Two mafias meet, at last

Is anyone surprised that the 2018 World Cup go to a Mafia state? Surely everybody is afraid of its boss? (Which is not its president, obviously.) And an organisation so corrupt from top to bottom, under the great leadership of that Sxxx Bxxxxxx guy, surely is to affiliate itself with the biggest Mafia? Looks like a perfect partnership to me.

That said, even ignoring all "political" side of things, it's hard to argue against it. When I first heard about England bidding for it, my first reaction was "you're kidding me." The British media have an inexplicable optimism about the whole thing. (Just like every time they think they are going to win the World Cup with "the strongest squad in N years".) Seriously, why should anyone let them host it? They only won the World Cup once when they happened to be the host (and the ball never crossed the line).

And I dislike the idea of joint bids. It's like having joint winners in "最受歡迎女歌星" (or similar awards) every time. I seem to recall there was a 4-country bid to host some tournament. Sooner or later we will see a 16-country bid thus occupying half the places in the tournament...

And... Qatar? (My jaw dropped and I moved to within one inch of the screen when I saw it - and a student happened to be outside at that instant...) I mean... why? ...how? ...who?

And some responses:

Running two World Cups together was clearly a mistake... It inevitably led to people with votes in 2018 doing deals with people involved in 2022.

England 2018 bid chief executive Andy Anson 

I suppose "mistake" is a polite word. Clearly the FIFA lot designed this on purpose; the more such deals, the more chance of making bribery out of it.

Similarly,

Premier League chairman Richard Scudamore said the fact England have facilities already in place appeared to have counted against them. "They have decided to take the World Cups to developing areas," he said. "What's gone against us is not having to build 20 new stadia..." 

 "Taking the World Cup to under-developed countries" is such a grand sounding and politically correct agenda, but do you really believe that such a corrupt organisation will be so well-hearted? You know, building stadia is another great way of getting your hands on bribery money.

Fifa is an organisation that doesn't have to answer to anyone. What did we expect?

Former England manager Graham Taylor

Now that is to the point. I am long against the "no political influence" principle of FIFA. It probably started with good intentions, preventing dictatorship governments using football to serve their political agenda, etc. But now it has become a shield for FIFA so that they are not accountable to anyone or any government (at least some of which need to listen to people). I sometimes wonder, are they even immune to police arrests? Why should all footballing matters in the world decided by this "elected" president of this organisation (elections with even less democracy than Hong Kong's)? Look at their insistence on not using video technology. How can anyone break this big protection racket in this football governing body now?

I dream about a world where some people stand up against Sxxx Bxxxxxx, start a rebel footballing faction, with its own players, clubs and tournaments. With video technology in refereeing decisions, of course. (I know, it's not going to happen. That's why it is a dream.)

An almost optimal algorithm for locating long runs of zeros in streaming data

The problem. We are given a large number N of data streams, where each data stream consists of n nonnegative integer values arriving over time. At each time step, before the new values arrive, we choose k of these streams, where k << N, and after the values arrive, we get a score equal to the total of the new data values from all k streams. There are various restrictions on how to choose these k streams, the details of which we do not go into here. The objective is to maximize the total score over the course of the n steps.

Our results. Although that is the intended objective, we developed an algorithm that achieves something quite different, in that it locates the streams with long runs of 0s. In fact it also picks out the boundaries of such runs almost optimally, e.g. it switches to another data stream precisely when the next data value is going to be large.

The algorithm. The algorithm can be described very simply as "madness in the author's head".

Evaluation of results. We run our algorithm on the English Premier League 2010/11 season data. This means N > 500, n = 38, k = 11 (or 15). At the time of writing, only 15 weeks have passed, but we already obtained some impressive results:

Figure 1: The algorithm selected this data stream in the weeks shown (in red rectangle). Note how it narrowly missed the two large numbers around the region.

Figure 2: The algorithm picked the precise moment to switch from the first stream to the second, avoiding the two 1s.

中國影帝

[轉貼]

有個人說：三聚氰胺我們一定要嚴查到底！於是趙連海被判兩年半。
有個人說：汶川地震我們一定要嚴查到底！於是譚作人被判五年。 
有個人說：政治改革我們一定要至死方休！於是劉曉波被判十一年。

「有個人」真是個愛國愛民的好官啊...

讀寫障礙

其實現在報館還有沒有校對這個職位的呢，還是記者編輯們都有讀寫障礙？

本來我對這些事早已 「冇眼睇」 (要是每次見到也寫出來，真是從早到晚寫不完)， 但你們也實在頻密了點 ...

容祖兒低留慰問咭及唱片
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/article/101107/18/l4fb.html

事件一直不之之了
http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/template/apple/art_main.php?iss_id=20101106&sec_id=15335&art_id=14632111

被當地兄妹在家中大除掃時撿獲
http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/template/apple/art_main.php?iss_id=20101113&sec_id=4104&subsec_id=12731&art_id=14657172

Ten unrelated things

1. It is time of the year again for school catering outlets to raise their prices.  Good, at least one third of the students won't know last year's price.

2. And it is also time of the year to see International students, usually Chinese, going to the canteen with no idea what a "typical" meal looks like and grabbing a weird combination of food items.  Usually it costs a lot (although they have no idea what a reasonable price is) and, more importantly, doesn't fill the stomach.  Although, to be fair, it is indeed very difficult to pick anything reasonable. The only obvious choice is:
.
.
.
chips.

3. Why are (almost) all Erasmus students Spaniards?  (Ok, there were two French yesterday...)

4. And girls?  (At least those that I need/choose to deal with.  Today the office was about to send another one to me.  As soon as I hear it is a he, I redirect him to the next door.)

5. Of course, nothing wrong with Spaniards, nor girls, nor Spanish girls; I already had "Final Year Projects: I teach you in a Spanish way" twice in the past. (Readers of this blog should be old enough to get this.) Which probably won't happen this year, unless they assigned some extra load on me.  That is when I had 20 vivas ("oral defence", in some sense) in a single week a couple weeks ago.

6. The average student here seems to have absolutely no stock market experience, unlike those in Hong Kong.  I have yet to supervise one project student which really know how the stock market works.

7. I hope you don't mind me indulge myself a little bit here:

It doesn't happen very often, you know.  Last year I think I topped only once and was then quickly surpassed. And I should spend half the time I spent on this game on a real stock market:

8. "A holding midfielder, right back, and center back away from an excellent starting XI and all injured."  Actually according to BBC you can just about put out a team like this

Van Persie
Fabregas Frimpong Diaby Walcott
Gibbs Vermaelen Bendtner Ramsey
Almunia

The missing one is Denilson, who is daydreaming at the centre circle.

9. In the past two weeks or so there were at least 3 occasions of strangers in the street saying "Ni hao" to me, in different places and from different "types" of people (non-Chinese, obviously).  Didn't know that many people know Putonghua.  However, when I think about it a little more, it reveals something very disturbing (to me)... you know, in the past unknown strangers usually speak Japanese to me.  Perhaps as years gone by I looked more and more like...

10. How should we "celebrate" the (63+1)th national day in 2013?

Leicester City sack manager Paulo Sousa

At last. 

I don't know what went wrong; most likely it is not entirely the manager's fault. But clearly winning one game out of nine and staying rock bottom of the table is not acceptable, and something got to change. Particularly when we were promotion candidates last year and now the only thing we should be looking at is to avoid relegation.

Richard Bevan, chief executive of the League Managers Association, said: "How can a chairman expect to deliver success at a football club when a talented manager is recruited and dismissed within two months?

 Never mind success, he delivered disaster within two months.

"Knee-jerk dismissals, and the chopping and changing of managers will not deliver success on the field and is incredibly destabilizing to the entire club.
"Leicester City Football Club has had 14 managers since 2004 and six whilst the current chairman has been at the club.
"Clearly the club has to examine its manager recruitment strategy as their current approach does not work.
"It is damaging to the club and its fans and is an inappropriate way to treat talented managers and their careers." 

Fair points, but just keep the second half of the final sentence, would you?  Presumably the League Managers Association is an association to speak for managers' benefits, so don't speak like as if you are so caring about a club's success.

保住 X X X

有朋友問我，釣魚島事件你怎麼不發表一點意見，譴責一下日本。我說，雖然腳下一片自己的土地也沒有，但對於領土的問題，我也是很在意的。最早的時候，我在 一個論壇上看見這事，我義正辭嚴的寫了一句，「保住釣魚島」，結果該論壇告訴我，我試圖發表非法的內容，請修改。我百思不得其解，直到把帖子改成了「保住 尖閣列島」，這才順利合法的發表了。

韓寒，《保住非法字符》，《蘋果日報》2010年9月19日

梁文道：她也是個母親

菲傭 Molina流着眼淚告訴藍佩嘉：「有時候我會在晚上哭。我會想，我正在照顧別人的小孩，那誰來照顧我的小孩呢？這麼多年來，我都不在他們身邊，他們總是 問我，媽媽，你為甚麼總是不在？我說，我雖然不在，但這是為了你的未來」。

Q&A: 躁狂抑鬱症

躁狂抑鬱症近日成為城中熱話，我們因此特別請來著名精神科醫生阮蒙能明回答大家的一些疑問。

躁狂症成因為何?

躁狂症一般是因為小孩年少時過度「受父母關心」，致恃寵生驕，加上家境優秀，「要乜有乜」，養成哈哈霸霸，唯我獨尊的性格。另外吸毒者由於腦神經受損，也較易獲此病。

躁狂症有何病徵?

躁狂症患者病情受控時，除了面色比較難看(即俗語所謂「X口X面」)外，一般表現正常。但病發時會有攻擊性，像潑婦罵街般罵人，打人，毀壞物件等。

怎樣診斷病人是否患躁狂症?

