A day of significance

June 29 suddenly becomes meaningful for a lot of people.

First off, it is the official release day of the hyped Apple iphone. See the nuts waiting in line days before today.  Being quite a gadget lady myself, this time I'm curbing the urge to jump onto the band wagon. Apple disappointed me after my Macbook hard disk failed within the first year of use. With Apple, any affair with their new product is a risky business. Let's see how my foresight play out this time with iphone.

Then, it is the release day of the new Michael Moore documentary "Sicko". Something that I would actually be willing to watch in the theatre before it find its way into the DVD.

Last but not least, it is my 30th birthday. From today on, any act of immaturity will be considered annoying rather than cute. Excuses will be hard to find to cover up any act of irresponsibility... How depressing.

On a positive note, this transition also marks the transition of the blog title. Now that the finishing point "graduation" is my new starting point. Only the piles around me will be just as high.

Four days before the finale

Next Tuesday (May 1st) is my defense. The same day as the Chinese Labor day. A day the hardworking ones get recognized and rewarded. Well, that'll be my day of liberation too.

Just realized that after the defense, the title of my blog will become obsolete. The journey will come to an end, though I'm sure that I'll continue being deeply berried by new piles. I've got a new name for the blog "Piled Still High and Deep--The other side of an Economist".

Yes, call me Dr. Li in a week.

Followup foto from Xtina's Conert

2 weeks after Xtina's concert. The photos are finally liberated from my chuncky Canon. No surprise, anything with me in it shows a dark hole on the background. The stage is not recognizable at all. Luckily, a zoomed stage shot captures the first scene of "ain't no other men".



The diva was wearing all white suit and pants. Sexiness exuberates from all over. Her appearance made all the wait worth it.

Btw, from the angle of my shot, you can pretty much tell how far back my seat is. :-)

Behind our jitters

I found this blog Let It Be Some Other 'Asian' by Andrew Lam, a Vietnamese American. His sharp observation makes me think.

I was among those Chinese who were anxiously hoping that the gunman be non-Chinese. I checked the bbs constantly Monday night looking for cues that exempt my ethnical group from such horific deed. At a time like this, we were even ready to pin point the differences in name spelling between Taiwanese, Hongkongnese, and those from Mainland, hoping that in the worst scenario, our smaller peer group can be "clean".

Andrew Lam's article reminds us that it was the deep fear of ethnic stereotyping and the ethnic hatrid that will be inflicted on the good citizens that is behind our worries.

Evil Monday

Who said that Friday the 13th is frightening? The Monday after that is worse.

Yesterday, a bunch of FaLunGong dumb a.. came to CMU and gave a "seminar" on Organ Havesting on FLG people in China.
Me and a couple of students went to see how they can put up a show like that. Before entering the auditorium, there were old women distributing leaflet of the FLG stuff. In the auditorium, there were similar demographic women sitting there, praying and mumbling words to themselves.

Among the four people that spoke, there were one guy who probably have studied in the US and are holding some academic position, one who gives no personal background other than being a "US citizen", one Canadian ex-polititian, and a German doctor who spoke in a voice so weak that make his point dubious.

Anyway, they were making inferences and assumptions with no hard proof. They compare the current chinese govenment with the Nazis, and even humiliated a chinese student who asked a question by saying that he sees Nazi in him too.

The enemies are desperate. Us a couple of people left when the woman that made her name by protesting in front of Whitehouse during Mr. Hu's visit. This probably caused some uneasiness in the woman and the panel. She later came out and asked us why we left, "we had enough of your lies, you are a disgrace to the country", we replied.

The Monday didn't end with just this episode. Later on that night, rumor starts to spread that the killer of the Virginia Tech massacre is a Chinese from Shanghai (note, rumor!). Fox news and Chicago Sun Times start to quote it as truth. The fact is, event half a day later, mainstream news is only saying "American with asian descent". I heard that Sina and Sohu were already buying and spreading the "Shanghai male story". Despicable!

Anyway, the Monday was eventful. Full of hatrid and violence. There were true bloodshed ( in VT), and fabricated ones (FLG).

Paraskevidekatriaphobia: Fear of Friday the 13th

Ed forwarded this link . That made a seemingly mundane Friday suddenly spiced up.



