In my previous project there was a tradition.? Every friday afternoon, the team get together in a meeting room to drink Scotch.? The first few bottle is by the generosity of the manager, later people take turn and contribute the bottles, especially when they travel.? This fun and team motivating event stopped when the project becomes very busy, then later everyone move into different projects.? A few team members join my current project, and one of them won a $50 spot light award for giving ideas to increase productivity.? He kinda donated the award money to a fine bottle of Scotch, and the friday afternoon drinking is revived.? I still have half a bottle left from the previous project, so I bring it to the meeting as well.? The whole team just sit by the table, drink and chat.? It has really good atomsphere.? The manager and even the director join us by hearing our laughters and smelling the drink down the hallway.? Those come to the meeting early bring their own glass.? The few people come in late has no glass.? First they say they don’t want to drink, just join us for the chatter.? Then I took the trouble to bring over some glasses from the cafeteria and everyone start drinking.? Not drinking is just an excuse of having no glass.? Unless those who are allegic to alcohol, no one will stay dry on this moderate social drinking event.

Today night’s political philosohpy class talks about John Rawl’s Liberal Equality, which is the corner stone of left wing liberalism.? It defends justice as fairness.? However I couldn’t agree his theory of what is fair.? The theory of libral equality has two major principles.? 1. Principle of maximal equal basic liberitie.? 2a. Social and economic equality, unless inequality maximally benefit the worst off group.? (difference principle)? 2b.? Fair equality and oppertunity.? It is easy to agree on principle 1 and 2b, but principle 2a is more controversial.? Why we have to maximize the benefit of the worst off group by scarificing the good for the better off groups?? Why can’t we provide them a tolerable minimium standard of living and let them work their way up the social ladder instead?? Rawl has two arguments supporting it, the hypothetical social contact behind the veil of ignorance and intuition theory.? The social contact failed to conclude the difference principle, because the tolerable minimium is a more rational choice if the rational being calculate the probability and weight the gain of being in each group.? I have encounter the intuition theory in a political discussion before.? The agrument is unfair to those with born disadvantage, whether natural or social, to compete with the better off people.? I can’t see why born unequal is unfair, as Rawl phased everyone is in this natural lottery.? Lottery by definition is fair, everyone’s chance of winning is equal.? Then a follow up argument is that it is not less fortunate people’s fault to be less competitive, therefore they should be compansated.? Then my counter-argument is it is not the fault of better off people for the less fortunate people to be less competitive, why do we have to pay for their misfortune?? Here I want to state clear that I am not cold blood and against helping the misfortune.? My claim is that it is charity and good work for the better off to help the misfortune.? However there is not intrinsic right for the misfortune to demand helps from the better off.? They should thank the help they recieve rather than take it for granted like in the theory of liberal equality.? My own political philosohpy is still very fragile and incomplete.? I should able to further develop it by contrasting it to other political theories.? So far, I have been losely base it on utiliteranism and capaticalism, but I can already see the limitation of these two theory.? Reality, power and efficiency would be the three pillars to construct my theory.

Today I had lunch with a friend whom went to Hawaii in the summer.? I made an comment about the size of Waikiki beach seems shrinked.? I remember when I visit Hawaii many years ago as a little kid, the Waikiki beach seems bigger.? This friend and my friends I went Hawaii with agree with me, as they all recall Waikiki was very big.? I came up with two theory explaining the reduce in size.? First theory is global warming, the sea level rise and drown the beach.? Second theory is part of the beach is converted into new hotels.? My friend points out the hotels by the beach are not brand new, they have been around for many years.? So my second theory is not very convincing.? The first theory doesn’t make much scientific sense since the sea level has only raise a few centimeters in the past 10 years, it should not eat up a large chunk of the beach.? I try to find some data on the web about Waikiki’s size, but every link on google is just useless advertisments.? Someone should write a search enginer that filters out commerical sites, only return informative site with information I am looking for.? Here comes one last theory, maybe our memory had cheated all of us.? The Waikiki beach is always the same size.? It looks bigger back then because we were much smaller.? When I was search for the information of? Waikiki’s size, I came across the answer for a question puzzled me for a few days.? There is a canal on the north side of Waikiki, and I always wonder what is it for.? The Ala Wai Canal was dig to drain the water from weland.? Waikiki was originally a swamp.? The beautiful beach and the land of all resort hotels are man made.

The past weekend I went to Haiwaii to attent FTBY’s wedding. Too bad that I can only stay in Haiwaii for 3 days. This weekend is really fun. When the Lasallian gang get together, there are always lots of laughters. Saturday is the wedding, everytime runs smoothly, except the groomsman got lost in the morning. Sunday we went to snorkeling in Hanauma Bay, a coral reef nationa park. It is quite an experience swim among schools of tropical fishes. We visited the Peal Harbour on Monday. The line up to see the Arizona memorial is not very long, we only have to wait about an hour. It is a very good deal, you get a free boat ride of the Pearl Harbour after seeing actual films footage from WWII. We don’t have time to visit the Missouri floating museum since we are having dim sum with Mr. and Mrs. FTBY. I accomplished alot in just 3 days. I had sampled almost every thing you can do in Honolulu. Staying longer is just repeating more or less the same activities in a more relax mood while spending more money. On my way back home, I almost got stuck in Portland. My flight back tO Vancouver is cancelled. Luckily the airline routed me first from Portland to Seattle, then from Seattle to Vancouver. It is the shortest flight with most stop I have taken. I am really tired after flying red eye back to Vancouver from Haiwaii and head straight to work. Gota sleep early tonight and probably for the rest of the week to recover. Click here to see my pictures.

[thumb:1860:l][thumb:1876:l][thumb:1899:l][thumb:1877:l][thumb:1900:l]

I found in the philosophy class I am taking this term, most people I talked to are part time students.? Some of them are obviously over age, they are seniors.? Some of them I talked to are still working toward their undergard degree, but they are already working full time.? I didn’t ask the reason, but I suppose they have no choice but to support themselves.? Otherwise, it would be better to finish school first then join the work force.? Today I met an acturaist, who is married, and thinking of a career change.? She just quit her job to go back to school.? I learnt that there are only 3000 or so fellow acturaist, completed all the exams, in Canada.? This field sounds really though.? I wonder where my friends studied actural science in Waterloo doing nowadays.? Looks like most of them won’t make it to the top.? Political philosophy is a very intereting topic, because we can all relate to it.? The class is in the evening at the downtown campus, time and location are quite convenient for people with full time job, except me who work much closer to the Burnaby campus.? That explain why there are so many part-time student in my class.? In class, you can tell the difference between part-time and full-time students.? Part-time students are more keen on asking questions and not shy talking back to the professor.? On the other hand, mostly the full time students just sit there quietly and some of them skip classes occasionally.? That’s the difference between study for fun and study for grade.? No one force part-time students to study, they are motiviated by their interest and want to get most out of the class.? Many full-time students don’t even know what they want to study, or study for the sake of grades or money.? They see learning as a mean to an end rather than the end itself.? That explain the different altitude between full and part time students.