如上所述，躁狂症病徵和一般「發老脾」，醉酒鬧事等極為相似(另請看「治療」一段)，臨床上無法分辨，須由專科醫生詳細診斷。

那專科醫生又如何診斷?

很簡單，由於躁狂症患者皆家境良好，醫生只須收取高昂診金，付得起者即為躁狂症患者。

躁狂症如何治療?

躁狂症無法根治，只能盡量控制病情，首要為病人減壓，如到外國散心等。飲酒亦是一種治療方法，因此常有躁狂症病人醉酒鬧事，此乃治療一部份，易與病徵混淆。

遇到躁狂症病人病發應如何處理?

應盡量避免刺激病人情緒，盡量迎合，如病人打你左邊面，應把右邊面也給病人打。

躁狂症患者病發時的犯罪行為應受懲罰嗎?

執法人員首先應避免執法，如因無法分辨而已被捕者，應只控以最輕控罪，並委派最仁慈的法官審理。病人會出示付出高昂診金之後得到的病歷證明，法庭應以治療代替監禁等懲罰。上文已說明，部份醉酒犯事行為乃治療一部份，況且監禁只會傷害病人自尊，亦令病人無法接受療程(即無法度假)，會使病人病情惡化，法庭不應以此摧毀病人一生。另由於躁狂症無法根治，因此病人大多會接二連三犯案，這不應作為加重判刑的理由。記著，躁狂症患者是病人，不是壞人，他們本質是好的。

我們又怎知每個躁狂症患者本質都是好的?

上面已說明，躁狂症患者有良好家庭背景，因此本質都是好的。

但為什麼「有良好家庭背景」就等於「本質都是好的」?

你是那家媒體的?

新聞改寫練習

依家 D 新聞硬係詞不達意 ，等我幫你改寫下：

#1

終審法院法官包致金的姪女，今年初在司徒拔道一宗交通意外中，掌摑警員，她早前承認襲警、不小心駕駛及拒絕酒精呼氣測試三項罪名，今早在東區裁判法院，被判感化十二個月、罰款八千元及停牌一年，感化期間要到美國進行針對精神問題的住宿治療度假，為期三個月，返港後再進行戒酒治療，並定時提交進度報告，如果感化官膽敢不滿意進度，可要求法庭延長感化期被告可要求掌摑感化官。 裁判官指，被告已有兩次襲警記錄，今次的案情更嚴重，但如果不判罰，會對公眾帶來錯誤訊息，但被告的感化及心理報告指出，她患有燥狂抑鬱症經常哈哈霸霸，導致有酗酒問題醉酒鬧事，考慮到被告有好的學歷及家庭背景我同人地叔父一場同事，認為她應該接受治療，因此不考慮判監。

#2

擁有兩個學士學位、放棄百萬年薪設計師工作的保育人士馮炳德，繼去年因襲警罪判囚兩個月後再惹官非，去年1月他參與爭取雙普選遊行時，被指用手肘撞向警員令其跌倒而被裁定襲警罪成，昨被判囚15周及賠償受襲警員8000元。裁判官判刑時直斥馮視法律特區政府高壓統治為無物，我地喜歡屈你襲警便屈你襲警，又指遊行並非「擋箭牌」咁你有冇法官親戚吖，警員亦無理由受到欺負和虐待演技不被認同的侮辱，最後更拒絕馮保釋等候上訴的申請。

下面呢段就唔改了，只係等你引以為鑒：

退休高等法院法官阮雲道幼子阮家輝，日前疑醉酒中酒精毒暴斃；十年前因涉嫌藏毒而免被起訴、卻惹起軒然大波的阮家輝，本月五日被 鄰居揭發他在何文田寓所暴斃，相信死去多時，初步懷疑是飲酒過度致酒精中毒致命，並無可疑，其父至今仍未能接受愛兒死去的事實，其遺體將於今日進行火葬。

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue

Doctor Who Episode 5.13: The Big Bang

Jaw-dropping. Mind-boggling. Magical. Wonderful. Amazing. I don't know of enough adjectives to describe it. This is the work of a pure genius.

So my predictions were mostly right. The episode did start with Amedia in 1996 - but I wouldn't have thought that it was the exact same scenes as in The Eleventh Hour, down to the first shot of a red, revolving pinwheel! (That's the reason why that slot is included in Episode 1...)

Then you have loads of complete surprises in the next 10 minutes, each being so mad that any single one can make you fall off your chair.

And again I was correct that the escape from the Pandorica is timey-wimey, although a hundred times simpler than I thought. I'm surprised that half of the Internet cannot get their heads round about the escape, asking things like "but how did he get out in the first place"! It is just a self-consistent time loop, people! There is no beginning and no end! You're watching a time travelling show and cannot understand a self-consistent time loop?! How did you comprehend the DVD easter egg and the transcript of conversation in Blink?

And the now infamous forest scene. It's not about the jacket, really, it is about the doctor saying something completely out of context and the tone in which he say it.

Just like many other Moffat episodes, you have everything in one episode: fun, sad, romance, wit, and of course, mind-boggling time travel. The emotional scenes with the Doctor preparing to fly the Pandorica, and speaking to sleeping Amelia, is very moving. And of course there is the
"something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" line. Pure genius. From now on this saying will have a completely different level of meaning. Why had nobody ever thought of that in the past 47 years?! I think Steven Moffat must have first thought of it and then constructed the entire series around the idea...

And yes, I predicted it too, that not everything will be resolved in this series.

Some people will complain that the episode makes no sense, particularly with respect to the "remember and people can come back" thing. I still think the series is mostly internally consistent logically (but see below), despite not really offering any scientific explanation. But there were never any "real" scientific explanation anyway. At the end, I think the issue is whether you prefer "logic without science" or "science without logic"; I know which one I prefer.

So here is my list of complaints, or notes about unresolved points:

• The universe takes a rather long time to collapse... 2000 years, no less.
• A restoration field? Why would anyone build a prison which not just keeps the prisoner in stasis, but even restore life (and everything else)?
• The Doctor said Amy "grew up next to the crack for so long". Really? Amelia prayed to Santa, presumably not too long after the crack appeared, and then the Doctor arrived to seal it off.
• Why exactly erasing the Doctor from the timeline makes him travel backwards in time with two of them at the same time/place?
• Who is the shadowy figure in Episode 1? Presumably it is the Doctor, although they choose not to show the same scene.
• I suppose Amy's change of name may even be attributed to the Doctor implanting this to her as he gave his bedside story.
• If the universe is rebooted, why did River Song still remember the Doctor? And she should be sent back to prison at some point after this episode, since she needs to be taken out of Stormcage in the Byzantium episodes. Just in case Moff forgets...

算把啦...

很好，大家都看世界杯，facebook 也沒有人談政治了...

民主黨早已是一個靠「地區工作」(也就是靠飲飲食食，攏絡選民)，面目模糊的政黨，和民建聯在很多方面都差不多。他們提出這個方案，最大的好處是為他們提供「就業機會」。議員也要食飯的，像李華明呀，劉慧卿之類，還有之下各級大小議員，不做議員不知可以做甚麼。還有很多 「靚」 跟你搵食的，你唔食佢地都要食。(所以我從來都反對全職議員，又開辦事處「服務市民」甚麼的。) 現在多了十個議席，直選便容易了，像劉慧卿，要不是上次中聯辦要玩死田北俊，早就落選了。區議員更是這種 「地區工作」政黨的強項。最好加至六百個議席，他們便最高興...

這個黨還經常強調要和「中央」溝通。溝乜X野通呀! 那是一個滿手鮮血，靠屠殺自己國民維繫的政權呀!

可是說了這麼多，唔想咁樣，可以點樣? 和中央「爭取」民主根本就是不可能的事(你以為人家是傻的嗎?) 你要麼搞暴力革命; 不幸大部份人都認為這太「激進」，那就只好認命，人家施捨甚麼你便要甚麼好了。現在民主黨「爭取」到這個，也是聊勝於無，總不比原本差，也不一定對繼續「爭取」普選有太大負面影響(反正也不會爭取得到)。只是你先前話說得太盡，一臉正氣的，甚麼沒有路線圖絕不支持云云，現在轉軚便難看點...




那邊廂社民連也是「爭唔落」。本來我很支持別人以暴(議會暴力，街頭抗爭) 易暴(政權暴力) 的，但你怎能說出癌上腦這種惡毒語言...

Never ignore a coincidence

Doctor Who Episode 5.12: The Pandorica Opens

Moffat once said that The Eleventh Hour will be the most scrutinized hour of their television lives. At that point it sounded like it is because it is the first episode with an entirely new cast and crew, but just like almost any other line of dialogue that he has written, there is another level of meaning: after Episode 12, everyone is now trying to find out what clues have been hidden back in Episode 1. Except that a few obsessed nerds on the Internet has already noticed that right after Episode 1 and proposed all sorts of mad theories. For the first time ever, though, these mad theories have a chance of being actually true: like the fact that something is wrong with Amy's house, and that her entire life doesn't make sense, is now officially confirmed by the Doctor.

This episode does not answer any questions, but instead adds further mystery to them and raises new questions. Just a few examples:

• What's the voice talking about the "silence will fall"? And why exactly the TARDIS explosion and the end of the universe lead to silence? (Other than that there is nothing left in the universe to make a sound - but that's not too meaningful is it?)
• When exactly was the Auton Rory constructed? No matter which point you pick, it doesn't quite make sense.
• Who really is Amy? Why did she change her name?
• Who/what is River Song?
• What exactly are the effects of those cracks? If the fact that Amy does not remember the Daleks and nobody remember the Cyberking is due to it, does it mean many aliens have fallen through it? Why?
• Why is there a damaged Cyberman?
  
