Get the followingin my Trillian MSN service
messenger@microsoft.com: You are running a version of messenger that requires an immediate security update. Please visit http://messenger.msn.com/Help/Upgrades.aspx to complete the update.
Do not how long I could still use Trillian.

mr blog

Mr Blow, dun be stressed, you are still the Mr Blow (take note of the captialized signoff name) and I've been reduced to "br mlog". =(
Anyway, what you described about this 7-alphabet guy is really something. It's sad to say that I'm not like him.

br mlog

HON GA LA RULES THEM ALL

1. During his Stanford tour, he only needs to spend money on entertainment purposes as well as donations to the needy.
   
2. He's more highly paid than TAs.
   
3. All his stipends received from this moment onwards are surplus.
   
4. In Straits Times today, HK pays higher wages than Singapore. This demonstrates his foresight in the right choice of country to reap the most benefits.
5. No living or non-living systems around him suffice to be his sources of inspiration. He self-induces inspiration.

The lowly, worthless scum of ...: Mr Blow

Oh... there's still hope for that lost $5000 !

br mlog

who dare to cheat hongaila $$??? DC

HK$5000..... I've just lost HK$5000

mr blog

1. CD without music
2. Dinner without rice
3. Computer without OS
4. Research without direction
5. Life without direction and aim

This's me.

mr blog

Finally make a reasonably good online album at here mirrored here

Random pictures of the CA trip ;lt& snipped ;gt&

some random notes during the trip.

Stanford Conference - 10 Aug

Arrived at 20:00 local time on a sunday. The custom is considerately easy to clear since I prepared the invitation letter. But I discovered I lost the letter after the custom clearance. Perhaps it was kept by the custom, but the letter has accomplished what it's meant to be.

Met my mother friends and they sent me to the camps site. We took 1/2 hr for travelling and another 1/2 hour for finding the exact location. We then went to the only dinnng place nearby - "Jack in a box".

The place I'm staying is a room for summar students in stanford. The room is big with two beds and tables with a partition. But I'll using only 1/2 of the room. The building is like a U-shape. The main entrance is in the middle (but I have no access) and 2 other entrances by the two ends. When I was done with my food, they dropped me by the road side and I walk back alone. I found my room 217 and opened and I found all my laggages were gone. I walked out of the building and realised I went to the wrong residence hall.

I slept at about 12 midnight. I rememebered I adjusted the watch in the air plane when I reached. I woke up at 6am, took a shower. The sky is still dark. I went back to my laptop and change the windows city/time-zone and I realise it's only 3:30am.

Stanford Conference - 11 Aug

My second day over the Stanford University. Had the opening night on Monday 5pm. It was just a tea gethering, with some light food, but that was considered my dinner for the day.

When I was about to go back to my room, I saw Prof Chin. He was holding on one with "Speaker" ribbon, so we exchanged the tags. People in my table are working in Research Lab, most of them hold PhDs and they always talked about microarray, saying that it's always not accurate, could not be trusted. They gave me the feeling that Bioinformatics is just a random try-and-error thing. I read from their name tags that among the 6 guys, at least 4 chinese and a vietnamese, a korean. They all communicated in english, fluent English. It guess it's what you need to survive in the states.

After the dinner, I began my "random work" again at 7pm. I saw the bookstore in the map, so I walked towards that direction. Along the way I snapped some photographs with my DC. I passed by the student union and post office. These are familiar to me in states university. I reach the bookstore, but unfortunately it was about to close in 2 minutes. The bookstore has two levels, and I saw those things I need to get from outside - T-shirts, soft toys.... Perhaps I'll go to the book store earlier later of the week.

After bookstore, time has already passed sunset, and light was getting darker. I walk farther in, towards the lake area. I could find where is the lake but I managed to get to the university convience store. From there I got a class of starbuck coffee and a stanford T-shirt. I wanted to get more stuff but I thought it would be a better idea to get them at the bookstore.

After I headed back to my room. After bath, I had an early night. For this second night at Stanford, I slept at 11pm (local time) and woke up at 3:00am on the next time morning.

