Tonight I got dragged by Pat to watch a fund raising musical organized by my church. Yes, it’s from my church, CMCC in Richmond, but somehow I am not aware of it. There must be something wrong about their promotion or simply I don’t to CMCC often enough. The musical is better than I expected, but still kinda boring in general. The first act is quite interesting, the angels are cute, the scene with travellers waiting at the airport is quite funny. I think that is the only part in the whole musical which is original, and raised my expectation for the show. Then the play turns south starting on the second act. The next four acts are modular components that are out-sourced to different groups in the church. Each group responsibles for 3 dances or songs, then mininal interaction with the travellers to keep the plot going. Indeed, this is probably most efficient way to involve everyone from the church in the show. Alas, I feel misleaded. This supposes to be a musically, not a variable show in disguised. Oh well, what can I expect from a church event? The only comfort is the Peking duck dinner before the show, green tea ice-cream and green tea latte after the show are very nice. Nope, meal and dessert are not included with the show.

This afternoon I went to a pulblic forum organized by the BC Cancer Agency. It was part of a bigger cancer conference. The forum are mostly talks and information booths on cancers for patients and families. The forum is held at downtown harbour front Westin hotel. We missed the morning session because we have dancing class from 11:00a.m. to 12:30a.m. Between the dance class and the talks, we went to have lunch at a tea house right next to the Westin hotel. That place serves very fine chinese tea. I ordered a pot of green peak dragon well, it’s the best dragon well tea I have drunk. I like the taste of dragon well, a light favour green tea, but can’t find in normal chinese resturants.

The only two talks we made to is about alternative medication and online information about cancer. The first talk is quite infromative, it listed many common alternative treatments, their pros and cons, and also how to judge whether a treatment works for you. Althought I don’t really believe in any alternative therapy except traditional chinese herb tea. The second one is pretty much a demostration on how to navigation the BCCA website. I am surprised there are so many well organized health information on their website. I just realize how little I know about health information in general. There must be similiar health society websites on allegeries and asthma. I gota set a few days aside, go and read all the infromation on the the diseases have immediate effect on myself. I realize here in Canada, you can’t rely on the doctor. It is best to have the knowledge to diagnoise your own problem, lookup for possible therapies then ask the doctor for their expertise.

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.