• Who controls the TARDIS and makes it explode? And if somebody have that power, why not just go ahead and do it? What's the point of lining up a list of aliens and construct a box? Is that elaborate setup actually something to save the Doctor?
• Are the Dreamlord and the TARDIS-building plot in The Lodger important, as they are the only episodes not featuring in this one?
• Do those wrong badges and clocks really represent something?
  

The episode, by itself, doesn't seem to make sense if you think hard enough about it. But nothing is as simple as it first appears, and everything is related to everything else, and hopefully, like Moffat's other episodes in the past, it will make complete sense at the end - only this time it is not one episode, but one series. Though perhaps not everything will be explained. After all, there are no laws in the universe that require everything to conclude within one series.

Next week: my guess is that it will not try to resolve the cliffhanger, but directly shows Leadworth and Amelia in 1996(-ish). The big resolution almost surely will involve some timey-wimey stuff, like the doctor somehow escapes, travel back in time to multiple places to do something so that a whole series of events that lead to the escape itself will happen. It certainly will be mindblowing, and will take at least several days, if not weeks, of the collective wisdom on the Internet to work out a consistent explanation, or to decide that it just makes no sense.

Oh, and "Time can be rewritten." Let's see how the big reset button will be used this time.

Parmars, again

Now that I finally have nothing to do with them, I can wholeheartedly "recommend" this fantastic 1-bedroom flat offered for rental by Parmars Estates. (The link may not last very long but don't worry, I have backups of it.) There are lots of good things not in the descriptions and the pictures though which I think I should highlight to potential tenants.

• The advertised rent is 425 pounds per calendar month. You may naively think the same rent is to be paid across the entire rental period, but actually, the rent will increase by 7.5 pounds after every 6 months. You will be informed of this, of course - after you have paid the application fees (and are thus effectively tied to them).

• And if you think you can quit after 6 months, sorry, the contract length is actually one year, not the commonest 6 months. If you want a 6-month contract then it won't be the same rent.

• It says "white goods" and you will also be told "everything is included". However, when they finally produce an inventory (after you paid all fees, obviously) you will find out that the washing machine is not listed, and when you ask them then they will suddenly tell you that it is not included and what you see is only left behind from the previous tenant. Maybe it is not "white" enough. Don't worry, it works, just that I don't know how much longer it will still work - you will soon find yourself enjoying its screaming.
  

• And if you find there are things, like a TV, left behind by previous tenants when you first view the flat, and are promised they will stay, then be assured, they will disappear when you move in.

• They charge a deposit which is 1.5 times the rent, not the usual 100 pounds+rent. But never mind. Make sure you chase them for proof of participating in the Tenancy Deposit Scheme though. This may come handy when you try to get your deposit back at the end of the tenancy. You will find that your deposit is indeed held very "securely" and will take you lots of patience to recover them.

• Here is what can happen. Two weeks pass and there is no contact. Then they say the inspector is "on holiday" and will do the inspection next week. Next week comes and nothing happened and you only get another "next week" promise. Another week passes and they say the inspection report is sent to landlord and waiting for his approval. But just keep bugging them, at least there is one tenant who got it back in 5 weeks time. And make sure you talk politely too, or else they will accuse you of talking "nastily".

• If I say this I'm guaranteeing myself huge trouble, but this is my true personal experience. All I***** lettings agents are f***ing l***s. Don't get anywhere near them.
  

• I'm not sure why, but whenever you come back to your flat and open the door, there will be a cold breeze blowing out. Scary isn't it. And soon you will notice the flat's level of humidity. Look at some parts of the c******. And look behind the d**** too. And I'm very very sorry about this, I've already tried my best: take note of the b*** s******. Good luck.
  

Funny alien awkwardness

Doctor Who Epsiode 5.11: The Lodger

(Actually I've already watched Episode 12 when I write this but I'll pretend I haven't)

• Nothing much to say here: ok episode, funny light comedy. Matt Smith is really an alien. Only he could have done those things convincingly.
  

• The ending (as usual) doesn't make any logical sense. How did a crashed spaceship land on top of a flat without anyone noticing or without damage to the flat? Why is building a time machine the most important thing to save the ship? And fair enough if they try to build any time machine, but a TARDIS? A TARDIS is a bigger-on-the-inside timelord technology! And now perception filter can alter memory as well...

• I was expecting the ending of this episode to lead into Episode 12 like Utopia and Turn Left did, and 40 minutes on this still seemed to be the case. Which makes the resolution slightly disappointing. (Unless, someone is also building a TARDIS in the non-existent second floor in Amy's house... Or if Amy's house actually is a TARDIS...)

• This is the most boring Doctor Who Confidential ever. A scientist talking super-excitedly about the Prime Meridian, the solar system and wormholes. Anyone who watch this show regularly (i.e. not because they happen to have flipped into this channel), would have known all these already. I switched over to watch football, fortunately. Or maybe not.
  

A pile of good things

Doctor Who Episode 5.10: Vincent and the Doctor

• I was not expecting anything from this episode, believing it is the usual historical character episodes where they tack a (very unconvincing) alien explanation to whatever mystery that character was involved (Agatha Christie's 10 days disappearance, Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Won), but was pleasantly surprised it wasn't the case.

• On reflection, that would be wrong, so so wrong to stick those ridiculous jokes to someone who suffered from mental illness. In fact the episode tackles the issue of mental illness at a Saturday 7pm slot, to the point of giving a helpline at the end; this bravery should be commended upon.

• In the "lots of sunflower outside van Gogh's house" scene, Amy was very... "inviting". (I mean, very inviting to be portrayed...)

• Richard Curtis. Big name that I don't know. Nor the films he has written. I suppose now I know how those films are like. Dr Black's 100-word speech, when read on paper, may not appear that outstanding, but the way Bill Nighy delivered it, the acting from everyone, the direction, the music, all added together. And the next scene showing Amy's sadness when she found out that, after all, history have not been changed and van Gogh still killed himself. And the Doctor's speech. Very moving, beautifully and marvelously written and shot. As good as "Father's Day". They will go down history as some of the best scenes this show has ever made.

• The giant chicken monster is poor, but this is completely irrelevant. The sheer brilliance of the last 10 minutes overcomes any shortcomings of the previous 35 minutes. Though one have to ask, why does it always have to be like this (Utopia, Cold Blood, ...) But still, I'm more than happy to take this. To quote the Doctor:

The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things.
The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa,
the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant.
And we definitely added to his pile of good things.

Perennial war

Doctor Who Episode 5.8/5.9: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood

• Unlike many others I don't think these episodes are too bad, possibly because of me never seeing the classic series. Usual monster-of-the-week type episodes of course, nothing too complicated and even a bit silly, but most episodes are like that anyway.

• Humans and Silurians sharing the planets? That's obviously impossible is it? Certainly no human would agree to it? But I wasn't too bothered about this point. Then just before the Sunday BBC3 repeat, the news was reporting the Israeli military operation of the Gaza aid flotilla.

  The Doctor should really take a closer look at human history. Humans are totally hopeless.
  

• The final scenes are epic, of course. But the most important question remains, who is the big bad that caused the crack? It couldn't be a returning aliens this time, I suppose; if it were then everybody would have known it by now (The Master and Davros were all over the Internet before Series 3 and 4 even began to air.) Is it the Doctor? The TARDIS? River Song? (I recently accidentally discovered that "song" (or more precisely "sông") in Vietnamese means "river" in English - I suppose this is just a very very big coincidence...)

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張國鈞報警﹕邀功banner純屬網民惡搞

Truth is probably here:
http://forum3.hkgolden.com/view.aspx?type=CA&message=2348732

England squad

Um, did that man actully say that he only takes players who play regularly and are in form? Look at the list and it is all "safe" choices (i.e., big names) with quite some players starting maybe less than half of the matches for their clubs, even when not injured. When I looked at the starting line-up against Mexico, it felt very refreshing, and for one moment I thought he would really ditch "the system" developed around Rooney-Gerrard-Lampard (who invented it anyway?), otherwise known as put-in-11-star-players-first-and-then-work-out-a-formation. But I quickly realised it is just a friendly, in a real match he is likely to revert to the tried and tested system which has been proven to give you partial, and only partial, success.

As for individual player selection:

Heskey: By dropping Bent they now officially bring three strikers to the World Cup. I mean, one of them score even fewer goals than the Columbian goalkeeper Higuita or the Paraguay Chilavert, how can you seriously count him as strikers...

Walcott: But never mind, in 2002 they also bring effectively three strikers since there was never any real intention to use Walcott anyway. He is a tragedy, really; had he not included in the 2002 squad, and hence not under that much spotlight and ridicule, there might just be a chance for him to develop into a better player. Given that SWP seems to play rather well at the national level, perhaps Walcott's exclusion is justifiable. (Btw, if I'm not mistaken, he was a striker, not a winger. Why do some Premier League managers seem to always fashion strikers into midfielders (Walcott, Kuyt, Babel)? )

A Johnson: should be given a chance really.

Parker and Huddlestone: these are poor people included in the preliminary squad only to make up the numbers.

Dawson: a pity, can't figure out any reason why Upson is preferred.

Overall, the team feels more or less the same as in 2006, although less injury-worn. But still can't see this team going any deep.