Stanford Conference - 12 Aug

Today considered the "first day" of attending conference. I don't understand a thing in any of the presentations. I've seen prof chin and we planned to add in more slides on my presentation. He asked me to bring back his proceeding for him. I didn't mind that since I can always squeeze in that. Finally went to the bookstore, bought lots of stuffs and paid USD50. One of them is a mug of stanford. They didn't provide the box and the lady at the counter said I can get the box from the "service counter". I went to the service counter and they charge 75c for the box, in the end the mug goes to the plane without a box. Went back to my room, Ken just stay in a room a floor above me. He voluneered to listen to my talk. I was already 10pm when I took my bath, bare footed. I didn't brought along my room key and I got to call the emergency counter for key. I finally went back to my room at 11pm, still bare footed.

Stanford Conference - 13 Aug

second day of conf. , modified the slides and presended once to prof. there was still more minor comments but they most acceptable. the dinner is also a workshop about genome. it was open to all for free with registration. i dint register and skip dinner , but i still went to faculty club, for some photo with ken and prof. i told them that i need time to prep for presentation. i went to student union cafe for dinner. i ordered teriyaki chicken. it turned out that the chicken comes with jap rice. i guess people in stanford like me would have this often enough. went back to my room and demo my presentation again. .

Stanford Conference - 14 Aug

Because of jet lag or other reason, i knocked down and found myself on bed. i came to my conscious at about 1am and never get back to sleep again. all i did on the bed is my speech, based on slides that i remembered. i came to my concoiuse again at 6am. i knew that its time for me to get off my bed. my presentation it scheduled at 1115am and it is the last one before lunch. i was hungary by then. i realise i miss many parts i wanted to discussed, as a result, the presentation was short, under-timed. who cares ? it's finally over. went for last meeting shopping at stanford, with someone from CUHK, we are both like 2 blinds touching a elephant, in the chinese idiom. meet my cousin at night and went back to her dom. She changed so much. when i talk to her on SF train service, i avoided mrt or mtr and i used the word subway, it was still wrong, SFians call it BART. Tomorrow going for a city tour, and maybe for some shopping.

Stanford Conference - 15 Aug

Woke up early in the morning staying at my cousin's place, at about 6am. I had ho-fun prepared by my cousin. It was ok but I didn't like the crab strips; i don't take crab strips and now it's even cut into piece, mixed with salad.

We went to the state CA state university for walk. In fact this is only for her mother to see, since she never been to the states. Then we took BART to go to San Frascico. It costs at USD3.50 and we had to use exact coins (separate) because we didn't know how to operate the machine. The design and operation of the ticket machine is really lousy.

When we reached SF, it had only 15 minutes for the tour bus to start. We had to grap some quick and fast food at the sea side. But there are lots of seafood, especially crab and shrimes. We had shrime burgers. I could only finish 2/3 cos I find the taste of the shrme funny, maybe they are raw shrimes. It was lucky that my stomach didn't roll in the entire trip.

The tour bus started it trip. The tour guide, cum driver drove thru central part of SF and later stop over at the city hall like buidling, and took pictures. I took pictures thru the windows of the bus. Then the most exciting part is to bring us to sight the golden gate bridge. By the time, my camera battery run low and I have to take a quick photo before it automatically shuts down. In fact I actually bought the AA battery one stop before that. It costed $3.99 + tax. Sold at a small susenvior shop by a chinese old man. The *new* battery didn't work, I recalled that the packaging is a little differences; I must have cheated by that old chinese man!!! *sigh* chinese are nothing food in the western country. OK so I needed to *squeeze* my camera battery before I can take the final shots at golden gate bridge. That's all for the 1/2 day tour of SF. We went to SF chinatown for vietnamese food.

When we head back at the BART station. We saw this *professional* helper at the BART station who work just to help people to operate the ticket machine. There machines for changes, machine for no change, and machine to make smaller notes and they have the smae interface, no one can understand how to operate. So the *professional* helper came, just point to us what to do, and we can use a 10 note note for 2 tickets, changes are all in quarters. Since she is a professional, she asked for some tip.

We are all tired for the day and we slept early for the night.

Stanford Conference - (Day 5) 16Aug

Last day of trip, my cousin plan for me to go to a states park for for red wood forest, with 2 more people one my cousin friend, and her friend thru ICQ, surprisingly all speak chinese.

The park is high up in the mountain and the road to the park are are curves, I got abit motion sickness. Well, nothing special to the trees. But the sight along the road to the mountain is nice.

After the trip, we all had spicy Sichun food at about 4pm. Went to her uncle house to collect some photo for cousin's mother. Her uncle insisted that he followed us to the airport. So we wen to china town for supper (our dinner) before going to airport. Toke a few photo at the airport with them and off I leave SF.

