“Lawrence in Arabia” – a Mesmerizing Read!

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Jean

I started reading Sunday evening and could not put it down. Entire week, I’ve devoted all my spare time to it.

I just finished it this morning on my shuttle to work.

The entire book was a rather delightful experience, but my tears rushed out so suddenly at the end, I couldn’t do much but sit in the lovely winter sunshine by the shuttle window and cried for a while.

Churchill’s eulogy was rather more loquacious: “I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time. I do not see his like elsewhere. I fear whatever our need we shall never see his like again.”

After i watched “Lawrence of Arabia” for the first time, I tried to get my hands on more background stories about T. E. Lawrence. I remembered trying to fight my way through the Seven Pillars of Wisdom for probably half a year but eventually gave up (probably 30% into the book?).

Scott Anderson’s “Lawrence in Arabia” is exactly the book i’ve been looking for all these years. In addition to Lawrence, he also included a German spy, an American Oil man, and a Romania Jew who settled in Jerusalem during Ottoman’s rule and eventually played a big role in the formation of Israel. All four of them were in their late 20’s or early 30’s. None of them had formal military training, yet they all contributed greatly to the event in Middle East during and after WWI.

The book illustrated the relationships among the empires and their people. Andersen is a great story teller and a wonderful historian who explained the intricate relationships so clearly. He was also funny.

Suez operation had seemed to underscore the old maxim that war can kill all things except bad ideas.

On the incompetence of the American intelligence community, after William Yale (the lone American intelligence officer in Middle East during WWI) sent to the State Department, Anderson says:

“He was establishing a tradition of fundamentally misreading the situation in the Middle East that his successors in the American intelligence community would rigorously maintain for the next 95 years.”

On the incompetence of British military during WWI:

after all, repeatedly smashing up against the enemy’s strongest points had bcome something of a British World War I tradition by now

On the tragedy created by WWI and its aftermath:

…it’s hard to imagine that any of this could possibly have produced a sadder history than what has actually transpired over the past century, a catalog of war, religious strife, and brutal dictatorships that has haunted not just the Middle East but the entire world.

…four wars between the Arabs and Israelis; a ten-year civil war in Lebanon and a twenty-year one in Yemen; the slaughter of ethnic minorities in Syria and Iraq; four decades of state-sponsored terrorism; convulsions of religious extremism; four major American military interventions and a host of smaller ones; and for the Arab people, until very recently, a virtually unbroken string of cruel and/or kleptocratic dictatorships stretching from Tunisia to Iraq that left the great majority improverished and disenfranchised.

On why Lawrence rejected his former life so absolutely after the war:

As a boy, he had been obsessed with the tales of King Arthur’s court and the chivalric code, had dreamed of leading a heroic life. In the reality of war, however, Lawrence had seen men blown to bits, often by his own handiwork, and left wounded behind to die, and had ordered prisoners to be killed. Just as any thoughtful person before or after him, what Lawrence had discovered on the battlefield was that while moments of heroism might certainly occur, the cumulative experience of war, its day-in, day-out brutalization, was utterly antithetical to the notion of leading a heroic life.

Some of Lawrence’s writing that Anderson quoted were truly lovely. Maybe it is time for me to pick up “Seven Pillars” and give it another try.

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
    And wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven pillared worthy house,
    That your eyes might be shining for me
                                                                when we came.
Death seemed my servant on the road, till we were near
    And saw you waiting
When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me
    And took you apart:
                                                                 into his quietness.

…two months into his retirement, “at present the feeling is mere bewilderment. I imagine leaves must feel like this after they have fallen from their tree and until they die.”

In one of his interview, Anderson said that even though “Lawrence of Arabia” the movie got many facts wrong, but it managed to tell a bigger truth when it comes to Lawrence as a person. I couldn’t agree more. The movie and this book seem to be a great complement of each other. I love both.

Amazon vs. Publishers, Little Fish vs. The Whale?

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Jean

Earlier this year, I read “Cheap Words” on the New Yorker, “Amazon is good for customers, but is it good for books?” by George Packer.

Bezos is right: gatekeepers are inherently élitist, and some of them have been weakened, in no small part, because of their complacency and short-term thinking. But gatekeepers are also barriers against the complete commercialization of ideas, allowing new talent the time to develop and learn to tell difficult truths. When the last gatekeeper but one is gone, will Amazon care whether a book is any good?

I wanted to write about it but didn’t.

This morning I just read “The War of the Words” on the Vanity Fair, by Keith Gessen. It is on the same topic, Amazon vs. Publishers. It did a great job documenting the evolving relationship between Amazon and Publishers, and summarized the conflict of today.