Quotes 20100530

... 然而我以為問題永遠不該是「為什麼下一代不能忍受」，而是「為什麼上一代可以忍受」；我們不能把這種環境看作正常的環境，接著質疑下一代人不能吃苦的理由，反而該如實看見這種環境的苦，然後探問是什麼使得上一代人身在苦中不知苦。

說穿 了其實很簡單，那就是希望，以及對希望的想像。流水線上機械化的動作確實難熬，但上一代人仍然盼望回家結婚蓋房子，每一個小時的工作都能換算成未來的磚 瓦，每斷一根手指都意味著樓上的房間多了一扇窗子。所以這種苦是值得吃的，再多的犧牲也都是有意義的。
...
現在呢？你現在回到農村生活還能算是一個好生活嗎？替孩子付出和城裏人差不多的開支，帶父母到城裏看和城裏人一樣昂貴的病；還有哪一位工人會希望 回村安家過日子？住在城裏吧，你不知道要等到何年何月才能憑積蓄住得起一間自己的房子（更 不用說戶口變遷的困難）。... 回去是不行了，留下來也看不到往上流動 的道路，眼前的勞動就真的只能是勞動了，猶如每日推石上山。

假如一代真的不如一代，那實在不是下一代的意志力的問題，你應該問他們要意志力來幹什麼。

梁文道：這也叫一代不如一代？

* * *

工人十二連跳，都是九○後的小青年。他們來深圳打工，與上一代民工不同。老一輩的，從農村到大城市來賣力，省吃儉穿，儲了現金回鄉下買地蓋房子。但現在，農村的土地已經給別人圈掉了...

國情通識課，陶傑

* * *

即使借用航海術語，政府也不敢說意義明確的「向普選出發」、「普選起程」或「普選啟航」。政府沒有路線圖和目的地，只能說意義模模糊糊的「起錨」。起錨不 一定是出發，起錨之後，是可以再下錨的。船隻停泊，初次下錨，鈎得不穩，也會再下錨，令錨頭鈎緊海床，泊得穩固。因此，「起錨」模糊得很，可以是再停泊一 次，預計原地踏步，很蠱惑的口號啊﹗

此外，海盜要綁架停泊在海中的船隻，也會命令船長起錨，隨賊船而去的。政府的起錨口號也有大吉利市的時候，就是香港的「民主號」慘被中共的「集權號」海盜綁架，不准原地停泊，要跟他們回賊巢，使到立法會的功能組別用區議會方案「溝淡」之後，禍延千秋萬世。

陳雲：是起錨，不是起程

Championship playoffs

Disappointingly but not too surprisingly, Leicester did not make it to the Premier League. It is a very good chance this time, particularly with Nottingham Forest being knocked out; and one of the Blackpool player is on loan from Leicester so he won't be eligible to play should Leicester meet Blackpool in the final. Next year it would probably be much more difficult. It has to be said that the quality of the football we are playing is simply not as good as the other teams.

I would have preferred Cardiff to beat Blackpool, depsite Cardiff being the one that knocked Leicester out. Blackpool was not even in the top 6 until the very last week (?). More importantly, their boss is Ian Holloway.

One thing that has been puzzling me for quite a while now is how some apparently idiotic managers have good results in the Championship. I don't know how well Ian Holloway did it in Blackpool, but back when he was in Leicester he always appeared like a clown, giving nonsense answers to questions. In contrast, the current Leicester City manager, Nigel Pearson, seems to behave sensibly, knows what he is doing and do not speak nonsense. I hope he continue to do well for the club.

Weird dreams

Doctor Who Episode 5.7: Amy's Choice

• I have only watched very few X Files episodes. I quite like the episode Field Trip ("hallucinogenic mushrooms digesting humans with yellow goo"). In some ways this episode is similar to it, with a twist that after waking up from the "first" dream, they are still in a dream. Here they could have made the two dreams much more equally believable, but the outcome is that one is completely obviously fake. Still, the premise is an interesting one. So the idea is interesting, but perhaps not executed very well in this episode.

• More importantly though: are they *still* in a dream? (Now this is the maddest theory ever...)

• They are seriously showing old people getting beaten and being thrown down a roof at Saturday 6:30-ish? I know they are alien-possessed but still...

• It is entirely possible to get out of a dream by realising it is a dream. During my school years I used to have regular nightmares that feature a succession of unfortunate events that any single one of them is plausible but together it is just impossible to happen. The typical scenario would be: on route to an exam, I discover that I've forgotten to bring something, but there is enough time to get back home to get it. But then when I'm getting back home there is a traffic jam caused by some accident. Then I decide to take another mode of transport and then discover the thing I want to get is with me all along. Eventually I managed to arrive the exam venue just on time, only to discover to my horror that I have been revising for the wrong subject all along. Or something like that.

  One day it suddenly occurred to me that since it is simply impossible that such things happen together, as soon as the second unfortunate event happens it must be a dream. The next time I had that sort of dream, I got out of it by recalling this reasoning. And then the same dream never happened again.

低水平抄襲與浮誇演技

某發展中國家之抄襲風氣，向來絕不遜於自稱「大國堀起」之天朝。

最近某人 review 一份該國「學者」之論文，看了老大半天，最後才忽然發現該文乃是 100% 抄自另一篇論文。還說是 assistant professor 云云 (雖然該國大部份 assistant professor 也不見得須要甚麼 qualification...)

查該某人於海外任教已有相當時日，學生多來自該第三世界國家，早已見慣該國學生抄襲之事。

最近又有一人，被揭發整個 project 每一行 source code 皆是抄襲回來。該(男)學生被 tutor 召見，先是無言以對，繼而悽然淚下，掩面飲泣，煞是可憐。及至步出門口，更是步履蹣跚，須扶牆而行，彷彿突聞至親噩耗一般。其演出卻是略嫌浮誇，況且他還沒行至走廊盡頭便已回復正常。他可不知該 tutor 閱人無數，三個月前才見另一同國籍之學生也是如此這般演出：上午得知 fail 了 degree，下午才猛然醒起自己母親身患重病，三日後再見此人已是不似人形，像三天沒吃沒睡，每一步皆可倒下一般。

該某人對自己任教之科目，更早已採「隻眼開隻眼閉」之態度，唯近來抄襲之水平實在太低，該某人一時技癢，竟連捉十多人。其中一位明顯為 source 者，已被不停給予機會從實招來，他卻含着一泡淚水，硬是不說，真是使人愛莫能助。

該人任教之學校也相當詭異，學生的祖母永遠只在考試季節去世，學生心情未能平復，大大影響考試成績。

The "Name of a mediocre monster" of "Location of a filler episode"

Doctor Who Episode 5.6: The Vampires of Venice

• Actually, I just moved house and did not have time to write this. In any case, there is not much to write. Very typical, "average" episode, with CGI monsters, explosions, lots of running around, lots of jokes, etc. Probably good enough for an 8-year-old. Not bad by any means, just that we've seen too many similar episodes.

• The pre-title sequence, though, is the weirdest ever.

The time traveller's wife/murderer and the not-so-nice assassins

Doctor Who Episodes 5.4/5.5 - Time of the Angels / Flesh and Stone

• Steven Moffat's son referred to the scene where the angel jumps out of the TV as the scariest thing he has ever watched on TV. Well he clearly haven't watched that Japanese horror film. Having watched so little film and TV, I initially didn't realise this is where the idea came from, though.

• I don't like the fact that they now changed the physics of the angels (if there is still any physics that is):
  

1. First, in Blink an angel cannot move when someone watches it, in a way similar to the standard quantum mechanical interpretation of a wave function collapses into a single state when an observer measures it. Now the angels don't seem too bothered looking at each other, they can move while the audience (us) is watching, and they may even freeze just because they think they are being looked at! (Maybe Moffat is trying to tell us that the Copenhagen interpretation really doesn't make any sense...)
   
2. Secondly, they no longer kill "nicely" by pushing people back in time (although it never made much sense to me.)
3. Thirdly, you will now die if you look at the eyes of an angel. The idea of "that holds the image of an angel becomes an angel" is nice, but I'm quite sure Sally Sparrow has taken some images of the angels...
   

• Actually, imagine if there are two different species of angels, one of those you must look at them without even blinking, and the other you cannot even look at them or you will die, and the two species look identical...
  

• The countdown bit is quite surprising and creepy.

• The sequence inside the forest doesn't quite work for me: the angels thinking they're being watched? The Doctor getting angry in The Beast Below is fine, but again here (twice) seems too much. But there are two good things: the "angels turning their head" moment is going to become a classic. Also, clearly there is a future doctor jumping back to this point in time! ("Clearly" when you watch it for the second time that is...)
  

• There are more and more evidence that Moffat is playing his timey-wimey ideas throughout the whole series, so instead an episode making sense in the last minute, it might take an entire series to make complete sense only in the last few minutes of the finale! (at which point all the mystery about Rory's badge, the wrong clock, duck pond, future doctor holding Amy's hand, two men in black appearing in a deja vu manner, etc. will be solved!)
  

Obesity of the Daleks

Doctor Who Episode 5.3: Victory of the Daleks

As you see, here I follow the tradition of setting the titles to "xxx of the Daleks"...

• Bringing Daleks back once and for all is clearly the right thing to do. You just can't keep on
  killing them off completely (apparently) after 45 or 90 minutes every year, only to invent more and more convoluted ways of bringing them back again next year...
  
  
• Redesigned Daleks: I don't really like them, but clearly I have no say about this, I don't even watch the classic series. The main problem is that they are now too plastic-y; they should be metallic. Also the head and the neck's proportion isn't quite right w.r.t. the rest of the body. But I'm not too bothered by it: in any case, Daleks are the sillyest alien that humankind have ever created (come on, pepperpots?? with a sink plunger?!) so no matter how ridiculous looking they are it doesn't matter too much.

• Plot: the story barely makes sense, but this is like other alien stories where the aliens always create incredibly convoluted and stupid plans when they could just blast the Earth out of existence in 30 seconds (or 20 minutes... according to the Doctor anyway.) But then you don't have a story to tell so I suppose this is not avoidable.

• Spitfires in space: I can just about accept the "gravity bubble" technobabble; after all the purpose of the episode is to put all British icons (Churchill, daleks, spitfires) together.

• Daleks with union jack: this is pure genius.

• I don't like Mark Gatiss' writing. Last time "The Lazarus Experiment" was a disaster to me. In that story and in this one, it is like "Crisis 1 arises, solved after 10 minutes, then Crisis 2 arises, solved after another 10 minutes, and so on", rather than developing slowly towards one big climax near the end. Daleks pretending to work for humans is a potentially very interesting idea, but they revealed their true intention after 15 minutes or so into the episode!
  

