Archive for December, 2003

amazing coincident

semi sweet: dodo, you are not going to believe this
semi sweet: me and leah bumped into each other at Disney World.
semi sweet: in line for a ride
me: OMG that’s crazy
semi sweet: no intention to meet.
me: how did you recognize each other?
semi sweet: and we didn’t even know that both of us were going to be there.
semi sweet: i recongnized her. and i recongnized her hubby even more, so i asked her what her name was, and i was like OMG
semi sweet: “leah.. this is kat, semisweet!”
me: that’s just crazy
me: where did that happen?
semi sweet: at disney/mgm studios
semi sweet: at the line for Hollywood Tower of Terror! :)

apparently two members on my board just met each other in person without planning. they don’t live close to each other either.. they are all on a trip.. how amazing!

the great irony

the more i read this news article, the more ironic i feel. the article states: “China’s socialist laws theoretically protect workers even as the country embraces capitalist ways. But the police crush efforts to set up independent unions as threats to the Communist Party.” i’m not surprised but still it’s so unbelivably ironic; it’s just pathetic. allow me to go over some history - during the first united front in 1920s, the Nationals (now the gov’t of taiwan) and the communist united under USSR’s encouragement to take over china from the warlords. the communist was best known for spreading idealism and help with workers’ rights. they helped forming labor unions in many places esp. in shanghai. they encouraged workers to protest against their unfair treatment. but Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist was close to the rich people. in fact most of their army was founded by rich people. they were certainly not happy to see the workers gaining power. convinced to strike first, Chiang Kai-shek open fired at the communist without warning. wiped out an incredible number of communist members in no time. the event is remembered as bai se kong bu - white terror of 1927. yes communists died then but they seem to me were heros who had given their lives to help those who were worst off. when did the original idealism take a complete flip? oh i know when.. after Mao’s ideal devasted China - after his intension to give everyone enough to eat, surf pass the US in steel production brought chinese disasters after disasters, no one believes in it any more. china is now a capitalist country where money is the only god everyone worships but sharing idealism is nowhere to be found. why does this seem to me like history repeating itself? when will china be able to truly balance sharing and economic growth?
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incredible illusion

from this thread - it’s certainly one of the best ones i’ve seen.

Click for a bigger version
the square labled “A” and the square labeled “B” are the SAME COLOR

don’t believe it?

I tried to do a little photoshop trick.
optical illusion

Still don’t believe it? You should save the picture and use a paint program and use the color selection tool to test. It’s incredible how our eyes deceive us.

ham ball recipe

remember the ham balls? oh yes
 

we finally made our own. if i don’t write down the recipe now, andy will kill me ^_^

ok this one makes 5lb of ham balls, if you want to make smaller serving, make sure you only use a certain percentage of what’s written here!
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spot - our precious

we are not allowed to own pets here in our apartment. andy used to own a cat named spot at his trailer. but since we moved, his brother has been taken care of the kitty. now they are on a trip so we can to keep spot for a week. this is always my favorite time of the year. spot is the cutest kitty :)

 
yumm, he loves the dirty towel where we wipe our shoes on. he says: i love the smell so i roll roll roll.

 
i’m posing for the camera - i’m a cat model.
 
look! i’m a fur ball =^_^=

today we got spot some treats.
 
the way he stares at it is so cute. i think he recognizes the kitty on the bag.

 
if i stare and concentrate, the bag will magically open!

and spot wants to get out of the room.
 
please open the door for me! i need to pee really bad!