Amazon’s self-published authors’ books were particularly inexpensive, and also something else: they were a particular kind of book. In publishing terms they were known as “genre” books: thrillers, mysteries, horror stories, romances. There were genre writers on both sides of the dispute, but on the publishing side were huddled the biographers, urban historians, midlist novelists—that is, all the people who were able to eke out a living because publishers still paid advances, acting as a kind of local literary bank, in anticipation of future sales. Some pro-Amazon authors boasted of the money they’d earned from self-publishing, but the authors of books that sometimes took a decade to write knew that this was not for them—that in an Amazon future they would be even more dependent on the universities and foundations than they already were.

As a reader, the question is do i want to continue reading the serious book written by authors spent a decay research and produce?

It is actually a very similar argument seen in today’s world that’s filled with 140 characters sound bites. They are fast-food culture. They are amusing. They keep me entertained every seconds of my day. But what if i still want to have the option to read serious biography, history, or great novels by the masters of words.

Kindle and Amazon’s efficiency did get more people back to reading, thank god. But reading what? Do we want a world with only genre entertainments?

It reminded me of a conversation from Giovanni’s Room that i loved. It is on the topic of America vs. Europe.

“Anyway,” he said mildly, “I don’t see what you can do with little fish except eat them. What else are they good for?”

“In my country,” I said, feeling a subtle war within me as I said it, “the little fish seem to have gotten together and are nibbling at the body of the whale.”

“That will not make them whales,” said Giovanni. “The only result of all that nibbling will be that there will no longer be any grandeur anywhere, not even at the bottom of the sea.”

“Is that what you have against us? That we’re not grand?”

I loved the Keith Gessen article on Amazon’s efficiency when he visited Amazon’s wearhouse.

So much ingenuity had been deployed to solve the problem of “reading”—in their different ways by the Kindle engineers, by the warehouse-software specialists, by Otis Chandler at Goodreads. And I remembered something a book editor, one of the best I know, had said to me about the Amazon situation. “They’re always talking about inefficiency,” he said. “Publishing is inefficient; print is inefficient. I mean, yeah. But inefficiency, that’s human. That’s what being human is.” The Kindle really is an extraordinary device—the fulfillment centers are wonders of undeniable efficiency. They too represent a remarkable human achievement. But art by definition is something for which there is no practical use.

What put a cold shiver down my spin is how close the future that Amazon is peddling resembles China. The books are super cheap in China. No one, not even the most popular writers can afford to live on writing along. Only writers who can earn a decent living are those who joined the state sponsored “writer’s institution”. They are paid a regular salary by the government. All through Chinese history, the great books were either written by genius who died of poverty (“The Dream of Red Chamber”), or by state supported historians (“The Records of the Grand Historian” 史记）.

I don’t want a world where published words can only go through Amazon. Yet, i don’t want a world that can only go through the old publishing house either. During my involvement during the Ping Fu scandal. I saw the worst of the elite publishing house world. Amazon was the only place allowed “little fish” to speak up.

I want a world where little fish and the whale can co-exist somehow. Is that possible?

“May the force be with you.”

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Jean

Noah’s initial encounter with R2D2 happened a couple of weeks ago, when he has yet to be introduced to Star Wars story line. I set off to correct that right away.

So far Noah has watched the first two episodes from the original trilogy–“Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back”. R2D2 becomes his favorite character. He knew who Luke is. He was mesmerized by the ending sequence when Luke and his comrades piloting fighter jet to destroy death star. He laughed when Yoda appeared for the first time, and quickly commented that “he was hungry” when Yoda sneaked a bite off Luke’s food. He knew Luke got the saber from “the good old man 好人爷爷” (obi one kenobi). He was very troubled when i first tried to explain the revelation that Darth Vador (“The bad guy 坏人”) is Luke(“The good boy 好人小哥哥”)’s dad.

When i watched the two episodes with him, I sometime would repeat the line “May the force be with you” when the heroes going to battle. Noah never repeated after me. If he understood what it meant, he didn’t let it show. I just thought it went over his head. Whenever he talked to me about the movie, he usually talks about R2D2, explosion, spaceship, etc. Never “the force.”

Last night after dinner. We sat together on the sofa and flipped through a few issues of recent “The New Yorker” magazine together. Noah liked its cartoon cover and the cartoons inside. He especially liked a recent cartoon depicting Mrs and Mr Potato Head, whom he had known from Toy Story trilogy and his own toys.

Then i flipped past a photograph of someone wearing a long black robe standing in the dark. Noah said, “May the force be with you.” I couldn’t believe my ears and doubled back, “what did you say? say it again.” He repeated it, “May the force be with you!” I was astonished! ZM didn’t understand what it meant (he never watched Star Wars before i showed it to Noah recently), so i had to explain to him. Noah listened with a knowing smile on his face.