• I don't know what Steven Moffat is doing in this series: they are releasing far too many trailers so that when you watched the episode, it feels empty because all the good stuff have already appeared. I mean he was the one who put in the "spoiler" joke in the Series 4 Library episodes! Imagine if the Smilers and the spitfires in space were never in any trailers...
  

All in all, we have 2 fairly weak episodes. I hope the next one will be good; even half as good as Blink will be magnificient. Otherwise I should probably stop writing this as it is going to
embarrass myself...

Snooker World Championship 2010

So I was at Sheffield again to watch the first session of the Marco Fu vs Martin Gould match.

I arrived very early and while walking up there, Mark Allen (who was going to play at the other table) walked right across in front of me.

I sat in row G this time, a bit closer to the tables. Probably wasn't caught on TV, I hope.

As for the match itself... well. Fu never failed to disappoint me. It started quite well for him, but perhaps it was only the other guy starting rather shabbily. At one point Fu was leading 4-1, but he did not manage to take advantage of this; during the latter half of the session Gould clearly showed sign of much increased confidence and pull it back to just 4-5 behind. It was therefore not surprising that when the match resumed the next day Fu eventually lost 9-10.

It appears to me that Fu's playing style has always been very "forced" and uncomfortable unlike many other players who play much more naturally. He is having a dreadful season; I have no idea how he managed to get into top 8 last year, and it looks like he may still be lucky enough to hang on to a top 16 place.

On the other hand, I can't quite believe what I'm seeing about that Martin Gould: at the time of this writing he is already 11-5 up against Neil Robertson. He just gets down and makes all sorts of insane pots and never misses a thing!

"Forget" or "Protest"

Doctor Who Episode 5.2: The Beast Below

The following is the message I recorded for myself. After typing them, I will press the "Forget" button and forget about this episode...

• There is one thing good about this episode: the pre-title opening sequence was brilliant. Probably the best since, er, Turn Left? Genuinely terrifying.

• Plot is the most important thing I look for in any science fiction/fantasy. One of the reasons that I like Steven Moffat's scripts is that they all begin in a completely mad and bizarre manner but by the end of the 45 minutes everything fit together and actually make sense. Unfortunately, this episode doesn't make any sense, as already pointed out by so many people so I won't bother repeating. What a disappointment when this is something from Moffat.
  

• He has another usual problem of tending to put too many ideas into one story when any one of them is good enough for an entire episode, resulting in many good ideas being casually thrown away. Sometimes it works great like Blink: time travel and several "predestination paradoxes"; "quantum locked" stone statues; DVD easter egg with one half of some dialogue; that half dialogue fitting in two different situations; all in under 45 minutes! But perhaps there are cases that don't work... I had thought that these brilliant ideas will be "diluted" as he took over and became executive producer with 6 stories to write instead of 1 or 2. However here it is not diluted, in fact there are enough stuff to give 2 episodes. The Smilers are terrifying, but do not tie to the plot whatsoever.

• The part where Amy votes is confusing: the fastforwarding gave the impression that the information is somehow fed to her so quickly that she made the choice subconsciously, when in fact (apparently) it isn't the case.
  

Amy (is about to be) in Wonderland

Doctor Who Series 5 Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour

I don't usually write Doctor Who reviews since (i) so many people have done this and there is really nothing original I can add and (ii) this will take too much time. Instead of writing a coherent article I will just write down some random points.

• As usual Steven Moffat has a remarkable ability to turn everyday objects creepy. From stone statues in Blink, to cracks in the wall this time (by the way, there is plenty of that in my flat...), and invisible (or rather unnoticeable in this case) room in your very own house. Enough to scare any kid. This also taps directly into kids' terror, like the "monster under the bed" thing in The Girl in the Fireplace.

• At the same time, as the Grand Moff and many others have said so many times, it was indeed also very "fairytale", not just the story concept but also the visual effects and music.

• Moffat has created a complex character in Amy Pond; there is much more to analyse then her skirt length. Unlike most other stories, time travel is always an integral part of Moffat's plot, and it is "The Girl in the Fireplace" all over again. This time the little girl was disappointed by the doctor, and her personality was consequently shaped in subtle ways while she grew up, which are all very reasonable when you think about it, and gives a more natural explanation as to why she is willing to go with the doctor, comparing with previous companions (a kid believing in a time machine is much more plausible; and she waited 14 years...)

• The heart of little Amelia, though, was still inside the grown-up Amy. The doctor's return allowed Amy, and the viewers, to let out their "inner child" again. This is best summed up in the dialogue:
  

  "I grew up."
  "Don't worry, I'll soon fix that."

  Moffat is in fact the one who fixes this for every grown-up viewer!

• I was skeptical about Karen Gillan's acting, but it seems so far so good. The "then why did you say five minutes!" speech was quite powerful. And the girl who played young Amelia deserves special mention; her performance was so excellent it is hard to believe she had no prior acting experience.

• Murray's Gold's music for the episode is once again superb. (Sometimes you have to wonder why these people are working for the BBC; surely they are destined for bigger things?) From the scene where Amelia packed her little suitcase waiting the doctor to come back; to the TARDIS left Amy behind for the second time; to Amy finally walked into the new TARDIS; all are accompanied with little sequences of music that are exceedingly simple but very effectively conveys the emotion and that are also, once again, very fairytale, very Tim Burton, very Alice in wonderland (never in my life have I thought of writing these words in my blog! "Alice goes down a rabbit hole" is the first and last thing I know about it. I know the other Alice, the one who cryptographically communicates with Bob, better...)

• The alien plot was somewhat disappointing. Although many would say this is not the main point in this episode, one would expect Moffat to pull out something better than this, given the quality of all his previous contributions. Still, you never know; numerous mad conspiracy theories are already being rumoured, based on (quite reasonable) observations like contradictory signposts on which years the events happened and the crack pattern shown on the TARDIS console etc. In the past it was always fans reading too much into these, but this is Moffat, he never put things in for no reason. The "silence will fall" etc are far too straightforward, clearly Moffat is up for something more twisted than this?

• Nobody seem to question why this is called the eleventh hour? Even this makes sense, in three different ways at the same time!
  

Daft

Every year, around this time, I have the most frustrating work of marking these people's programming assignments. Which is even worse this year, because for the first time ever, the cryptography module has become the most popular third year module. The frustration arises not just from of the amount of work, which is bad enough, but also from other things.

(1) Why do people insist, year after year, assignment after assignment, to write something like this?

File privateKeyFile = new File("C:/Users/ChanTaiMan/Desktop/ChanTaiMan.prv");

Am I supposed to create a directory like this to run your program? Or am I supposed to edit everybody's program for such things before compiling it? And there are always a few people to offer a "user friendly" option of popping up a dialog box to input such things. To them

java ProgramName ChanTaiMan

is as alien as the Martian language. (Not to say options like -a, -b: I suspect they never did an ls -l in their life.)

And that is because they say their IDEs can't do this. All IDEs are evil! Nobody know how to use command line arguments anymore!

I would so much love to give these people just a zero mark! If only I could!

(2) OK, you can't write programs, you can't even understand sample programs given to you, so you copy your classmate's program. But why, why people can't even use "find and replace" properly? Rename one occurrence of the variable and leave the other unchanged?

從前有一隻青蛙...

很久以前，我看過一個短篇科幻故事，名叫 "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed"。看完後我覺得那故事很 disturbing，不過我也沒有深究為甚麼。

* * *

還不過幾年前，大家還恥笑董建華這句話：

「香港好，中國好。中國好，香港更好」 --董建華

... 最後連董建華也承認他曾去信中央，請求京官幫忙。但他這一下「求救」，教香港人無地自容，恨他無本事帶領香港擺脫困境，怨其丟盡香港的面子－－明明是全國最富庶的地方，卻公然厚著臉皮向「阿爺」（北京）伸手討好處。其實香港人雖然都在北望 神州，欲在中國崛起之際分一杯羹，但很多人卻覺得交往過程應是公平地互惠互利，而非中央單方面的「偏愛」，無條件不斷施予優惠，做中國的「敗家兒」...

-- 特區十年史 １．１２　北望神州

幾年後的今天，人人都已從心底裡由衷相信，香港必須要和中國融合，不然便會死。

他們說， 90後的一代將來畢業後，香港必已被邊緣化，沒有高鐵，他們就不能方便地回內地工作，沒有出路。 --蘋果日報, 引述某被訪者

... 宜家香港上至政府下至小市民個個淨係識背靠祖國做寄生蟲...
... 真正既邊緣化唔係有冇高鐵
而係香港政府同香港人自願放棄經濟上既獨立性...

-- extracted from 某高登 post

隨著中國「發展」，香港必將淪為中國一個普通城市，這是歴史宿命，多一條少一條高鐵，也差不了多少。不幸的是人的想法也變了。今天還有誰會覺得「求救」是令人「無地自容」？

* * *

那個科幻故事是說，有一些地球人滯留火星，其中一人有一天突然發現，花草樹木的顏色不同了， 慢慢的連別人和自己的眼珠顏色、頭髮顏色、甚至說的語言都變了。他想離開火星，其他人卻不介意那些轉變，或者「詐唔知」不去面對那些轉變。那人最後也不再堅持...

很多年後，地球才再有人來火星，卻找不到原來的地球人，只發現一些「火星人」 ...