Mr BLOG

My presentation is ovr at last. Forgot many many points tha i want to mention. My presentation became like from a pro-long (over-timed) presentation to a under-timed presentation. The indian, who asked question for EVERY presentation, surprisingly didn't ask me. I think he must feel asking me question is like wasting his effort to bring up inteligent question.

mr blog

Haven't been posting since I'm on conference to Stanford. Arrived on Sunday night and it was until now that I got to check my mails and get the internet access from the library of stanford. But I have been writing what I've been doing these 2 days. Strange thing, I seemed to spend less on food, since everything is paid for. I went to the bookstore just now and got a bag of key chains... to be brought back for those people who expect me to bring back something (and that something must not be made in China). Have been waking up early in the morning... 3 something in the morning. Hope that this could maintain until the day of my presentation.

mr blog

On the lst day that I fly to the states... i managed to download the latest album of david tao, nice.

mr blog

Went back home and watched Real Madrid again HK. At least 4:2 is at least much better than losing 6:0 to Liverpool at few weeks back. In fact 4:2 is a very good result.

mr blog

Today's is the last day before I fly, I can't do anything. Went for an one-hour table tennis with another guy in teh lab. As I remember corrrectly, the last session was way back in 1999 or 2000 (???), with another 3 guys in MPH (one of them is smartie???...). I realised that the table is now smaller, the bad is small (the ball easily hit my fingers, and they hurt); the ball moves faster (can easily get out of table). Brings me back lots of fond memories.

mr blog

A game of picking up someone in a group of people. Rule of the game,

1. When there are n paritcipants, draw n veritcal bars, equal length, equally spaced.
2. Any one can add in any number of horizontal bars from one bar to another bar, in any postion along the vertical bar.
3. When done, all chose their own distint starting positions of the vertical bar. Whoever gets to the chosen end poin got to do that task.
4. Rule of tracing the path is simple, first start by going down. Whenever one reaches an interception of lines, he cannot go striaght, he either has to turn to the horizontal (if you are going towards down), or he has to turn virtically down (if you are traveling horizontal).
5. A self-explainatory example,
   
6. Theorotically, the game is interesting because different players end up at different end points (and distinct). Actually, we don't hav to try all players one-by-one, it's the same by tracing back from the end point to the players's starting position. But it will be less exciting.

And just because of this game, I need to be the so-called MC for the coming welcome tea for the new postgraduates, =( .

mr blog

P.S. What's this game in English??

Today I saw the registration day of HKU undergrad. Different societies are setting up their booths, trying to get more new members. One very common tackic to give our small 'little' gifts, things like pens, note books,.... even saw some society gave out umbralla (not the foldable type). Heard from others that, there are even society that the *only* activity is to prepare for the annual reg. day. Most of the booths are out door, or cannot be locked, so I see each booth, there's always someone staying back overnight to man the booth.

mr blog

Watching Movie

Just went for movie for teh first time after I last watched "Minority Report" half-asleep. It's "Finding Nemo"... quite an interesting movie, following the "Monster Inc" spirit.

mr blog

A story on my sups. He went for COCOON late last month in US, and going for my coming conference in CA, US. So he made the trip as a family traveling tour. His iternariry is roughly, HK->JP->Settle->... California -> Hawaii -> HK. The one presenting is the PhD student, with my sup, my sup's wife + son + daugter + sister. They even bought a brand new digtal camera, along with that camera, they got a 40GB harddisk to backup the photographs from camera. It's supposed to be a enjoyable trip. but...

1. On the day of departure, it was the Strong Wind Singal No. 8 in HK and the fligh got delayed. Subsequenctly all the flights got to be re-arranged.
2. When they were in Japan, they took another flight, so they stayed in hotel for the night. And lost the brand new digtal camera. All the photos are taken in the PhD student's camera.
3. After COCOON somewhere near in Seattle, they went to the Yellow Yellow Park. PhD student was supposed to stay there only for another 2 days. While the rest stayed for 5 days before they moved on.
4. Just before the night that PhD student suppoed to leave, my sup ask the student to stay for another 2 days, with the dinner and accomadation paid for. But for that he spent USD 200 to change the flight.
5. That student needed to stay for another 2 days because the digital camera is needed. =(

I'm not sure if I should bring my camera there.

mr blog

A friend of mine just confirm that will be back from 7th to 23rd. It might not be a good time for me, but at least we still can meet.

mr blog