Daily Scribble

Indian and beef

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When I worked in India, I made friends to a few colleagues in the Bangalore office.  They shown me show me around town on weekends and we had lots of fun together.  One of them is visiting Vancouver for work, so it is my turn to be the host and show him the city.  We had a welcome lunch with other team member at Cactus Club today.  This friend of mine is a rare Indian because he eat beef.  He is the one brought me to try the illegal off-menu Indian deep fry beef in Bangalore.  We recommended him to have steak for lunch.  At first he wanted have the steak well done, luckily we stopped him or his steak would be like shoe leather.  It would taste best with medium-rare, but we afraid he may not like the blood juice, so we ordered him a medium instead.  This is his first time travel outside of India, so this is his first time to have a real steak.  He like the steak a lot and complain that he could not find  such a good steak in India.

When I was in India, I told him about my guns and I promise to bring him shooting when he come over.  So tonight we went to shooting range after work.  Due to various delay, we had dinner at McDonald to save time.  It turns out having a hamburger in McDonald is a new experience to him.  The McDonald in India don’t serve hamburger, they only have chicken, fish or veggie burger.  The funny thing is somehow he think hamburger is made of ham instead of beef.  I have to explain to him hamburger is not made of ham.  The name comes form where it is invented, which is Hamburg, Germany.  Other than serving hamburger, our McDonald is pretty much the same as the Indian McDonald.  The next food I will get him to try is sushi.  He still haven’t overcome the idea of eating raw fish.  I guess we should start with California roll then slowly work the way up to sashimi.  It is always fun introducing new cuisine to people from different culture, whether he like the food or not.

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Ineffective incentive

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Today we have our department quarterly update.  The director flew in town to give us overview of how the department is doing.  My project is the only project in the department, so it has very high profile and no room to fail.  Thanks to the stupid decision of close down two design centers in Canada, lay off many experienced engineers and outsource the work to India, the project is quite behind schedule.  Now the management finally wake up and realize the problem, they are all scrambling and try all means to pull the schedule in.  They try to add more resource in India, but they simply could not find any qualified engineer.

They try to hire back ex-employees from the closed design center as contractors.  It is pretty much admitting last year’s decision to close down the site is stupid.  One desperate measure to they try is by making us work hard and longer hours.  This idea won’t work if they use the stick because it would only demotivate us and further lower our productivity.  They try to use carots and lure us to work overtime.  The director said if the project is finish on time, the whole team will have a special bonus as incentive.

This idea sounds great, the only question is how much is the bonus.  The director did not give us any number or percentage, so the incentive won’t work.  No one would work harder if they don’t know roughtly how much we will get in return.  After the meeting, some of us did a rought calculation, we all agree that the bonus has to be at least $10k to be attractive.  Judging from previous record of the company, the so call special incentive bonus could be merely a few thousand dollars, which won’t worth working your ass off.

電影

Princess 公主追殺令

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Princess 日本動畫平常看了不少﹐丹麥動畫還是第一次看﹐其實丹麥語電影也是第一次看。一齣好的電影無分語言國界﹐只憑字幕也能夠感受到電影的感染力。每個國家的動畫也有不同風格﹐《公主追殺令》的畫面設計有別於日本動畫﹐日本動畫顏色精緻鮮明﹐這套動畫則運用大量陰影﹐富有美式漫畫的沉重感覺。看慣畫面變化紛亂的日本動畫﹐會覺得這動畫的畫面很緩慢﹐要一段時間去適應歐洲的節奏。動畫層次效果很簡單﹐大部鏡頭只是在靜止的背景上加人物動作﹐但絕對不是低成本馬虎製作﹐每個畫面的作畫也充滿詩意。這部動畫採用實驗性的拍攝手法﹐戲中的倒敘片段由真人演出﹐回憶以住平靜的日常生活﹐正好是Kill Bill用動畫回憶舊日廝殺的相反。

這動畫是一齣很黃很暴力的悲劇﹐連在性行業合法化的丹麥﹐前衛敏感題材也具爭議性。被稱為公主的色情影星自殺身亡﹐留下五歲的女兒給弟弟照顧。在海外傳教的弟弟趕回國接了姪女回家﹐發現她寄居在妓院時受到性侵犯﹐姐姐自殺也與色情王國的大老闆有連關。於是弟弟發起一個人的復仇戰爭﹐挑戰催毀整個色情王國。

