When I am searching for power socket format used in Europe, I came across an interesting article on origin of driving direction. Some countries drive on the left hand side of the road, which is Japan, UK and its former colonies, and the rest of the world drive on the right hand side. Driving on the left hand side actually makes sense and it can be dated back to pre-automobile days. Knights are usually riding on the left side on the road, so that their sword using arm is closer to incoming enemies. Moreover they carry the sword on the left hand side, so it is easier to mount or dismount the horse from the left. It is more natural to get off the horse to the side of the road rather than towards the center of the street. Thus riding and driving on the left hand side of the road is a symbol of the noble class, where the presents leave to walk on the right side of the road. When revolution came in France and US, the people want to distinguish themselves from the old royal system, therefore driving on the right became the rule. Sometimes illogical choices due to political ideology would stay and affect our life for a long time.
I forgot to bring my cell phone to work in two consecutive days. I have a habit put all the stuff I have to bring everyday in one spot, and put everything into my pockets in the morning blindly. If I don’t see the thing, there is a high chance I forget to bring it. Let me count how many items I have to gear up before walking out the door. There are wallet, coin purse, home keys, car key, cell phone, eye glasses, watches and palm. The problem is that I put my stuff on the right hand side of the monitor, while the cell phone has to placed on the left hand side to recharge. I can’t simply put everything on the left hand side since it does not have enough space. There is no easy solution to this problem, not until I move back to my own place where everything is nicely arranged. For the mean time, I just have to remind myself about the cell phone every morning.
The schedule of the project at work is really bad. My part has been slipped for almost 3 weeks already. I suppose to have 1.5 months to verify my block before I take off for vacation. However my work depends on the deliverable from other team members. Both the RTL design and the testbench components are late and cause a cascade effect to my schedule. Now I only have a little more than 2 weeks before my vacation and those parts are still not working. Today I got another release from Saskatoon, but it turn out the code is so buggy that it is unusable. It seems the first milestone of flushing out the datapath has to wait until I come back from Germany. The managers keep saying my block is not on the critical path so it can slip a bit. I hope the schedule will not get out of control and put me in the hot seat when it’s time to tape out.
In the news, there is a24 years old female teacher in Florida charged of having sex with her 14 years old student. This news brings some discussion to the Lasallian email group. Someone us believe that she should be free of charge, something is seriously wrong with the US law regarding minimum legal age of having sex. It is out of question that her act is indecent and unprofessional. The school board should fire her for violated the teacher’s conduct. However citizen’s private life is not the business of the government and she shouldn’t trialed with criminal charges. Protecting the minor from sexual abuse is good, but in this case I don’t think that 14 years old boy was hurt in this incident. He is old enough to be responsible for his own decision of having sex with his teacher. I will have different opinion if the teacher is a man and the student is a 14 years old. The boy probably had sexual experience with girls at his age already. How his relationship with his teacher hurts him, and what does the law protect him from?
I have been a long time Macross fans. Back in the old days, whenever I walked by the amine shop, The Pirate Ship, in Mongkwok, I always stare into the the shopping window at the Macross Gold Book. I remember it cost HK$1000. It is specially printed for the release of Macross The Movie. It comes with a Valkyrie cut through poster and a film stripe bookmark. Being a student I didn’t have the money to buy the book at that time. Eventually the stocks ran out and I never seen it selling in any shops again. Many years had passed, with the advancement in internet, I occucationaly see it selling on eBay. Albeit it is usually very expensive, especially for the first edition that come with the film stripe. I saw some of them have reached over US$200 without shipping. This book is quite heavy and shipping cost is estimated at least $20, probably over $40 if shipping out from Asia. I came across another one in eBay a few weeks ago. Thanks to the Macross World Forum being shut down for maintenance during that week, I won the book without any competition. It’s even cheaper than the original price. Today the book arrived by mail, and I had finally fulfilled one of my long time childhood dreams. As a bonus, the film stripe bookmark features a close up shot of Minmay, the leading female character. What a pleasant surprise!