Now Noah is a true star-wars-fan. “May the force be with you!”

Saw this outside a cafe at work

The Generation Gap

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Jean

On Saturday morning we walked through Lucasfilm campus in Presidio and ran into a small filming crew with an R2 holding flowers.

We’ve never played any Star Wars movie for Noah before. So he didn’t know who R2 was, but he knew it was a “robot”. Nevertheless, he was immensely interested and patiently sat down on the ground waiting for the filming to begin so he could watch “robot!” walk.

We waited for about 30-40 minutes, when the filming finally began, the black R2 was unveiled and two droid started moving and “talking”, Noah’s first comment was, “wow, just like Wall-E!”

Green Apple Books and Music – 2nd Store

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Jean

Green Apple Books and Music – My favorite bookstore in San Francisco – just opened their 2nd store near Golden Gate Park. ZM and I used to love the original store on Clement for the books that we care about(ZM: Photographer Monographs, Me: used book of certain author i happened to be fascinated with at the time).

Recently we started taking Noah there and found out they have an amazing children’s book selection, too. It became one of Noah’s favorite places to visit after dinner on weekends.

First visit with Noah back in April. He picked up a great copy of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”

We visited the new store over the weekend. Fell in love with the children’s section. Noah even picked up a book.

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After we left the bookstore. I walked across the street to pick up some macaroon, and told ZM and Noah to continuing back to the car and i will catch up. Noah was so eager to get going with his new book, they ended up sitting down at a sidewalk garden one block from the bookstore, and Noah started “reading” under street light.

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Green Apple’s co-owner talks about how they thrive in the age of amazon, a fascinating read.

This is my favorite passage from the interview:

But numbers don’t tell the story. Within our walls are real human interaction (sometimes for the better, sometimes not so much): parents read to their kids in our store, couples meet for the first time, Robin Williams and Dave Eggers once connected over our bargain bins, Tom Waits recently told us which book about him “really sucks,” a man had a heart attack and died in our military history section, a drunk lost control of his bodily functions in poetry, every day a lost soul finds someone to talk to, and it was at Green Apple that I was set up with the woman who became my wife.

Green Apple Books and Music
2nd Store: 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco, CA 94122
Flagship Store:506 Clement St, San Francisco, CA 94118

The Last Day of Summer

Posted on October 6, 2014 by Jean

In San Francisco, the real summer temperature only occurs during Spring or Fall.

The entire September has been sunny and relatively warm, and we even got hit by a heat wave starting middle of last week. Temperature rose to the 90’s in the east bay. I dug out all my short sleeve shirts and managed to wear them all. I even wore a skirt yesterday!

The children section of the new Green Apple Books is awesome!

Tonight we checked out the new Green Apple Bookstore in the inner sunset after dinner. The street was filled with people. Lovely days. Even though one could already feel a hint of chill in the breeze after the sun set. Tomorrow will likely to cool down. Goodbye, Summer!

“In Summer”

by Josh Gad, “Frozen”

Bees’ll buzz, kids’ll blow dandelion fuzz
And I’ll be doing whatever snow does in summer.
A drink in my hand, my snow up against the burning sand
Prob’ly getting gorgeously tanned in summer.

I’ll finally see a summer breeze, blow away a winter storm.
And find out what happens to solid water when it gets warm!
And I can’t wait to see, what my buddies all think of me.
Just imagine how much cooler I’ll be in summer.

Dah dah, da doo, uh bah bah bah bah bah boo

The hot and the cold are both so intense,
Put ’em together it just makes sense!

Rrr Raht da daht dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah doo

Winter’s a good time to stay in and cuddle,
But put me in summer and I’ll be a — happy snowman!

When life gets rough, I like to hold on to my dream,
Of relaxing in the summer sun, just lettin’ off steam.

Oh the sky would be blue, and you guys will be there too
When I finally do what frozen things do in summer.

Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Jean

Before today, when I thought of O’Keeffe, I thought of sensual flowers, abstract paintings, New Mexico, subdued color tone. Everything about her was cool, collected and quiet.

The Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George show at de Young changed everything. Her work could actually be so vibrant, colorful and warm. There were so many paintings I have never seen before and they were all so good!

She painted so many beautiful trees! Why isn’t there a Georgia O’Keeffe’s book of trees? I would never grow tired of looking at them.

And amazing landscapes and even barns.

And her still life could totally stand up to Cezanne’s. Look at those rich and saturated colors!

Under comparison, her signature petunia and abstract almost seemed boring.