The article gave one hilarious explaination why ther westerners fear the number 13 as follows,

... fears surrounding the number 13 are as ancient as the act of counting. Primitive man had only his 10 fingers and two feet to represent units, this explanation goes, so he could count no higher than 12. What lay beyond that — 13 — was an impenetrable mystery to our prehistoric forebears, hence an object of superstition.

Which has an edifying ring to it, but one is left wondering — did primitive man not have toes?

Precisely. That's why Chinese fear none of the 13's. We got toes.

Back to Basics

Three days before Xtina's concert. As a warm up, I pull up the lyrics of her songs and really start to pay attention to the words behind her vocal for the first time. They are beautiful. Love "hurt" and "Without you" most. This Pittsburgh girl is really growing mature after marriage. Her naughty songs "candyman" and "nasty naughty boy" make me want to see her live performance even more ~_*

You go girl!

CEO House Size ~Stock Return

A study by Liu and Yermack proves that the bigger his house, the worse the CEO.

In a paper titled "Where are the Shareholders' Mansions? CEOs' Home Purchases, Stock Sales, and Subsequent Company Performance" (what a mouthful name), the two professors used information from the web, especially Zillow to find out the house value and house purchasing behavior of the fortune 500 CEOs and find a negative relationship!

That's what I call "interesting" research!

Psychologist spoof

Facial Expressions May Not Be Universal

How people interpret facial emotions may depend on their cultural upbringing, suggests a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

"We think it is quite interesting and appropriate that a culture that tends to masks its emotions, such as Japan, would focus on a person's eyes when determining emotion, as eyes tend to be quite subtle," said Masuda. "In the United States, where overt emotion is quite common, it makes sense to focus on the mouth, which is the most expressive feature on a person's face."

Here's the funny part:

Consistent with the research findings, the Japanese emoticons for happiness and sadness vary in terms of how the eyes are depicted, while American emoticons vary with the direction of the mouth. In the United States the emoticons : ) and : - ) denote a happy face, whereas the emoticons :( or : - ( denote a sad face. However, Japanese tend to use the symbol (^_^) to indicate a happy face, and (;_;) to indicate a sad face.

First day of spring

Wednesday, 21st, March, 2007. The official first day of spring.
This time, the official calendar finally "predicts" the reality. It's 7 celcus outside. Just 3 days ago, I was digging my car out of the snow. The spring comes JIT, as the winter blue is slowly drowning me. Strange that I never had such kind of depression when I was in the country that has the longest and the darkest winter, plus the highest suicide rate.
The kids at CMU are back from their spring break. Their young vigor is contagious. I should come to the school more.

Singaporean Waiting in line

Guess what they are waiting in line for--猪肉干(pork jerky). What you see is only the second half of the line that twisted at the front.

Trip to Singapore

Another delayed post of a picture taken in The Santosa island in Singapore. See the lion statue at the back.

Employed at Last

This is a delayed record of a major step toward my graduation. I accepted the job offer from the Board on Feb 28 (Wednesday), the last day of Feb. The decision was made 1 hour after CD made me an offer from BGI. By turning them down, I turned away from higher salary, comfortable living in SF close to the in-laws. Yet there is something irreplacable about the Board that attracts me--the ability to observe the financial world from 1000 miles above, rather than being in it. Ed laughed about my using of the word "altruistic", in refering to the difference between the public and private sector. Yet, that was really helping me make the decision.

I'd say that I'm really a typical irrational economic agent. I place a high value in the "optionality" provided by a Board career, and my utility function obvioulsy included both monetary value and social value.

Name Matters

Fun Read From Derman's Blog. My addition to the list: My advisor Richard Green, a finance professor. "Rich, and Green", you get the point.
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Some time in the early 1970s Nature magazine had an article about people whose names matched their occupations. There was a famous neurology textbook "Diseases of the Nervous System" written by Lord Brain. There was a published article on birth control written by Maria Concepcion ...

A few days ago I dealt by email with a health plan administrator whose surname was Nurse. And, on the front page of today's New York Times, there's a article about the promising fact that H.I.V. risk is halved by circumcision. From a few paragraphs down into the article:

'Circumcision is "not a magic bullet, but a potentially important intervention," said Dr. Kevin M. De Cock, director of H.I.V./Aids for the World Health Organization.'

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Ed and I decided to name our kid "bond" (boy), "muni" (girl).