Thanks to a popular TV series, Dae Jang-geum, Korean culture is the most trendy topic in Hong Kong as well as the Chinese community in Vancouver. The show is about the first female royal physician in Korean history. I had only watched about 5 minutes of the show in total, and couldn’t understand why Pat and many of my friends are so addicted to this show. Luckily the show is finally finished, so no more bombardment from the media. Inspired by the glorified cooking of this show, me and Pat went to try out the Korean royal feast yesterday, . The meal has about twelve courses and took almost 2 hours to eat, kinda like fine dining served in Korean style. The food is pretty neat, very different from other Korean BBQ restaurants we are used to. Out of all the dishes, the ginseng tempura is most extra-ordinary. The dinner is not very expensive, comparable to having 3 courses in any bar and grill restaurants in downtown Vancouver. Highly recommended.
All posts by hevangel
identity
Often, Pat complains about losing her identity when going out with my friends, she is always treated as the girlfriend of Horace instead of an independent individual. Finally it’s my turn of having the identity of Pat’s boyfriend. Today is the wedding of Schola, a church friend of both me and Pat. The wedding ceremony is marvelous, one of the best I have attended. In addition to the boring Fr. Chu of CMCC, they have a guest priest, Fr. Chau, from HK. His homily is so good that kept me awake by fusing Chinese culture nicely with the gospel. He even made a chinese poem using the name of the newly wedded couple. In tonight’s banquet, I thought we will assigned to sit with the church people. It turn out we sit with the Maryknoll table. Pat is so happy that she can hang out with fellow Maryknoll sisters and can introduce me as her boyfriend. There were dancing in the banquet, unfortunately me and Pat are haven’t learn the steps of ball room style music played before it turned into clubbing style. After the banquet, we went to bubble tea with the Maryknoll group and two LSC old boys who are friends to the group. We had some good time, and surprisingly I met Verona there. Oh, by the way one of the old boys is a handsome dentist happens to be single.
move on
Tonight I am having farewell party with a friend leaving Vancouver for good, then the big group went to watch Starwars together. The line up is pretty long, even though we went almost 1.5 hours early, the seats are just so-and-so. In the gathering, I had met some old friends who had left the company. They talked about their career plans and I found I couldn’t join the conversation. I simply have nothing to say about my career, I know the job at PMC leads no where, and I don’t feel like talking about the plan after I graduate, since I still haven’t got my degree yet. Talk about something that vague in the future even makes me think I am just BSing. I am glad that my friends are able to move on to their next stage of life, but what about myself? Anyways, enough whining for the day, now switch the topic to something more positive.
I read this anecdote from HBR, which is quite inspiring and I planned to use it in the Toastmaster meeting. In WWII, a statistician Abraham Wald was appointed by the US air force to improve the survivability of the warplanes. From the data the air force had gathered, they found that the some parts of the planes get hits much more often. So the military naturally concluded they should reinforce those parts. However Wald come up with an opposite conclusion from the data, he figured that the part that hit least should be reinforced. His reasoning is that the data is biased, only planes had survived are included in the statistic. If a critical part is hit, the plane is already crashed and it won’t show up in the data. Therefore reinforce those heavily damage parts won’t give any improvement in survivability, as the pilots can still make it back to the base. Selective bias when reading statistics can be very misleading and give us a false sense of security.
chess
Since I have started playing chess, I think my skill had improved a lot over the past year. Although I still cannot beat Andrew, the grand master who had left PMC, I can slaughter Gordon most of the time if I don’t overlook some obvious blunders. What makes me different from a novice player is I no longer eager to exchange pieces, unless the exchange gives me a positional advantage. I learn how to setup traps and avoid the traps setup by the opponent. One thing I would like to improve is the ability to trade equal material with pieces of different values. My end game is still quite weak, many times I gave away my advantage by pushing the pawns too far, without giving them enough support from the king. The use of chess clock makes both Gordon and me play like a pro. He no longer do touch moves, he can even get me sometimes if I don’t pay good attention on the implication of his moves. There is no magic bullet in playing chess, study hard on the tactics, carefully plan your strategy and master mind your opponent is the only way to victory.
Voting
Today is the election of the BC provincial government. As a good citizen, I did caste my vote. Fortunately, the candidate I support had won the seat in my riding. I know nothing about the candidate himself before going to the voting station, nor he had any advertisement targeted me. The only judgment I had is to vote along party line, support the party closer to my ideas. There is an independent candidate in my riding with the nick name “evil genius” in the ballot, who is a SFU student. I almost wanted to give him my vote as an encouragement for his courage.