The show also quoted many of her own words, which were so beautifully written. Now I’m curious to read more of her writing (e.g. My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz)

After snap this photo, i’m told there is no photo allowed. So i had to type them down her words on my phone.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way… things i had no words for.

I had a garden at lake George for some years. The growing of corn was one of my special interests–the light-colored veins of the dark green leaves reaching out in opposite directions. And every morning a little drop of dew would have run down the veins into the center of this plant like a little lake–all fine and fresh. 1976

Corn, No.2, 1924

March 17, 2014 The New Yorker – Lydia Davis, the Sandy Hook Killer, and Noah the Movie

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Jean

A good issue again.

(Noah named everyone in this cover a friend of his at his pre-school class. He named the little boy on the bottom left wearing a “I HEART NY” tank top himself, and little beard dude to his right Daddy).

Long Story Short – Lydia Davis’s concise fiction, by Dana Goodyear
I’ve never heard of Lydia Davis until this article. She won the 2013 Man Booker International prize. She was also Paul Auster’s first wife. She sounds like a very interesting person. I’m not exactly sure i will like her stories, but I’m curious to read them.

The Reckoning – The Sandy Hook killer’s father tells his tory, by Andrew Solomon. Enough said. The only lesson i could draw as a parent from this article is never to keep a child in isolation with his/her parent only. Adolescent might be painful. Isolation is deadly. Children have to learn to adapt to their environment. But then again, in Adam’s case, if his parents had forced him to try harder, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference for Adam himself. Just to force his demon to surface sooner and maybe detected by more people earlier, at least there might be a chance to avert the mass murder at the end.

Heavy Weather – Darren Aronofsky takes on Noah, by Tad Friend.
This is my favorite of the entire issue. I’ve only seen two of Aronofisky’s films (The Wrestler, Black Swan) and didn’t felt too strongly about either. But Noah sounds interesting.

I’m fascinated by this custom-built desk of his.

Aronofsky writes his films on the second floor of his place in Manhattan’s East Village, at a custom-built desk of Bastogne walnut, inlaid with responsibly harvested macassar ebony and pink ivory. Twenty-five puzzles are concealed within it, cunning locks and springs and slides, and the front houses an octave of organ pipes you can play by sliding drawers in and out. As you solve the puzzles, you find hidden pieces of wood, each of which displays a few musical notes. When you put the pieces in order and play the resulting tune on the organ –an Irving Berlin song that was the first thing Aronofsky learned on the piano–it opens a secret safe: the final prize. It took him six weeks to pop the safe, and he had the plans. David Blaine told me, “The desk is a very cool thing that’s a lot like Darren himself–there’s always another twist and turn.”

An interesting anecdote.

In the mid-nineties, Arnofsky wrote down ten film ideas he wanted to pursue. All six of his films have come from that list, and all have been informed by his early years: the stress and the bloody toes his sister incurred in ballet practice became Nina’s in “Black Swan”; his parents’ cancer scares informed Izzi’s cancer in “The FOuntain.” After he wrote a prose poem about Noah for his seventh-grade English teacher, Vera Fried, he got to read it over the P.A. system — “The rain continued through the night and the cries of screaming men filled the air” — and was transformed from a math geek into a writer.

Then there is the celebrity gossip that i didn’t know before. Aronofsky was engaged with Rachel Weisz for five years and had a son together. Then they broke off the engagement, Rachel started seeing Daniel Craig, whom she later married.

A Valuable Reputation

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Jean

Sunday night, I finished reading A Valuable Reputation from the Feb. 10th issue of the New Yorker. Once again, i felt so lucky to have not stumbled into any of these inherently evil fields: Tobacco, pharmaceutical, military contracting, etc. Freshly out of college, if I had been given a job by one of these big corporations. I had a high chance of taking it. and then 10 years down the line, I could have become one of those employees in the article plotting to destroy a scientist systematically because he spoke the truth.

shudders.

The New Yorker Tech Issue Nov. 25, 2013

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Jean

It is a pretty decent read. I read most of the tech features within a couple of days of time.

The cover reminds me of Noah’s current favorite cartoon series Octonauts.

1. Rocket Man: The Youtube weapons inspector, by Patrick Radden Keefe
I find this to be the most interesting piece of the entire issue. How an armchair amateur, Eliot Higgins from Leicester, London, broke so many Syria news than most professionals (from journalists to spy agencies). All he does was scanning uploaded youtube footage by Syrian locals, and using Google and Facebook to find answers to all the weapons show up in those footage.

It is a mind blowing story. What is to come for professional journalism as well as spy masters? should those work be outsourced to passionate amateurs like Higgins? Look at what Higgins has accomplished, it seemed unnatural not to tab into this source of talent who work mostly for free!