it’s so much fun to have a furry companion once for a while. when i went to sleep, spot jumped to my side and slept around my legs. it felt weird LOL andy said this morning he started meowing for attention. it woke andy up and he took him out to the livingroom so i could continue my sleep. i don’t know how you can get mad being woken up by a cutie like that tho. (if you only have him around your house once a year that is)

why can’t people in china view china objectively

There’s so much I want to talk about China. It’s impossible to fit them all into one post. But yesterday’s incident was the spark I needed to really sit down and arrange my thoughts and to give a more complete description about my views on China. My recent blog hunt and news stalking had given me a wider perspectives about China’s problems and more insights about people’s political mindset in China. No matter how hard I try, I find it impossible to feel completely apathetic to those who are suffering across the world from me. China’s improvements make every Chinese excited. Who doesn’t want to be proud of their roots? But before I can sit back and relax, I remain skeptical. It’s clear China has a lot more to improve. I can not leave myself with “aw, it will change” and walk away.
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undying class struggle

my experience online is very ironic today. first i got the email from my english teacher in china telling me he wishes to move to a different district. he says “I have a deep-rooted hatred on those so-called leaders as Party members in my school. No class struggle in America, isn’t it? But in China, it’s quite different.” i wished him good luck and just minutes ago some “george_ca” guy left a message on my tabulas tagboard said “Are you anti-China? That’s not good to follow Weijs.” for all the years i’ve been living in america, no one labeled me as anti-anything. as soon as i start to talk chinese policies, wow, someone is already eagerly to give me a label. back a few decades, i will probably be a rightist and doing manual labor by now. wtf?! it just disgusts me when people jump to conclusion just because i question the governmental polices. apparently many mainlanders believe questioning policies = anti-government

only sugar coated words are to be accepted.

i’m born to chinese culture but am greatly shaped by western society and democracy. i see problems in china. what disappoints me even more is merely questioning for changes is deemed is anti - not even by the chinese gov’t but by some regular chinese. i hate to say but right now i feel chinese problems are hopeless. it’s better just not to care. i know this sounds ridiculous but i’ve thought so hard about chinese problems that i lost sleep. yea isn’t it dumb?! *slap slap* i think i will live just fine in a different country not interested in the country i was born just like thousands others who came here as a child.

themed pop ups

bubs from bubblessoc.net asked me this question. I thought i’d share the answer.

“How do you get your popups (ie: xchange) to match the current theme? Is it complicated coding or something you wrote yourself?”

This can be done regardless what theme script you are using. Usually your theme/skin script has a cookie variable. In my script, it’s $css, in some other scripts it could be $newskin. For my exchange popup, i made different popupheader.php and popupfooter.php in different theme folders. Then you include the header and footer in the popup page the same way you do for other pages.

For example for my “love” theme, I made
lovepopupheader.php
&
lovepopupfooter.php
in my themes/love folder

in my x.php
i just put
include($DOCUMENT_ROOT.”themes/$css/”.$css.”popupheader.php”);
&
include($DOCUMENT_ROOT.”themes/$css/”.$css.”popupfooter.php”);

Then the x.php file will change with different themes.

sweet air of christmas

2003 cards Thank you to all of you who sent me xmas cards!! They are very precious. Eve, the hellokitty card is so cute unfortunately the lazy postman folded the evenlop :( It really broken my heart. Sarah!! My card for you got returned. I emailed you for your address but you didn’t reply. So i used your old address from a card i got from you. ecila, you sent the card to my old address - where now andy’s brother lives. Email me for a new addy! Thanks sis for your gift! Yesterday I got a new hellokitty plush from andy’s mom.
 
my mermaid hk now has company!
Today i got some perl books from my professor. No they are not gifts. They are for me to engulf in over the winter break.
 
I’m going to write my own blog script in perl just to learn the language. It will be fun :)

Finally, my new toy! My dad gave me this 128mb mp3 player. My first! How exciting :)
 

last final

delightful - i finished my last 7:30am final. i was struggling with one of the haskell problem on the exam but i think i nailed it at the end. 10 minutes before the end of the exam. the exam is two hour long. i finished everything except problem 4 by 8:30am. then i dived into problem 4. for 40 minutes i’ve tried many different approaches and finally i got it. however redundant it could be, at least i believe it solves the problem correctly.

i also got my TA’s email telling me i scored 100/100 on the last homework. i haven’t been happy with the class if you read my complaints here and here but maybe i will end up with an A coz i’ve been hearing a lot of “i didn’t study” “i have no idea what i’m doing” kinda comments from my classmates before the exam. at least i do know what i am doing even if i will never touch haskell or prolog again.

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