the link is going to disappear

If you care to read, the blog entries about the UK trip is now finalized. I thought I would add a lot more, but things seem not very interesting by now, so this is only a slight update.

And, for those who insist to go through my CS homepage to here (yes I know someone is wasting an extra click every day): you better bookmark this page now, as the link on CS homepage to here would gradually fade out and eventually completely disappear. It is a randomized link with a certain probability of appearing, and this probability will be decreasing...

越黎越渣

A professor and his three students A, B, C (in descending order of age) are having lunch to be paid by B, supposingly to "celebrate" B finding a job. Somehow the conversation includes something like:

C: 我比B 教過的
B: 我都比A 教過的
Prof: 而家D 學生越黎越渣
A,B,C: ...

where am I going?

So... what do all these mean? Will I be teaching in a second Iraq?

no title

So, it's done. After a week's struggle - you probably don't understand. A move for someone who never left HK any longer than 2 weeks. A decision that certainly affects my career, possibly whether I can chase girls, and perhaps where I will live in the rest of my life. I don't know why I do it, I don't know whether it is good to do it. But anyway, it's done. The first one to leave HK for permanent academic jobs while remaining single in the theory group, as far as I know. An embarassing dishonour.

You know what this story tells you, right?

成功乞食

恭喜霍會長成功乞得唔之咩項目主辨權... 真係令我無面見人...

King's Cross St. Pancras

Exactly one month ago, at the same morning rush hour, I was in this station on my way to Leicester... and it is the location having the largest number of people killed in this attack. (Is that a warning that I should not go? ...)

Last year I was in Paris and two months after I left, the roof of a terminal of Charles de Gaulle airport collapsed... For people's lives, perhaps I should not go to anywhere else...

芝加哥之死

吳漢魂，中國人，卅二歲，文學博士，一九六零年六月一日芝加哥大學畢業──

白先勇，《芝加哥之死》

點算？

點解？點解？你叫我而家點算？我唔想走呀！我真係唔想走......！夠了，唔好恭喜我......
:(
有冇人可以俾的鼓勵我唔走嘅意見/理由...唔該...

新的特首

So we finally have our 新的特首. And could all those people on TV stop keep on saying the word 的 when talking about this 新的特首 ? Yeah I know they interpret the law again to say this is a 新的特首 , not 新任特首 ... but can't you just skip the 的 ? Isn't 新特首 fine? Or 新嘅特首 is also fine, right?

Anyone still want to do algorithms?

Job finding can be particularly frustrating when you know that universities in Hong Kong do recruit people, but only those doing databases like him and him...

Every country needs CS faculty...

I better take back my words around two weeks before. I hope what I heard is not true: well, a visiting/guest is finally moving to T... anyway, not a country I'd like to go. (You don't have the European Champions League Final at the same country every year, do you?) But it seems he has some connections over there before.

What makes me more worried is with his "background", the "shine" he got is still not enough to allow him to stay here (?). As for his ability, on one hand he has been PC member for some conferences; on the other hand you can know how "good" his teaching is by googling...

UK trip day 4

This is supposed to be a free travel day, but actually not much is done. First, a 3-hour train from Liverpool back to London occupies the whole morning. Before going to the airport, I have only around 2 - 3 hours in London. I only go around Westminster, the Big Ben, and the London eye. This is a Saturday and there is a lot of people everywhere. I could have gone to a bit more places, but the admin people of the underground decided to close two lines on weekends, which are exactly those that passes through some tourist attractions. Another line is having "severe delay".
I end up travelling along almost the same path returning to the starting point. Then I reach the airport only to know that the flight is delayed by an hour...

UK trip day 3

In the morning I took a 2-hour train to Liverpool. It needed a change, and the first train was small and crowded, but the second train was fine. When I arrived, Prudence was already waiting me at the train station. She took me to have the famous "fish and chips" as lunch. According to what she said, that is a better one around there and I find it acceptable, too!

We walked up to the campus. Her office is situated in the same floor as some radioactive laboratories. And the building has a real lot of doors - every now and then you open a door and get into a very small closed area with three other doors at the three other sides...

And the talk itself. There are exactly five people including Prudence in the audience. That's good, as I didn't have even a bit of preparation for it. And one of them made the important observation that the "motivation" of the research has absolutely nothing to do with the scheduling problem being studied!

After the talk we walk around the city, in particular going to the Liverpool football club souvenir shop. And it is exactly on this day that the UEFA announced that Liverpool can defend their European Champion title. See I bring good luck here, shouldn't they give me some free souvenirs?

