Every four years, soccer fans around the world is crazy for the worldcup games. I am not a hugh fans of soccer, not a sports fans in general. I can’t name the players except the most famous ones. My soccer knowledge is limited to the news covered in the newspaper or radio. Somehow the media streotype a typical male as a soccer fans. In this aspect, I have to say I am abnormal. I only watch the game to act like normal. I don’t repulse from watching the game, but I don’t have any urge to watch it either. I would watch the final game if it is part of a social event. Crazy for a sport team seems so irrational to me. I would not explain the mind of sports fans logically. Anyways, my bet is on Brazil to win this world cup. I didn’t study strength of the teams nor support any favourate team. My bet is based on the odds published by gamble companies. If the market is efficient, all the information should be have already reflected on the odds. I can’t understand why people are so addicted in watching sports, I can surely understand sports as money making bussiness. When I was talking with colleagues about worldcup this afternoon, I brough out my calculator to estimate the revenue from tickets alone, which is over $1 billion. In SFU there is even a course offered title the economy of sports. Sports is not merely games, it is based on economics, involves politics and even replaced religions to some extend. I wonder have anyone wrote something about the philosophy of sports yet?

Today is the convocation of my master degree. The convocation ceremony is as boring as the undergrad ones. This time, I got more stage time as a master student, unlike the undergrads has to pipeline through the stage. The Ph.D. studetns got most stage time, the dean put on hoods for them and they sit on the stage afterward. The honorable doctor even get a chance to make a boring speech. I guess the stage time is revalent to your importance to the university, which is fair. During the ceremony, I read the booklet to kill the boredom. There are much more science or applied sciense Ph.D. graduates. It is relatively easy to invent something new in your research than B.S. a thesis all the way through. However, the thesis of the Arts Ph.D. are more interesting, at least the topic is self-explantory, not in some encryped technical terms. I used to look down on arts degrees from undergrad all the way to grad school. On a second thought, an arts Ph.D. is harder to get than a science Ph.D., and it deserves more respect.

Today supposes to be very evil, 6th June, 2006, which translate to 666. 666 is the number of the devil, it origins from the book of Revelation in the Bible. One saying that 7 is the number of perfect, the number of God, and 6 imply imperfect thus the number of devil. Obviously, nothing special happen today, other than it is the opening of the movie Omen. The new movie is a remake of the old one, which is a classic scary movie using 666 and devil as the theme. Opening today makes good propaganda. I almost forgot today is the evil day, until someone reminds me during the lunch. I guess believing the magic power of some specific number is totally non-sense. Somehow, people still like to related number with either good or bad luck. Chinese people avoid anything with letter 4, while the westerns avoid the letter 13. It has been almost over 300 years since the enlightenment, when can man learn not to be superstitious?

I should have write a real article on this topic, but really don’t have time these days. So I can only scribble my thoughs on my blog. My memory about the 64 event is quite blurred, except the news clips keep replaying every year. I was in F.1 that time, I can recall my teacher cried in class the next day trying to tell us a lesson we were too young to understand. Maybe next year, I will have time to give it more thinking and write a longer article about 64. I don’t want to merely repeat the two sides of arguments I have been hearing over the past 17 years. For now, I only have the common standard shared memory of all HKer had exprienced 64 in 1989. One good thing about history is that it always there, you can take as much time you need to think it over. The question is, will the Great Firewall put Youtube on the censored list?

TVB News Special on June 4 1989

Today I met a Catholic friend coming from Beijing and learnt a few things about the Catholic Church in China. Recently, the ordination of chinese bishops light up the conflict between Vatican and the Communist Party. The cause is the fight for the control of the China Catholic Church. The power struggle doesn’t really affect normal layman catholics in the church. There are indeed underground church in china, even in Beijing. My friend said the priests enter China as tourists and offer masses outside the control China Catholic Church, which is just a dog of the Communist Party. He had attended mass inside the Canadian Embrassy, but the mass no open to local chinese without a foriegn password. Technically speaking, it’s not an underground church, since the Canadian Embrassy is on Canadian soil. He had invited us to have short term missionary in Beijing. This is a good chance to really understand the life of people in China. Plus, visiting the underground church should be quite exciting. I just have to remember enter China using the Canadian passport, so I will have embrassy protection if anything goes wrong. I have just added an item to my life goal to-do list.