2. Auto Correct – Google’s self-driving car, by Burkhard Bilger

As amazing as the technology seemed, the stalemate with Auto industry seems the most important fact to note. What will happen to all these fascinating technology development? iPod end up being amazing because Jobs manipulated record industry in signing the deals with Apple. Who will be the Jobs for self-driving cars?

3. Naked Launch: the digital economy’s new corporatism. by Nathan Heller
This article reads more like a silicon valley bibliography. and a good list of books to avoid. Otherwise the theme of the article is rather mundane: despite how the New technology companies paint themselves, at the end of the day “Company doesn’t hire company, people hire people”, and all people are greedy.

4. The Love App: Virtual keepsakes and real romance in Seoul, by Lauren Collins
Seoul described in the opening paragraphs sounds so fascinating. As if lifted out of sci-fi novels. But it is real! wow!

Captain Phillips

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Jean

A really good movie. After i came home, i found out the director was the same who made the Bourne trilogy. No wonder!

It kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Amazing actor from Hanks as well as the supporting actor, excellent editing, and impeccable story telling. A very satisfying experience.

I’ve spent the evening reading up on the Somali Pirate situation wikipage (turned out Indian Navy has been capturing, defeating the most Somali Pirate hijacking in Gulf of Aden), interviews with director Greengrass, Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi–a first time actor and a Somali-American, and interview with the real Richard Phillips. I even started readying the real Richard Phillips Memoir “A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea”.

All the scenes of the movie was shot on real ships, Greengrass ensured they were of the same model/type of ship as in the real story, from the Cargo ship to the Navy destroyer. They shot the movie off the coast of Malta. The four main pirates were all Somali-American who now live in Minneapolis, where there is a large Somali community. And the four were friends in real life when they auditioned. The other Somalis in the film were recruited from UK.

Greengrass also kept the US cargo ship crew actors separate from the pirate actors until they shot the real scene of their encounter. Tom Hanks mentioned their first meet during shooting, when the four got onboard of the ship and shoot their way to the bridge where “Captain Phillips” were at the time, “these were the four skinniest and scariest people i’ve ever met in my life.” Hanks said in the interview on Fresh Air. Hanks and the other two crew on scene also didn’t know what they were shouting at each other in Somalian.

Tropical Vacations

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Jean

During my traveling days, I’ve always been partial to mountains and cities. Tropical vacations has been very few. Looking back, I found out the only two tropical vacations I had both happened to be during Thanksgiving week. Both time i went with Gui, who loves the tropics and a veteran of all the tropical paradise: Tahiti, Bali, Bahamas, British Virgin Island, yucatan peninsula, Costa Rica, and many trips to Hawaii since she moved to San Francisco.

Nov. 2001 Cabo San Lucas, Sea of Cortez

I went with my diving partner Jenny, Gui and Matthew. It was right after Jenny and I got our PADI diving certificates from West Valley college. Jenny and I got off work twice a week to attend the classes (usually one lecture, one pool session) for 10 weeks. Final certification happened in the cold water of Monterey bay with amazing kelp forest. Two full day dives of four dives total if i remember correctly. I also failed the swimming test at the beginning of the quarter and had to retake it (and passed, whew!) prior to our ocean dive certification tests. I forgot how many laps it was required to pass the tests, but it was a longer distance than I could manage initially.

Diving in tropical water is so different from diving in Monterey. I’m very glad we did the trip. I remember seeing my first octopus in flight while diving (thanks to Jenny who noticed him, and i did the incorrect touristy thing by poking it with my flashlight, unknowingly forced it to put up a show for us). It was an amazing sight, not only the octopus changes color as it skid past rocks, ocean vegetation; but its skin also changes texture to match its background. All these happened within the blink of an eye. Then it was gone.

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on the beach in between our diving trips.

I loved the open air lobby of our hotel, where sparrows flew in and out as we were waiting to check in. The air felt warm and comfortable on the skin in the evening, and hot and blazing during the day.

Nov. 2003, Phuket, Thailand

Looking at the photos, i remembered in addition to Gui and Matthew, Gui’s college friend Sara also joined us. I think she was working for a non-profit in Thailand then and used to send Gui funny stories of her work there. I don’t remember if I dived in Phuket.

I remembered snorkel off the beach in front of the hotel during the day, as i was heading back to the beach, i saw a local boy swimming into the ocean holding a long pole with some fixture of ropes and hooks. I then joined Matthew sitting under a local food stand on the beach. A while later, the local boy with the pole came back with a freshly caught octopus in hand. Turned out Matthew ordered an octopus salad. And we witnessed the entire process of harvesting and cooking in one shot. Matthew said it was the freshest octopus salad he has ever tasted.