UK trip day 2

This is the day of formal interview. In the morning it is the talk. There are a total of 4 candidates, and they do it in alphabetical order of surnames. Still, having a surname starting F, I'm the third one to give the talk.

The talk itself is not too bad; at least this is what I think. They do it in a lecture theatre, which is not something I expected. Around 10 - 20 people there. They ask quite a number of questions, some of which I'm not entirely clear as to their relevance, like "where do you do this research"...

They take us to lunch in a staff restaurant. As usual, I don't speak in lunch...

In the afternoon there is a formal interview. Interview panel 有五個人：chair 的是個比美國國防部長拉姆斯菲爾德面口稍為好一點的 pro-vice-chancellor. 一個是 CS dept head, 另一個也是 CS faculty staff, 一早見過的。還有貌似聯合國秘書長安南的 law department professor, 與及貌似愛恩斯坦的一位 structural biologist. 至於 interview 的慘況就不要提了... 正當我 nervous 得答非所問，張口結舌之際，我眼尾望到阿秘書小姐係到向我扮鬼臉... 之後似乎答得好左dd...

After the interview I go back to the city centre... and like many other places in Europe, shops close at exactly 5 pm. At 6 pm or so I'm buying food from a KFC which, well, is only semi-operating... Along the way I also heard some Cantonese for the first time here...

UK trip day 1

[So I've finally come back from UK. I have very limited internet access over there and hence not blogging; but to make it more clear what's going on, let's pretend I'm writing this every day during the trip... (12/6/05)]

I arrive London early in the morning. Since I'm not the one to pay, an expensive airline is chosen. But expensive is not always the same as good: the flight is the coldest I have ever taken, one of the toilet is closed for repair, my screen is basically not functioning, etc.

Anyway, after that I took the underground and then a 75-minute train to Leicester. I had a short walk around the city centre for a while, before going to the university in the afternoon to visit the faculty "informally". It's really sunny over there and I feel it even hotter than Hong Kong...

As reported in this page there are lots of Indians there. Not much Chinese in the city, but quite some Chinese students in the campus, although the campus is within walking distance to the city centre. The first four Chinese characters that I see in the city is 專業剪髮 ...

I meet with four faculty staff and a PhD student, all in the Algorithms and Complexity group. Perhaps the most important observation is that one of them has a wife from mainland China, another has a Taiwanese wife, yet another has some connections with Chinese that I don't remember...

free trip (2)

For several years I've been trying to hide myself from the truth. Now that a free trip is really put in front of me, I'm finally forced to think seriously about the cruel reality of the world. Am I really prepared to go away??? Why can't I be like some people who seem to hang around as visiting or guests forever?

Anyway. I'll be going here first, and afterwards have a visit to Prudence.

Sir X X memorial scholarship

Today I phoned the Sir X X memorial fund council dealing with some trouble of a scholarship I got many years ago. At the end when I finally mentioned my name, she said she has "a bit of impression" about my name. Gee... how could that happen??

BTW, I still keep a booklet issued by them listing all the scholarship recipients of that year. Apart from some funny names, there are actually two of my girl students / classmates in HKU. They were still in high school by then; and they probably don't remember this anyway.

pyfung @ FMO

I suppose there is someone called P. Y. Fung in the FMO (Facilities and Management Office) in CityU; I'm constantly receiving emails asking this pyfung to reserve a car park [slot], close [lock] the door of a certain room, or send a security guard to somewhere...

free trip

While my boss is not (yet) successful in kicking me over the Pacific Ocean, I am accidentally kicking myself the other way round, across the Asia and mainland Europe to an island. While a free trip is fine, it would be a huge trouble of thinking whether to accept it if they give me an offer. But their ad is the first one that I've ever seen that asks for people doing online algorithms...

Yesterday I have dinner with some LG101 colleagues. They discovered a "rule" that theory group PhD graduates will go overseas if get married, and will stay in Hong Kong if remain single. There are exceptions to this on one side, but not the other side. Now I'm worrying...

蜈蚣

I'm typing this post while inhaling pesticide...

The CS general office is under renovation and caused our office to have no electricity for the long weekend. When I come back today, I am told that they discovered there is a 蜈蚣 in our office, and pesticide is therefore applied to this room last night. As you can expect, this room is now full of the smell of pesticide...

Ar yeah, this office is shared with five other people, all from mainland. Back in HKU I also remember seeing a lot of "interesting" creatures in Haking Wong building. Hmm...