I have slept for 10 hours last night. It was the company’s beer and wings event after work. To my surprise, even though it said only two drinks per person, we get almost bottomless drinks, since many people didn’t use their drink tickets. I have drink 1.5 glasses of beer and I feel my head is kinda stuffy after I went home. So I go to bed early on 11:30p.m. I havn’t sleep for this many hours for a long time, even on weekends or holidays, I couldn’t get this much sleep. It is nice to have more than enough sleep, now I feel very refreshing.

Hong Kong University just annouced the ban shark fin from the resturants inside its campus, and make a policy it that shark fin cannot claim for dining expenses for guests. I think the school is bowing down to the green pressure groups. Everyone knows shark fin is a traditional chinese delicacy, almost an insperatable part of all Chinese banquet. There are international treaties control the fishing for sharks, and make it illegal to fish some rare shark species. The government should enforce the law on illegal shark fin trades, which should be enough to protect the shark population. I can understand HKU exclude shark fin form dining expense out of buget consideration. However, forbid the campus resturant sell shark fins in the contract over use its power and violate spirit of the invisible hand. Another than HKU, Disney also forbid the selling of shark fin inside their theme parks. All the big business or organization are afraid of image trashing campage of those activity groups. Those groups make big noises and grep news headlines, but they rarely able alter the view of a consumer with economical senses and critical mind. Those groups can only appeal to the overly emotional public who got brainwashed by their mis-information. The best tactics to deal with those groups are educate the the public as well as those fat, dumb executives.

Last night was Halloween, and I was stuck at home working on my CTM#3 speech. No halloween party for me this year, I guess I am already too old for that.

My speech today is not too bad, the title is “Say no to package tour”. In the speech I first outline the bads about package tour, then offers three tips on how to plan your own vacation. First is try not to pack too many cities into the schedule, second is get a good tourist book, and third is learn the language. I tried not to use the notes, but due to lack of practice, I forgot some of the points when I was up there. I have cut down alot on my the um and ah, but still need to work on pauses and repeat sentence. My hand gesture and eye contacts seems ok, just have to remember be more relax next time. I found that I will start getting nervous when I begin to forget my next line. This problem can be lumped with the lack of pratice. The biggest improvement I have made is on timing and speech organization. Three pages of draft is about right for a five minutes speech.

I am one of the keeners keeping up with the progress of my toastmaster program. I want to keep up with the the leading pack in completing of my CTM speeches. No one had make their CTM#4 speech yet, so my goal is not to fall behind too much from the most advanced person.

Today PMC has announced that it will spend $4 million to acquire the storage division from Aglient. This news explains why we have to lend $2 million in the quarter result last week. Borrowing money to expand the company is a normal business pratice, but I still think kinda uneasy using up all the cash reserves to add another 300 head counts to the payroll. Still, it is nice to know the company is back on growing mode, only if this acquisition works out. I am not in the storage division, this news doesn’t impact our consumer product division much. However I could image my friends down in first floor can feel the shockwave. The storage division is running off from Allantown before the acquisition, the Burnaby team always feel like they are mistreated. Now with the extra headcounts, ESD people in Burnaby will recieve even less attention. I guess the morale of the Burnaby ESD team has just dropped to the lowest point. I wonder does Harvard Businnes Review has case studies on acquisitions. Gota remember to check out the lastest issue from the library tomorrow.

Pat always complains I am a very boring guy, a typical engineer who knows nothing about romance. She have been trying hard to get me understand the concept of romance. So far I the aspect of romance I can get includes the element of surprise and the appreciation of arts together. Somehow sweet talks, which always think is romantic, is not part of the equation. She only think I am acting funny and turns her off. I always try my best to practise romanance even though I had limited understanding of it. I impressed Pat today by showing her my romantic level has improved. This afternoon we I buy lunch for her, I bought an exta chicken leg, which she love since childhood, as a surprise to her. Then tonight we went to a lounge resturant with live music for our halloween dinner. We sat, chatted and enjoyed the oldies songs for 3 hours. The dishes are very satisfying, it’s a fining dining resturant in Richmond opened by Chinese. The food has elements of fusion, the presentation is in the form of western cruises, but the cooking is tailored to the appetit of Chinese. The atomsphere is very comfortable, suitable for quiet chats with friends.

Please check out the resturant at Also Lounge