* * *

青蛙心想，跳出去沒有水，會死的，其實熱水也很好呀！火力愈來愈大，青蛙卻愈來愈興奮。它死前的最後一句話，是：「 嘩哈哈！ 」

每日新聞圖片

兩名內地大款得戚地表示支持興建高鐵。





工聯會立法會議員王國興向會外高呼「撐高鐵創造就業」的示威者表示，工聯會成功爭取「反對高鐵工程優先聘請本地工人」，至於「示威工程優先聘請本地臨記」則在泛民拉布下暫未成功反對。





和諧黨副主席檢閱首名乘高鐵來港的女兵。

「西班牙人」

再說，就算有極少數廣東人吃貓，也不能泛稱「廣東人吃貓」，就像不久前，有北京人殺了他自己全家（父、母、子、女、妻、妹），絕不能延伸說「北京人殺自己全家」，若形成「北京人殺自己全家」的說法，自然和「廣東人吃貓」一樣，是大大的謬誤。

倪匡，《「廣東人吃貓」》，蘋果日報 10/1/2010

倪匡大概對「新中國」的「現代漢語」還是不太了解，網上就充斥著類似以下的大陸文字：

利物浦糟糕的戰績讓領隊賓尼迪斯本賽季承受著巨大的壓力，歐冠盃提前出局讓球迷們對西班牙人的失望之情到達了頂點。媒體也一度把賓尼迪斯和皇家馬德里、國際米蘭聯繫在一起，有消息稱西班牙人很可能在今夏取代摩連奴在國際的位置。

你不知就裏的話還以為球迷對所有西班牙人都感到失望，所有西班牙人一起取代摩連奴！這大概是從英文「翻譯」過來，英文可以說 (在文中提到過該人之後) The Spaniard, The England international 之類，你譯成中文，最少也應說「該名西班牙籍領隊」、「該名英格蘭國腳」 。就是英文也有那 the 字啊！不過大家也見怪不怪了...

反高鐵，保香港

...
第一個假設是，假設內地的有錢人不斷來香港幫襯，帶挈香港地產發達，小市民可以分享唾餘，有份掃地捧餐做實Q。內地（主要是廣東）的人民和商人要來香港交 易，是因為香港有內地買不到的商品、服務、治安和生活品質。然而，這不會長久如此的...
...
高鐵的第二個假設是，香港長期維持優秀可靠的服務，可以吸引內地人幫襯。...
一旦香港的服務與內地拉平，內地人也毋須幫襯香港。
...
愛國者應理解國情，內地大勢不妙。香港應該保持適當距離，自求多福，而不是去銜接危機。內地人發達繁華，不稀罕你去銜接；內地災難爆發，香港去銜接也沒用。高鐵是一塊雞肋，不是一塊肥肉。一塊雞肋何須稀罕？
...

陳雲：《反高鐵，保香港》，信報 7/1/2010

我不認為甚麼菜園村之類是反高鐵的強力理由(雖然是些比較冠冕堂皇的理由)。

反而支持興建的那些甚麼「促進中港融合」，「接上內地發展」之類才是最危險的糖衣毒藥。

不論物質上還是文明上，香港都比大陸先進 - 至少現在還是。這正是香港的優勢。你快快「融合」 掉，香港就和大陸一模一樣，沒有獨特之處，只會「死快D」。所以香港應盡可能減慢被大陸同化的速度，作一個好榜樣給內地學習。

再說，那是個每天都在殺人的政權啊！你跟它「融合」幹甚麼？你沒聽說人家要出兵了嗎？將來有了高鐵，石崗軍營出市區也很快捷嘛。

PS1.

出賣香港利益的，時時見報，就是這一伙了，七百萬人，記住他們的樣子。時機成熟，一起跟他們算賬。

陶傑，《賣港》，蘋果日報 16/12/2009

PS2. 咁鐘意起, 起成咁好唔好? (我見到果洲個圈真係笑到停唔到...)
http://w3img.westkit.net/0286b67a82a0da64237c0d25c061c357.img

Going into 2010 the cold way (almost)

At this very moment, I could have been typing my final words in 2009 in a zero degree Celsius room, with a torch, a mobile phone and a 2-hour laptop battery being my only power source. Thankfully it wasn't like that.

On this very last day of 2009, I lost electricity at home. It's the stupid laptop power adaptor again; this is already a replacement but this time it even brought down the power of the whole flat. The circuit breakers inside the flat did not trip, but every socket and every light switch was dead.

I was fearing the worst and planning how to endure a long dark night in this holiday period without lighting and without heating - surely an unconventional way to go into a new year - when the guy from the letting agent came over and fixed that. Which I'm very grateful to and perhaps I should just slightly change my view about the agent.

An unusually nice journey

You don't often hear me say that, but my return journey this time could not have been better. Having picked a closer and smaller airport this time (which I should have done years ago - you see, the algorithm running in my head does produce something that converge to the optimal solution,
just very slowly), it turns out that one leg of the flight is less than 1/3 full, the passport control and baggage reclaim was exceedingly quick, and the train timetable somehow allowed me to catch unexpectedly early trains. The only worrying bit was that there were actually officers from customs standing there inspecting passengers' stuff, but I even managed to escape that. (Why can't they learn from Heathrow where there's nobody inspecting anything round the clock?)

「港足奪金」之曾蔭權在做甚麼

曾蔭權真是一個X街...

... 當晚唯一的遺憾，是行政長官曾蔭權於頒獎禮期間突然宣布有話要對記者說，害我「拿拿臨」仆過去採訪而錯過親眼看港隊站上頒獎台最高一級的機會。...

伍家謙, 《歷史會記住這天》

Bring in video technology into football!

Is it just me, and nobody else really cares? So many blatantly wrong decisions have been made by referees over the years and that FIFA lot of people insist on not doing anything about it. It is beyond stubbornness, it feels more like something dirty is going on behind the scenes. And if not from within then what about the fans? On facebook, the largest group about this has, errr, less than 2000 people there, with most other groups less than a hundred. Even groups about 港女 etc. can get into tens of thousands much more easily and quickly.

Referees are humans and in such a high-tempo game, it is simply impossible to ask referees to make correct decisions instantly. Almost all other sports is using video technologies now, even snooker does!(*) An organisation that keeps on saying "fair play" is the same one that tries everything possible to stop referees from making correct decisions. Is it ironic enough? How much longer do we have to tolerate this?

FIFA stands for Football Injustice Forever Association. It is a total disgrace.

(*) To be precise, snooker only uses replays for replacing balls, not making decisions.

James May's Toy Stories

"He is completely insane!"
"That, and a bit magnificent."

- Valerie and Brannigan, Doctor Who "Gridlock"

This is a completely mad TV programme. The show takes several no-longer-fashionable toys (well, most of them), and blow them up to build real-life-scale things. You may not realise their names, until you see them. The first episode is about making an Airfix model (something like this) of a Spitfire, except it is 1:1 scale, and they asked a group of kids to do it, at an old factory where real Spitfires were produced. Other mad ideas include making a garden out of plasticine and actually putting it in the Chelsea Flower Show, and building a over 4 km long track out of Scalextric and actually run slot cars on it.

Other than satisfying the nostalgia of us "old" people, the best thing about this show is that it at least tries to do the impossible of tempting children of this generation to do things that require long hours of concentration without looking at a computer/TV screen. These toys are no longer fashionable precisely because they take time. I also like its engaging factor, where it often involves hundreds or even thousands of people to build the thing and to participate. The Scalextric episode for example, (not aired yet but from the lots of youtube videos flying around) involve lots of people, since one person can only be looking at a very small section of the track at one time. Very much like a community event where every kid living around are out, running along the track. Seeing people getting excited about such events at least gives a (however small) hope of reversing or stopping the trend of the dumbing down of toys (and everything else).

Update: here, before it gets removed...

In memory of a youthful heart

I suppose I owe quite a lot to him. Many years ago, since we lived relatively close to them, our family often visited theirs. My childhood memory mainly consisted of playing toys in other people's homes; this one was no exception.

There were probably some lego sets around, although my main activity appeared to be reading lego catalogs. For some reason this cement mixer and this classic space set had left very deep impression in my mind.

During that time I had one of my early encounter (if not the earliest) of a computer; in fact it might be an Apple II but I'm not so sure now.

He used to work in the UK for some time. Every time he came back he brought us lots of UK stamps, in two categories: those used for regular everyday mail, in large quantities and with many duplicates, and those that were relatively rare and only have a few copies in each batch. Then we have the task of splitting these stamps into 4 sets "fairly" (one for each of the kids there). We could spend an entire afternoon doing this.

He once gave me a thick and heavy book (the biggest book I had at that time), something like a Reader's digest compilation on topics related to the Earth, and a 1970-ish atlas used by Geography classes back when he was in school (in which you can see the version of Hong Kong coastline before the more recent landfills, and a whole lot about the British Isles).

I also stole, from the books he left behind after he emigrated, a (I believe?) C. J. Tranter's A-level Pure Mathematics textbook; it's very "British" and certainly treats topics very differently from a modern-day text (for example it starts with the question of what happens if we integrate 1/x, shows that it must be "log-like" and from this defines the constant known as e before finally moving on to its numerous other properties). Among other things it gave me my first exposure to the convergence of series and the natural logarithm.

These were probably useless stuff to him anyway, but were good to me. I really appreciate this because I myself hate to give things away to people; if you ask me to give you my atlas back in secondary school, I won't be too happy about it (even worse if you have taken it without me knowing it).

During all these years he never seemed to get old; he always spoke in a slow, cheerful and somewhat child-like tone. This probably is a reflection of an youthful heart.

In the past year or so, somewhat being kept out of the loop, I have only been barely aware of what has been going on with him. During a certain period of time there appeared to be positive progress, but the inevitable eventually happened. At least I believe he didn't have much regrets. He can rest assured the books had made their impact on a kid.

正音??

這 post 未免太遲 ，但遲到好過冇到 ，即管輕力一推，略盡綿力...

「購」、「構」二字讀音：讀「救」還是讀「扣」

挑戰何文匯

二數相乘，有口訣云：天天，地地，人人，天地人，盡負一...