I also remembered the last day of the trip when Gui, Matthew and Sara continued on to a diving expedition on the other side of Phuket, I checked out my hotel, still have a few hours to kill before heading to the airport. I walked into the airy patio of Le Meridian on the beach which was next to our hotel but with a much better view and higher price tag, and sat in one of many comfy chairs and read my book on that trip, Enigma by Robert Harris. It was such a pleasant morning, with beautiful view of the Andaman sea, the breeze, the tropical fragrant in the air, always smiling wait staff, leisure sail boat on the sea, and a satisfied read. It must be the low season, the entire morning I almost had the entire large and beautiful patio to myself. Only one other woman customer came in and sat a few seat from me about mid-morning.

In between these two trips, there was also the three weeks Ecuador trip Sara and I ended up going April of 2002. It was also in a tropical setting since Ecuador is right on the equator, and our trip also included one week cruise among the very special Galapagos, but it felt less a tropical trip, more an adventure.

I never quite shook my unease with diving. My sister happened to be an advanced diver, she learned diving in Tahiti while attending a summary school session with Cal’s ocean-biology(or something like that) department. My mom loves swimming more than anything else and she still swim laps three days a week now. I’m the black sheep in the family. The year 2000 was my year of adventure, after mastering skiing, got hooked on rock climbing, and skydived once and loved it. I went for the scuba certification.

But i was always nervous before each dive (even though i really haven’t done that much). Later when i found out my sister also had her own fear about diving each time before she went in the water all suited up. I suddenly felt relieved and decided not to force myself to dive. Snorkel was just as fun in the tropicals and so much more relaxed for me.

My best snorkel experience has to be during our cruise at Galapagos. I remember a penguin shooting past me like a missile and missing my face by a hair as i was entering the narrow entrance of a sunk crater; I remember swimming in the crystal clear water and watch a group of sharks “circling” a large group of fish right beneath me; I remember a sea lion swam up to me and floated itself upside down, stared at me with its huge pretty eyes, and then blew a series of bubble at my mask…

I’m about to visit Hawaii for the first time this Thanksgiving. Surprisingly, everything i read about Hawaii, especially the scenery, reminded me of Ecuador. People’s description of the drive to Hana match exactly what i remembered from our bus ride from Papallacta in the Andes to Pimpilala in the Amazon Jungle. The description of the volcanos reminded me of our mountain biking trip down the volcano Cotopaxi in Quito Valley. And the varied colored sand beaches reminded me of Galapagos.

If Hawaii is a smaller, tamer, more civilized version of Ecuador that’s only 5 -7 hours away from home, then I can see myself visiting it more often. I could also understand why people will equate Hawaii with Paradise.

The New Yorker Digest: San Francisco, Collapse of a Top NY Law Firm, The Guardian, Jack Dorsey

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Jean

Another classic cover from Oct. 14, 2013 The New Yorker magazine. Subtle and funny.

Two interesting articles so far.

Bay Watched – San Francisco transforms the culture, again. by Nathan Heller

I’m taking a huge grain of salt with this article. The tone of the article reminded me of the days prior to dotcom bubble burst. When things sound too outlandish to be true, it is probably not true. Many of the phenomenon described in the article has a lot more to do with how much money are over flowing at the moment. What happens when that overflow stops? A business model should be one that works through thick and thin, not extravagant life style of some individual during the best of times.

One message i like about the article is that more silicon valley millionaires care more about quality of life after they made it. That is encouraging. Wish the country will become less workaholic, and more like Europe.

The later part of the article on the VC trend is pretty interesting.

The Collapse – How a top legal firm destroyed itself by James B. Stewart

A fantastic run of events that caused the collapse. I kept on wondering “what if”. I’m often of the opinion that the inevitable is inevitable. But in this particular case, i kept on feeling that a reversal of one particular bad decision could have turned things around. It didn’t have to end this way.

Two articles from outside the Money issue.

Freedom of Information – The newspaper that took on the N.S.A. -BY KEN AULETTA (Oct. 7, 2013)

An article about the editor of the Guardian newspaper, Alan Rusbridger.

Rusbridger, who is fifty-nine, has been its editor for eighteen years. He wears square, black-framed glasses and has a mop of dark hair that sprawls across his head and over his ears. He could pass for a librarian. “His physical appearance doesn’t tell you how tough he is,” Nick Davies, the investigative reporter whose byline dominated the Murdoch and WikiLeaks stories, said.

I’ve grown to respect The Guardian a great deal after their coverage of News of the World scandal and Ping Fu the liar. This article centered on their coverage of Snowden and their search for a viable feature of the newspaper in the ever more digital world.

