in the joke that Eriksson lost a bet with Arsene Wenger on something and therefore has to bring Walcott to Germany. If you don't dare using him, why bring him there?

3. Crouch, Lampard and the formation. There was the 4-4-2 vs. 4-5-1 issue. I don't have a problem with switching between formations; however, it switched just because of who is available and who is not.

First, people keep on saying Crouch is rubbish. In terms of scoring he is, and you better pick someone else in the first place, but given that no other strikers are there, I think he should play along Rooney. BBC showed an analysis where no England player is within 27 metres of Rooney... how can anyone play in such case? You need someone to support Rooney. And Crouch did hold the ball for some time.

Then, if you play Crouch (or anyone else in a 4-4-2) then someone from midfield get to be sacrificed. I always believe they need a holding midfielder, whoever that is. You just can't play Cole-Lampard-Gerrard-Beckham. Given that Lampard is not performing well, and the Lampard-Gerrard problem that so many people have discussed, I think Lampard should be dropped. But this is not something that Eriksson would do.

4. Penalties. "We practised penalties so much, I really don't know what more we could do about it." said Eriksson. And this completely misses the point. Penalties is not about practice. That's why they will never win a penalty shootout - they simply don't believe they can. Ironically, the only one to get the ball in is one who is least British. But this is not something that Eriksson can solve, I suppose.

Having said all that, I hope Portugal won't win the World Cup. If every team played like them - just imagine a scene where players are all covering their face, rolling on the pitch every minute. It is claimed that it has something to do with Scolari (as in Brazil 2002). I wonder what would happen if Scolari is England coach. Gerrard holding his face rolling on the pitch when he is slightly touched in his chest... so funny just to think of it.

World Cup: three second-round knockouts

The Holland-Portugal match is a shame on football. They are doing everything except playing football: kicking players, diving, rolling on the ground pretending to be injured, stealing the ball that should be given back to the other side, or simply fighting. People say the referee is crazy. I disagree. Obviously he made some wrong decisions, just as all other referees we have seen in this World Cup; but if the players are crazily fouling, there is not much you can do other than crazily giving away cards. In fact, I think he is too lenient, he should give away more cards. (Perhaps both teams should be disqualified and then England go straight into the semi-final...)

The Italy-Australia match is decided by a, well, dive again. When can they use instant-replay or other technologies to aid referee decisions? Until then, there is no way to stop players diving or acting. And stop the "wrong decisions by referee are part of the game" nonsense: so correct decisions are not part of the game? Diving, acting, fighting are part of the game?

And I just don't understand what the Swiss are doing. So they decided to play 120 minutes defensive football to hold onto a 0-0, which they did successfully, but didn't practice penalties? The first team ever to go out without conceding a goal... and refuse to kick in all 3 penalties...

World Cup: 有今生冇來世

正如某講波佬所講，今屆世界盃真係「有今生冇來世」。大量球證錯判本來就司空見慣，冇乜特別，但今次特多一場八張黃牌，三張紅牌等，更在同一場賽事出現「三黃一紅」，「入球前一刻吹雞完場」，「禁區內欖球式防守合法化」等，令人嘆為觀止。

我認為歸根究底都係因為 FIFA，每屆世界盃前都「公佈」一 d「嚴打」項目，(平時就唔理架咩?) 令 d 球證無所適從...

meeting week

This is the week of meetings. In each such meeting, most of the teaching staff gather together for several hours, and at any point in time, 90% of people have absolutely no idea about the module or person being discussed. As usual, there are endless discussions about arbitrary adjustments of some numbers. Even worse, different people seem to be supplied with different versions of spreadsheets full of numbers, adding more confusion to what we are really talking about...