怪哉，於此二十又一世紀，中學國文科尚棄文言如糞土之時，若干有志之士，竟以文言編維基大典，所涉更非限孔孟老莊、唐詩宋詞，諸般數學，凡 Quaternion 至 set theory 皆具文誌之，誠可貴也。

more delays

As usual, this is the place for my rant about flight experiences. But this time I found out it may serve a new purpose: it might help some other people feel better by knowing other people (me) have even worse experience than them.

I won't bother you about what the trip is for, what exactly does the airport code DUS stand for etc, but instead just go straight about the travel itself.

Outward flight: LHR->DUS

The outward flight only had, relatively speaking, minor troubles. The flight was delayed by roughly 2 hours, but it is not the interesting part; the reason for the delay is more interesting. It was because "the toilets are not fully operational", resulting in a need to find a replacement plane.

When we arrived at DUS another trouble surfaced: all except a handful of the passengers lost their checked luggage. I didn't have any checked luggage, but other people travelling on the same trip did, and I got to see a hundred people hanging outside a small room filling forms etc. In fact, it looks like another flight also had the same problem...

Inward flight: DUS->LHR

I need a bullet list for this:

• During the whole week the weather was fine, but just when we were about to get a train to the airport, there was heavy rain. As a result, the train to the airport was delayed by 15-20 minutes. This was still fine, but...
  

• At the airport, we found out that the flight was delayed by "only" 50 minutes. This was still ok, except...
  

• I needed to catch a train at St Pancras. I've put in 2 hours between the original landing time of the flight and scheduled train departure time, which should be more than sufficient, particularly with Heathrow Express. And normally the plane can fly a bit faster to catch up at least some of the delay. But
  

• The plane circled at least 3 times above London before finally landed. And after landing, as the pilot put it, "to add to the misery", the air bridge to the terminal didn't work and we had to take a shuttle bus even though it was just 30 seconds walk away from it. And the shuttle bus needs (due to some ground traffic regulations on the airport ground) to make a big detour and travel round a loop.
  

• Then, long queues as usual at UK Border. Actually this time it was slightly faster with some more counters open.
  

• (If you need proof that worst-case analysis is useful:) then I missed a Heathrow Express train, and had to wait exactly 15 minutes when they have one every 15 minutes.
  

• Then there were further delay on the Hammersmith-and-City tube line which means overall it is actually not faster than taking the Piccadilly line directly to St Pancras.
  

• I was fearing the worst (I seem to recall the only other train departs at midnight and arrive at 3am or something like that), when actually there was one at 23:15 which I was able to catch. Usually such late trains stop at every station and takes about 1.5 hours, but this one was even worse due to construction work which required a hugh diversion costing some extra time.

• So I finally arrive Leicester at 1:38am. This was "only" 98 minutes later than scheduled, and when you take all these incidents together, it isn't too bad.

The irony is that I went to a scheduling conference...

當年今日 (2)

瑣事兩則:

(1) 原來本校有這位校友... 不過很明顯她不知道甚麼是甲組乙組...

(2) 這真是大快人心，人家ATV 已夠左的了，不過反正沒人看，沒關係，你 CCTVB 又左，結果...

當年今日

今天是「中國網站維護日」 這個大日子，但本網站並不「被維護」，特別在此轉貼一段當年今日(1989年5月35日)的片段:

譚耀宗強烈譴責中共六四屠殺



PS. 我想在此讚一下生果報的一系列六四報導，以跟著當年每日事態發展的方式報導，重現出當年局勢如何日漸惡化。

偉大的中國人！

在柏楊「醜陋的中國人！」一書(2008年版)中，收錄了一篇(其他人寫的) 「偉大的中國人」，當中提到:

二十多年前，有一個男子，一時想不開，爬到台北市館前街某大飯店的十樓頂上，揚言要自殺。頓時招來了滿坑滿谷看熱鬧的觀眾，警察大人如臨大敵，一面在樓下撒下了安全救護網，一面派人上樓去勸說，新聞記者端起照相機，取好鏡頭，準備獵取那最珍貴的一剎那，那男子卻也作怪，任憑警察老爺說破了嘴，他仍堅持非自殺不可，可又不肯立刻就跳，就這樣一點鐘兩點鐘乾耗著。中國人看熱鬧的耐心是天下第一的，抬頭仰望兩三小時，脖子再痠，也不肯休息片刻。眼看對面火車站前的時鐘已經敲出十一點了，跳的還不肯跳，看的還不肯走，這時候，有一個提著空菜籃的主婦，嘴裡嘟嚷著道：「要跳還不趕快，老娘等著看完了還要去買菜！」

幾十年來，「國家在各方面的發展都得到驕人的成就」(更何況上文說的是台灣，沒有「黨」的領導，自然更差)，已進化到這樣，還在外國上報：

粵漢不滿阻塞交通　扮「握手交朋友」走近推落跳橋男子

China bridge jumper 'gets a push'

嚴正聲明

本人特此聲明，本人從無授權曾蔭權代表本人，亦從無直接或間接投票支持曾蔭權，其一切言論並不代表本人立場。

PS.

有人說，鎮壓壓出了繁榮。我只知道，是經濟改革改出了繁榮。是人民，用市場經濟打破了毛澤東的枷鎖，才創造了繁榮。現在有人總結說，繁榮是鎮壓的產物。面對全球經濟危機，我不知道他們是否正在準備介紹鎮壓的經驗，來拯救世界經濟。

-- 《改革歷程》

Piano Choir

A fine line between genius and insanity...

World Championship Snooker 2009

This year I didn't go to Sheffield to watch the above event, because the tickets were already sold out (or more precisely, I'm not bothered to try the phone lines for the "resale" service. There are always plenty of empty seats in each match.) But the BBC streams everything on the web.

Marco Fu plays Joe Swail in the first round. I was quite worried, but somehow Fu got past this easily. Swail wasn't playing that badly, all he lacks is probably luck. Anyway, Fu's next round opponent was Shaun Murphy. Fu lost 3-13 with a session to spare. When he was trailing 1-7 overnight I wasn't too concerned - I saw him won six straight frames to come back from 9-15 to 15-15 a few years back. Never did I imagine that he could lost 2-6 in the next session this time.
He just played very, very badly. It is interesting that players can have complete different performance from day to day.

As for the other players, I'm glad to see Ronnie O'Sullivan crashed out, particularly when he was "potted out", not "bored out" as some may claim for his other losses before. The fact that he has "motivation" difficulties (which is probably genuine, we have students like this) is his own problem, and it doesn't automatically mean that the whole sport is dying.

I managed to see the very last part of Stephen Hendry's 147 live. I have to say, though, that the pockets are incredibly huge and takes almost anything in.

John Higgins eventually won the title. He really is an all-round player, not as exciting to watch as many young players but fully deserves the title.

著名足球評述員林尚義逝世

阿叔 rip...

PS. 無恥亞視纂改歷史 林尚義由中華民國代表變中華台北代表 @ ATV NEWS 2009-04-23

Leicester City promoted

So Leicester City is promoted back to the Championship, and as champion of League One at the same time, with two games to spare; although at one point it looks like losing momentum and wastes all the huge lead that was made in the middle of the season. It is important to get out of this League One in the first season, or otherwise it may take ages to get out, just like Nottingham Forest and Leeds.

Now let's hope "the management" don't make any more silly moves and make sure the team at least survives with some comfort in the Championship next season...

In name of confidentiality...

高層防家醜再外揚 入境處捉內鬼

Secret filming nurse struck off

Hmm... interesting...

本週新聞圖片

嘩, 好威武...

賊喊捉賊

港足聯賽　爆踢假波疑雲

香港足球圈之「盛況」早已人所共知，多年來在一少撮人圍威喂的「緊密合作」下，把球市搞得「有聲有色」，每場賽事觀眾多達數十人。不知何故，近年竟能更創高峰，甲組球隊數目愈來愈多，有人更一人搞兩隊波。如果我是班主，一定提供一條龍服務。試想: 賭仔有波賭，開賭有錢搵，球員有波踢，唔駛踢也有錢收，可謂百利而無一害，對香港經濟將帶來巨大貢獻...

I'm now officially in debt...

...for an amount of 8.22 pounds.

This is the amount due from the "final electricity bill" left over from the previous tenant. Obviously, I'm not the one to pay it. I sent it to the landlord (and the lettings agent) several times long ago, and not surprisingly they won't deal with it; I also told the electricity company, Southern Electric, about this, and also not surprisingly (as they constantly feature on BBC's Watchdog programme) they didn't handle it properly either. In fact, I have set up my own account with Southern Electric (at this same property address), they sent me my bills, and I paid. But they continued to repeatedly issue several threat letters to "The Occupier" (they don't even know their client's name!) about that outstanding bill.

Eventually, they passed it to a debt collection agency called Past Due Credit Solutions. They sent a letter to me as a "new customer" asking me to call them "regarding an important matter". So I called. Before I get to know anything more about the case, they instantly told me, after asking when I moved in, that they should not be sending this to me and apologised. And I wonder, it can't be so simple, right? What's their next trick? Do debt collectors in UK do what those in HK do? Hmm... (And by the way, that Scottish accent was simply unintelligible, especially over the phone.)

Actually, the 8.22 is just my guess because there is also an outstanding water bill (which the water company didn't seem to chase after I set up my own account with them), and who knows how many more debts...

Semester start at Chinese new year

Today is the Chinese new year. Of more relevance however is that this is also the start of the new semester. And I have three lectures to teach today, the first one at 9:00am.

The worst part of all this is, well, that I am the person to make the timetable...

Royal visit

The Queen and Prince Philip visited the university. Since the university is publicizing it as if it is the biggest event in the universe, I would save typing a few keystrokes and just point you to here for what it is all about, pictures, etc.