Reading this article made me want to go out and subscribe the newspaper so to contribute something to a still great newspaper, which is such a rarity in today’s world (just subscribed their kindle’s edition!)

Two Hit Wonder – Jack Dorsey, of Twitter, is now making big money at Square—and is out to prove that he’s more than a lucky man. BY D. T. MAX (Oct. 21, 2013)

The New Yorker is looking west more often nowadays. Maybe because silicon valley topics are become more trendy. Some of the New Yorker’s profile are very good, such as the one on zuckerberg. But most the others are not so good. Comparing to the other more thoughtful writings, The New Yorker seems largely still stays in the fascinated stage with this little valley of ours. Fascinated but not understanding. As a result, most of these articles don’t really go beyond gossip. Classy gossip told with more restraint. But still are just gossip.

Very well written gossip, though!

Dorsey loves cities and the way movement within them can be charted and broken down into millions of parts. A city is a system that is at once flexible and stable, searchable and random. He expressed a similar interest in ant communities and aspen trees. “I really like any colony-based structure, where you have a strong dependence on a network,” he said. “Aspen trees grow in groups. If one of them dies, they all suffer. I think humans have the same thing, though it’s not as much on the surface.” He likes to draw ferns. (In his twenties, he studied botanical illustration.) “They’re a single structure that tends to repeat itself,” he said. “They’re fractal.” Exotic as these enthusiasms are, they seem suspiciously apt for the creator of Twitter, a service defined by its “strong dependence on a network.” As a thinker, Dorsey seems at once earnest and improbably coherent.

The article ends with an interesting exclusive headline, that Dorsey is interested in becoming the mayor of New York City.

Certainly, if Square eventually follows Twitter and becomes a public company, Dorsey would have extraordinary resources to fund a campaign. He owns 23.4 million shares of Twitter stock; an initial public offering is upcoming, and his stake could be worth nearly half a billion dollars. In March, at a celebration of Twitter’s seventh anniversary, Dorsey asked Bloomberg if he had any suggestions for how to succeed him in his job. Stone recalls, “Bloomberg told him, ‘Become a billionaire!’ I was joking with him recently, and I said, ‘Well, you’ve checked that box off.’ ”

A Satire of SF & One of NYC

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Jean

Someone in the name of Peter Shih wrote “10 Things I Hate About You – San Francisco Edition” on Aug. 14th, last Wednesday. I learned of its existence the next day on Twitter, where it was causing lots of anguish and harsh words. Shih tried to soften the tone of his article by adding a clause claiming it is satire, and also removed some of the most offending clauses, these all happened on Thursday.

I told ZM about this incident over the weekend. Today ZM sent me a Chinese news article talking about Peter Shih! and the Chinese news article also indicated that Shih has removed his essay and apologized! wow!

Apparently the Shih Storm is all over town (literately) and all over the news.

So i went back to reread the screen capture of Shih’s original article. To be honest, quite a few items he listed are very true, such as how bad SF’s public transit is, how monotonous SF is comparing to any real city. I remember commenting to friends after watching Billy Elliot on 2000, that it was so depressing to be born into a mining town and all you are expected to do is to be a miner. My friend Jennie at the time laughed at me, “and how different do you think the silicon valley is?”

What surprised me was Shih liked NYC, while complained about the various shabby elements in SF, such as transvestites, homeless, and unsafe areas. I asked ZM, who lived in NYC for nine years, isn’t NYC even more dirty and dangerous and has more weird people than SF? ZM said NYC is larger and more segregated(gentrified?). Just like Shih said, an uptown guy doesn’t have to mingle with the shabby elements if he chooses. But in San Francisco, such a compact city, everything is jumbled together. People like Shih couldn’t live in a bubble even when he has lots of money.

Shih is also correct about San Francisco’s nightlife (or the lack of).

This whole incident reminded me of the famous monologue delivered by Edward Norton in “25th Hour”. ZM and I watched that movie in a little theatre off Union Square in NYC. That satire monologue was even more extreme than Shih’s “hate -list”, it was about NYC. And while we were in that NYC theater, that monologue earned a standing ovation from the crowd. Everyone was clapping, laughing and cheering.

When i told ZM about 25th hour, his first reaction was real life is very different from the movies. I made him read the monologue and suggested, “could it be possible that New Yorkers are more secure than San Franciscans?” ZM contemplated a bit and reluctantly agreed, “maybe. Maybe because New Yorkers are a much more diverse group. While San Franciscan are mostly of the same type.”

I thought ZM had an excellent point. Basically we are back to monotonousness vs. metropolitan. San Francisco has a limited categories of residents, while New York City has many. Going down the list of Norton’s 25th Hour monologue, i could safely say none of the guys listed in Norton’s list are watching that movie in that theater, or very few. In other words, Norton’s list didn’t make a left-wing liberal a target, who is probably the target audience of that movie.

