Re: Fantastic March (夢幻三月)

The easy-come-easy-go Spring Break vacation is finally over this year. March would not be as fantastic without Spring Break, and Spring Break would not be as nice without a reunion. Though the 3-week vacation had a tight schedule (originally two-week), it was indeed quite substantial. Thanks to 'Dolphin Travel'!

So where did I go this time? Visiting friends (including bumping into couple friends) and relatives, and of course, Macau again! I go to Macau like everytime I come back to Hong Kong. No wonder Don suggested that maybe next time I should just directly land at Macau instead :-) But why I like going there so much? Well, it's the food and the relaxing atmosphere. And of course it also depends on who you are going with. Though we don't really gamble, but we do like playing the 10 cents slot machines, which is actually cheaper than playing arcade games :-P This time, we also went to a concert called gold-typhoon concert, which was a very special concert with more than 12 artists performed.




Time flies, especially happy time. Now I am back to the ordinary same old days. Work again. Not April Fools though :-( Howsoever, it shall be the harvest year finally. Good luck, good health, and best wishes for everything to you and me!


In response to post: http://mypaper.pchome.com.tw/news/carinna/3/1312472169/20090331173935/

09 Spring Break - 牛年春假

真係一年容易又Spring Break。不知為何讀書比做工來得更要忙碌，更大壓力。可能因為讀PhD根本就是沒有真正的休息和假期(尤其是思想上)，如果不是“神童”或Ivan或equivalent，也很難會有真正的假期. 無論如何，假總是要放，縱使是帶著千斤Research的擔子。所以正如Felix所料，三月的Spring Break就是回港的日子，好讓我與太太及一眾親友聚聚。大既會在三月六日便抵港，電話無變，見字請速聯絡 :-)

The Icon A5 - Sport plane?

Doesn't it look like a sport car? This little plane can go up to 120mph and requires only a 20-hr sport pilot training, it's going to turn the aviation of mankind to a new page.

A Little Gift Box

閒記就是這樣容易令人忘記。筆者忘記去寫，讀者忘記去看。

今天收到太太寄來的小禮物，自不然就想起要「update」這個「龜 blog」。因為這幾天氣溫已降至近乎零度，本想關了外門的小窗，卻竟發現一個小包裹就在門與門之間靜待著，可說是雪中送碳。

想不到一轉眼又回來了美國一個半月，踏入PHD的第四年，要是你不是一個想「hea」的人，總也會覺得壓力及工作都大加，實是不容易過的日子。做PHD或是說做學問的，總算是會有點抱負吧！可以的話，莫論會否投身學術界，也倒想有一點成績或貢獻，如此說來，壓力就是難免的，希望畢業的時候能夠有五份「first author」的文獻，而有一份可達「impact factor」20 的就好了，當然這個是「best case scenario」，但唯有就是盡力而為，無愧於支持我的人！
話又說回那小包裹，內有很多香港特色東西，有玩的，有賞的，有熱氣的，也有清熱氣的，可算是頗有心思。而值得一提的，莫過於森姆與Cathy的遊戲碟，好為沉悶的學習增加點點色彩，多謝熊生熊太同熊女！說到家人及一些老朋友，總令我想起香港的萬分好。
無論如何，盡快畢業才是最實際！

ISMB 2008 Toronto

Just came back from the ISMB (Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology) 2008 conference at Toronto! It was a 5-day conference from 19th to 23rd. Due to the 'expensive' registration fee (550 at least for early bird), we chose to just drive from New Haven to save cost. Originally I thought an 8hr or more drive would be very exhausting, but it turned out the road trip was not that bad and was kind of fun. I guess it might not be too much worse than flying considering all the waiting and connecting time. So we (I, Mohamed, Pavi, and ThaiBinh) drove to Toronto on 19th in the morning and arrived at 8:30pm. We stopped by the Niagara Falls on the US side and visited briefly. If it was not raining, we would have spent a longer time and took a boat trip there. But it's not a problem since there is always next time : ) We spent most of our time (relatively) on the conference so we haven't really explored Toronto that much. But as usual, there are always talks that you can skip : ) So in the afternoon before the day we left, I bought a one-day pass and did a super quick sightseeing of Toronto. I took the Metro subway to the Queen's Park, University of Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, Casa Loma (some sort of castle), and then took the street car to the Lake Ontario and back to our Hotel on King street. My overall experience of Toronto is that people are in general quite nice. The subway is clean and convenient. The city is also quite organized. The bad thing is that the QEW always seems to have traffic and the conference didn't have enough food and water provided, ridiculously. Besides, we were also invited by Meisha to have a get together at her home on Sunday and enjoyed a very nice treat from her whole family. And also we got a chance to meet with Pavi's mum as she is now working in Toronto. Her mum was so nice that even treated us a lunch at the Richtree restaurant : ) On our way back, we visited Rochester (Mohamed's feel-like home) and RIT, and almost tried 'something different' for our dinner. And finally, under the quite severe storm, we safely came back around 2 in the morning!

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/hugolam/ISMB2008Toronto

MS Graduation

On May 26, 2008, we, the CBB 3rd year students, walked at graduation all together and took our MS degree en route to PhD. It was such a fun and memorial moment not only because we walked together with the presence of our families, but also because we witnessed the conferral of the honorary doctoral degrees to Paul McCartney and Cesar Pelli at the same time! P.S. it was the first graduation ceremony that I attended!

Mac OS X

After my IBM (Lenovo) T60 died with a couple of hardware problems, I got a MacBook Pro as a replacement. When I was using Windows, I had a perception that Mac is a legend in the OS field as its stability and usability are so well received. Considering they build the OS and the machine, plus the OS is Unix based, it still makes sense to have such a reputation of performance. Honestly, I was quite happy with my Mac in the first week and with no doubt its usability is so much better than Vista, which I think unnecessarily imitated many of the Mac UIs that don't fit very well into their realm. As a user that extensively uses Linux daily, I feel more convenient using Mac with its built-in terminal, ssh, sftp, vnc, and virtual desktop (spaces). And most admirably, it comes with Java out of the box. That's everything I need. I would be really pleased if it can truly maintain its stability, at least for longer. As an IT professional, I wouldn't blame the OS because of individual program crashes. As in the past years I had never thought Windows was really that bad, considering it runs on a large variety of machines, until Vista came into play. I would say Windows 2000 is so far the best version of Windows I have ever used and Vista, in my opinion, is somewhat comparable with Windows Me, sadly. No matter what, the bottom line is that in my theory, an OS that is claimed to be good shouldn't in any case crash just because of an individual program crashed. Unfortunately, my Mac crashed twice in two weeks so far just because of individual program problems, not to mention some other minor bugs that are well discussed in the forums but are still outstanding. I originally thought it could be some sort of memory problem. However, the best memory tester for Mac, MemTest, said they are good. Although I am sure many people would have never encountered such an experience with Mac, nor they would have been aware of it, if it does happen and my Mac OS is genuine, I am a little bit reserved in its legendary stability, at least with that of Leopard.

Home Sweet Home

I remember a couple years ago the TV drama "Triumph in the Skies" (衝上雲霄) said pilots not only take people to their destinations, but also help people reunite. This is particularly true for people staying away from their families and friends. Last week I was still on the other side of the Earth and now I am writing this passage in Hong Kong, meeting up with friends and getting together with my family, it is pretty amazing. This is the first time I take my spring break in Hong Kong, and I hope after "recharging" myself I could have more energy to cope with the qualifying examination coming soon :)