The Maths and CS Building has, I would say, the best view of the whole thing. One side of the building are offices with windows facing the library directly. Unfortunately mine is at the opposite side. Nevertheless I (and others) went to a room at a corner of the building, which used to be secretaries' office and now half-abandoned; it has a 270 degrees view of the whole thing, high enough to be above the crowd but low enough to see as closely as possible. See pictures below. (Btw, the day before, somebody had already put up a notice on the front door of the building saying there is no public viewing places inside. Depending on your interpretation, you can call it a lie.)




The thing I wondered is the (apparent lack of) security. Given our superb viewing angle, if anyone here is not that happy with them and has some weapon...

The landlord

Now that I've said about the agent, I'll go on to say about the landlord. It's a company; it may just be the same name, but the only thing I can find on Google is a US-based company listed in NYSE. (I tried to search for it in UK company registration, I do found a company of the same name but it is listed as a "dormant" company. Btw, I cannot even find the lettings agent on this list...)

This company calls itself "a newly-formed specialty finance company" that invest in residential mortgage loans, residential mortgage-backed securities, Alt-A mortgage loans, and CDOs. Hah. They made their IPO last year and their share prices have since fallen about 85%. Just last week they announced a secondary offering of 110,000,000 shares...

Parmars!

Parmars (http://www.parmarsestates.com) is a well-known lettings agent, presumably only working in the Leicester area, so this should not concern most people reading this; nevertheless I still want to share my experience with them here, so that people can know how exceptional their service is.

Before I say anything further, I must confess that the problems you may notice below, if any at all, are entirely due to my own fault. All other agents I've encountered so far are fairly reasonable, so I was not expecting such a unique experience with this particular one; I was more on the easy-going side and didn't follow rigidly the general principles dealing with lettings. Had I been more firm on those grounds, however, I wouldn't have a chance to experience this. Also, all these only happened after I paid 225 pounds (under various names of holding fee, application fee, etc.), so I was essentially tied to them and cannot change even if I wanted to. I suppose this is how they make sure their clients can receive their full suite of unbelievable services.

You would have assumed that the rent was the same as the one advertised. In fact, just before I paid that 225 pounds, they drafted a nice little list detailing all kinds of money I need to pay,
specifically the rent and the length of the contract (12 months). However, I was only told a few days later, when I went to sign the contract, that the advertised rent is only for the first 6 months and the rent will go up 7.5 pounds for the remaining 6 months. In fact, it is customary here for the rent to go up by (say) 25 pounds every 12 months, so such an increase is not a problem. What I particularly appreciate is this service of not bothering the client with such minor details until the point of signing.

The other point is that they offer you no choice of start date; you just have to start the tenancy on the date that the landlord/agent decided. Once again, this avoids the client the trouble of deciding when to move.

They also offer various fully automated service, e.g. asking me to sign on a completely blank standing order form. On another day I might have done it, but I was not in any good mood that day so I just turned down this nice help.

Here comes the main point which triggers me to write this article. When I viewed the property, which is a "part-furnished" flat, there was a table and some chairs (among other things). I was told that they will stay. Before I paid that 225 pounds of money, they assured me once again that they will stay (while they also specifically mentioned that some other thing will be removed). When I signed the contract and went to the property, the table and chairs have disappeared. I would like to praise their strict adherence to the legal point that you cannot trust anything that was said verbally (in this case, a staff member's assurance that the furniture will stay), but you need to put things in paper.

Actually, we did: like other agents, they drew up a list of inventory. One particular item on the inventory list is "dining table and 4 dining chairs". We signed the inventory list; strangely enough, we did it in the office, not at the property. I believe this is to avoid the client's trouble of going to so many different places. I believe nobody would bother to remove them anyway, so I trusted them and signed. So when I discovered the table and chairs were gone, I phoned them. They requested me, in their kindest possible tone, to go to their office the next day to sort it out.

The next day they sorted the matter out in the simplest way: they just crossed off that item from the inventory list! (see pic below) To try to make me feel better, they gave an explanation that the item was left behind by the previous tenant and had been subsequently picked up by those previous tenants. Unfortunately I'm a bit too stubborn to accept such an explanation as the tenant has clearly left long before I viewed the property. Then they went on to explain that "part furnished" means cooker and fridge only, any other thing there is only left beind by the previous tenant. Being not as intelligent as them, this somewhat confused me further because if that's the case then I'm not sure what's the point of putting so many items on the inventory list. I could only conclude that the agent/landlord are so nice that they decided to remove the items, at their own cost, so as to create more space for me. I have also learned from them that even things put in paper cannot be trusted.

In addition to these specific virtues, the general level of politeness of the staff also helped me learn how to improve my own patience and politeness too.

In conclusion, I really cannot recommend more about this lettings agent to you.



Inventory list. The red rectangle shows the thing that were crossed off after it was signed. (They countersigned it; I didn't.)

Moving house again, part 2

Another one I viewed (call it Flat B) turns out to be what I have to stick with unwillingly in the next 12 months. The strange thing about it is that it is exactly opposite to my first flat here (that's the one with bees, if you remember); see the map:



So it means I moved down the road, and after 18 months move back up to the same point again.

I don't really like the location - close to university but a bit too far from city center, and also a bit too quiet - but I told myself, if I could survive the first one for 18 months then I surely can survive this one for another 12 months? I think everything is so-so but acceptable, and since there are no other alternatives, I decided to go for it and paid some money.

The next day I viewed another property at the city center (yes, I decided to go for B already, but viewing doesn't cost money...). Let's call this one Flat C. This one is also nice, though not as good as Flat A. More importantly it is at the same price as Flat B; it is at a better location, newer, but unfurnished. If I have not put money into B, I would definitely go for C.

It turns out that maybe it's actually better to give away the deposit - partly my mistake and partly due to the agent...

Moving house again, part 1

I'm not dead just yet, although not posted for a long time. After spending months writing something which I myself don't believe in, I have to immediately start a process of finding accommodation. It looks like I have to move house every 18 months (although I really hope the next one will be shorter than 18 months - it will become clear in the next posts), this time because the landlord wants to repossess the property.

Before I go on about how bad this flat-hunting process turned out, I should say that I like the current one very much - it is in a very convenient location, within walking distance to everything, and I find out that I like living in a noisy city center area much more than some more "rural" ones. (It can be quite scary that at night, when you look out of the window, all you see are some trees and shadows waving. Also, I seem to enjoy watching pedestrians, and the current flat has a great view on a busy point in the street. Shops in city center also close as "late" as 8pm, which is more convenient.) Thus, despite some minor problems (like fire alarm ringing at any time it likes, some idiots on the street playing with your intercom, and a bright orange colour scheme in the bathroom), I would be very happy to stay longer if possible.

The city center "regeneration" has created a whole lot of very nice flats, but for one reason or the other I always missed them. One flat that I viewed (let's call it Flat A) is in city center, has very very new furnishing and I like it very much. Except that the price is expensive. After several other viewing disappointments, I think maybe it's time I pay a bit more, and want to commit to it. Only when I actually go to their office and do the application do they try all sorts of tricks to squeeze more money out from me; I refused, and thus no deal.

As you will soon find out from my other posts, other agents are equally bad, or worse...

垃圾會08

由於今年本人沒投票的分兒，所以在此嘈幾句算了... 本 blog 讀者(如有的話)大概早知本人立場。無他，那XX黨是惡霸，自然要支持其對家了...

(1) 獨立之謎

何解這麼多人這麼容易就幾乎可以當選？只要你自稱「獨立」，加上是「名人」就行，尤以此兩人為甚：

勞永樂 - 因廿三條事件被醫學界選民唾棄而未能成功連任醫學界議席，之後忽然化身民主鬥士，無間道得很...

龐愛蘭 - 此人更無厘頭，睜著眼講大話說自己獨立也有這麼高支持度...

(2) 唔做野之謎

長毛之類經常被指「唔做野」。我真不明白怎樣才算是「做野」。 抬棺材是「搞事」，議案投反對票也是「搞事」。我只希望議員們能夠：

You don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no! You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away!

正因為大部分人都不敢 make a stand (包括我，連XX黨大名也不敢說啊)，才更需要選這些人出來代替我們「搞事」...

(The link should make no sense to most people, so don't click it.)

(3) 我只想拜託各位新界東選民，不要投劉江華，唔該...

(4) 順便一貼:

鏡 頭 一 轉 ， 民 建 聯 譚 耀 宗 、 張 學 明 等 人 在 台 上 扮 八 仙 演 話 劇 嘲 諷 有 人 想 分 裂 中 國 ， 主 持 搞 gag 問 ： 「 我 地 唔 係 咁 蠢 ， 係 唔 係 ？ 」 台 下 高 呼 「 係 ！ 」 主 持 忙 糾 正 「 唔 係 」 。 蔡 素 玉 是 片 中 女 主 角 ， 蔡 菜 子 對 婦 女 選 民 堅 稱 ， 今 個 選 舉 是 場 「 奪 權 與 非 奪 權 之 戰 」 ， 民 主 派 一 旦 取 得 優 勢 ， 香 港 的 政 局 會 不 穩 、 國 際 評 級 會 下 降 、 股 票 會 跌 、 失 業 率 升 … … 選 舉 論 壇 是 戲 肉 ， 當 年 大 家 力 爭 2007/2008 年 雙 普 選 ， 蔡 菜 子 咄 咄 迫 問 民 主 派 的 余 若 薇 ： 「 如 果 2012 有 普 選 你 地 支 唔 支 持 ？ 」 今 天 ， 民 建 聯 支 持 的 是 2017/2020 年 雙 普 選 。
(apple 3/9/2008)

其實觀眾無錯啊，那 proposition 是「我地唔係咁蠢 」，主持問是否同意，那當然是「係」嘛...