說這電影很黃﹐並不是指畫面上的色情﹐嚴格來說動畫這三點不露很乾淨﹐可是意識上卻令人十分不安。一個五歲女孩在院耳渲目染﹐不自覺地學習妓女的謀生技巧﹐並不意識這些行為的嚴重性。她會在舅父替她洗澡時﹐順手拉下舅父褲子的拉鍊。在公園與小朋友玩家家酒時﹐脫衣色誘其他小朋友。在偷看母親的色情錄像時﹐會模倣母親跳艷舞色誘男人的姿勢。

至於說這電影很暴力﹐並不是指劇中有很多打鬥場面。一般動作電影有很多打鬥或槍戰﹐但那些耍帥耍型沒有真實感的場面﹐似在表演雜技武藝多於暴力。這套電影沒有好看的打鬥﹐因為復仇並不需要觀眾拍掌﹐只需要拿起鐵桿一棍扑下去﹐讓仇人鮮血四灑直流滿面。然後舅舅還叫姪女過來﹐用力扑曾經侵犯過她的人的下體﹐一下一下不停地扑下去﹐死者從叫得像殺豬到慢慢無聲﹐地下的血慢慢滲開一大灘。這套電影中那幾場見血的場面﹐展現出就是這種令人恐慌赤祼祼的暴力。

我不清楚這套電影想表達什麼﹐是對色情事業的控訴﹐還以藝術為名測試﹐觀眾的道德底線。大慨這部電影帶來的啟發﹐足夠寫篇幾電影理論的論文。電影的衝擊性很極端激烈﹐看罷後心情不能平復﹐要看多一齣無厘頭喜劇才好過點。這次我破例不推介這齣動畫﹐不是品質差劣浪費時間﹐而是每個人不一定接受到其中的故事。觀看前要有心理準備﹐看完後發惡夢不要賴我。

Daily Scribble

Yakisoba Sandwich

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Yakisoba Sandwich

Today I tried a very unusual sandwich, yakisoba sandwich.  I have heard of this sandwich from a childhood cartoon.  The characters love having the Yakisoba sandwich all the time.  I thought it must be a joke in the cartoon, who would want to eat sandwich with no meat or veggie, but it turns out yakisoba sandwich is real!  Yakisoba is Japanese fried noodle, so Yakisoba sandwich is Japanese fried noodle inside a bun.

The taste is OK.  It taste like yakisoba and bread.  However having double dose of cabrohydrine seems a very weird combination.  I have no idea why Japanese would come up with this silly sandwich.  Apparently, it’s quite popular in Japan.  If people are stupid enough to believe having the no-carbo Atkin diet will lose weight, maybe I can start a new all-carbo diet fad.  I can create a series of double carbo sandwich such as  fried rice sandwich, french fries sandwich, toast sandwich, cereal sandwich and ultimate sandwich sandwich, which is a sandwich bun inside another sandwich bun.

Daily Scribble

Royal Caribean

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Royal Caribbean

I just got the package from Royal Caribean for my Mediterranean cruise.  I have to check-in online to register my passport and credit card.  There are some information of onshore excursion tours come with the package.  On each port the cruise ship stop over, we can get off the ship to visit the place.  You don’t want to travel around on your own, if you are lost or get into trouble, the ship won’t wait for you.  It is better to join the day tour package run by the cruise.  At least they gaurantee the ship will wait for you.  On average the tour cost about $50 for half day trip and $100 for full day trip.  Two people stopping 5 ports easily add another thousand dollar to your cruise bill.  That add almost a quater of the cost of the cruise.

Paying that much for the day trip, I would expect I get some decent information help me to decision which trip to join.  All I got in the booklet is a few wordy paragraph for each trip on each port.  I would expect the online version is more helpful, but it is even worst!  The online version is the same as wordy paragraph from the paper copy, but the list is sorted according to type of activities.  Please list all the tours of a port in the same.  I can only do one or two things at each port, it is important to see see all my options is one place?  I have a hard time deciding which tour to join.  All the tour description looks quite similar, there are only a few famous places at each port after all.  What I really need is a matrix highlight the difference between each tour.