But Shih’s attempt at satire was met with a much limited audience as well as resources. He didn’t have much choice at who to pick on. And whatever he picked on happen to belong to the group of people who is reading his publication.

I happen to love both cities: San Francisco and New York City. I wish San Francisco will grow into a real city some day, with great public transportation, a functional public school system, and the diversity of New York City, while keeping our great weather, interesting architecture, and our nice parks. I wish San Franciscan will become more secure and tolerant of people with different opinions. Next time when someone deliver a Norton style monologue about San Francisco, we can have the confidence to call it a “love letter”, give it a standing ovation, instead of threatening to chase him out of town.

The New Yorker Digest 7/29/2013: Kayaktivist, Ask Ayn

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Jean

I don’t usually read “Talk of Town” or “Shouts and Murmurs” sections and realized I’ve been missing out!

Some quite hilarious pieces in the latest New Yorker (7/29/2013) issues in the “Talk of Town” and “Shouts and Murmurs”.

Kayaktivist

A women kayaker who noticed the Manhattan ferries don’t follow a marine rule. i.e. They don’t sound their horns during maneuver around the ferry terminal. Making it dangerous for kayakers like her. So she started a e-mail campaign to the Coast Guard. Early June 2013, her effort paid off. To the surprise of many luxury waterfront residents every morning starting at 6am. The horns are very loud. Now the residents started their own mail campaign to the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard has an easier time answering these residents protest, “Until the International Maritime Organization and the U.S. Congress change the rules, there is nothing I can do.”

Repeat Customer

A Tokyo resident finally passed the New York Bar exam after 17 tries starting from 2005. He wasn’t even planning on practicing law in New York.

Ask Ayn

Excerpt from an Ayn Rand newspaper column in “Parade”. True Ayn Rand style with a real life flavor such as freedom of taking drugs, why she loves “Charlie’s Angels”, her take on movies such as “Caddyshack” and “The Shining”.

The New Yorker Digest:Everest, Sniper, Silicon Valley, & An Manhattan Apartment

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Jean

Spent the last day of the long weekend reading the most recent two issues of the New Yorkers. For the first time I can now read the magazine on my phone! Thank you Google Play for bringing in the New Yorker!

1. THE MANIC MOUNTAIN
BY NICK PAUMGARTEN

An article originally intended to be the profile of Ueli Steck, one of the world’s premier alpanists–“The Swiss Machine” and his final epic climb on Everest. But it turned out to be more about the confrontation a month ago on Everest between Ueli and Nepalese Sherpas. The news and blogs i’ve heard about that story was one sided blaming the climbers. This article served as testimony of the story from the Climber’s view. Sobering.

The article is behind a subscription wall. Failing that, you could listen to this interview of the author Nick Paumgarten and Peter Hessler on climbing culture and a summary of the article by Paumgarten, by Sasha Weiss.

and here is a video of Ueli climbing Eiger!

2. IN THE CROSSHAIRS–Chris Kyle, a decorated sniper, tried to help a troubled veteran. The result was tragic. BY NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE

How some people could use this story to make a case for pro-gun and against gun-control is beyond me!

3. Change the World By George Packer

Throughout most of Silicon Valley’s history, its executives have displayed a libertarian instinct to stay as far from politics and government as possible. But the imperative to change the world has recently led some Silicon Valley leaders to imagine that the values and concepts behind their success can be uploaded to the public sphere.

It is mainly a story about how Zuckerberg turns political. Entertaining, but please take this article with a grain of salt. Some of the statements are overly sensationalized, which made me question the truthfulness of the remaining of the story.

4. Crowded House by Tad Friend

In the spring and summer of last year, people from Brazil, Norway, Spain, South Africa, Bangladesh, Japan, and even the Upper West Side pounced on a Craigslist ad for a twenty-five-hundred-square-foot Chelsea loft with two large bedrooms and two baths. The apartment’s owner and impresario was a photographer named Michael Tammaro who assured potential tenants that he’d get them membership in Soho House. Everyone wanted in. They couldn’t all rent the apartment, of course. Unless they could!

A hilarious read!

My favorite part of the story is how the Asian couple used sympathy to recover most of their money after learning the truth. And the advice the D. A. gave to a couple of the victims. “I”ve been in this job fifteen years, and I’ve heard everything — but I’ve never heard of the scammee locking the scammer out.” He went on, “I’m going to give you some advice – get out of the apartment. You’re two young people, starting out together, and you don’t want your lives to be about this terrible person.”

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may he love tomorrow, who has never loved before, may he who has loved, love tomorrow as well

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