YANG IS A DOC NOW

Yes, after four years, I finally finished my PhD. This explains why I wasn't posting anything here for past a few months. Besides wrapping up all the paper works for the degree, I spent too much time on Olympics as well. Well done China though.

So, finally I am a Dr. now. What's next? That is the question that I have been asking myself everyday and I still haven't got any answer yet. Strange enough, when I finish my degree, I was not feeling very relived as I thought I would've been. And the worst of all, I have no idea of what is my next step.

It is a shame that I haven't been writing anything here for the past couple of months. I guess laziness IS my only one natural gift. So much has been going on in my life, and I wouldn't know where to start if I am telling. So, I will just skip those for now and maybe dig it up later sometime.

Simply Miracles

It is said that the 78 hour windows is the golden time for the rescue actions after an earthquake. It has been nine days since the quake in Sichuan, China, which has claimed over 40,000 lives. But the rescue teams are not giving up and the miracles are everywhere:

A 120-hour survivor who was still conscious by the time

A 140-hour survivor, who sadly lost her legs.

A 61-year-old survivor after 164 hours

He is rescued after 164.5 hours under the ruins

China in Black and White

FOR THE SALVATION OF THE DEAD AND

BLESSING OF THE LIVING

0628 GMT, 19th May 2008, China started its three minutes national silence and half-mast flags as a special tribute for the victims in the 5.12 Sichuan earthquake. This quake is now declared to be 8.0 Richter by Chinese officials. This devastating earthquake, unfortunately, happened in my home town, the Sichuan province. But I am one of the lucky ones that all my families are safe and sound. Over 30,000 did make it, according to the state media statistics and the number is expected to roll up to 50,000. Today is the start of the three day national mourning of this tragedy events. Many entertainment industries have decided to shut their business during this period including many cinemas, night clubs and pubs in Beijing. Most TV channels will suspend their entertainment programmes and most websites colour-coded their home pages with black and white. China is crying with the deepest sad and sorrow but it is fighting with the strongest will and courage!

MSN China

EACHNET(EBAY China )

MySpace China

Yahoo China
Google China

A Shelter for Refugees from Earthquake

This Jiuzhou Stadium is about a few minutes from my home. Today, it is one of the most important shelter in the city, accommodating tens of thousands of refugees from all over the places heavily affected from the quake. Just had a brief talk with my parents over the phone earlier today. They told me that there were still quite a few after shocks.

copyright: Yang, Lei (Xinhua News Agency)

Fill The World with Love: The Picture from The Earthquake

My home town was totally devastated by the tragic earthquake in China. Finally I got hold of my family. Thankfully, they are all safe. But I know ten of thousands didn't make it. There is so much I want to see but I totally lost my mind of where to start. The only thing I can do now is to listen the only operating local radio station online, hoping I could get a track of everything.

I got this picture from a website. It is a class room that has been destroyed by the earthquake. The broken blackboard says 'Fill The World with Love'. Let's pray for all those affected in the region, with love.

Copyright, Wang, Xiaoxi (Beijing Youth)

Also, I would like to thank all my friends who has been querying about me. I am doing fine, thank you all for your concerns very much.

Earthquake In My Hometown

There has been reported a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that took place in China (Wenchuan county, Sichuan province). It was from the province where my homo city lies. I have tried to contact my family back there but couldn’t get through any of them. I couldn’t get through any of their mobile phones. None of them were picking up their landline. I have tried their numbers over and over again but with no response at all. Eventually, I managed to talk to my granduncle done there. He sounded laid-back, saying that there was only mild disturbance in my city. But he had no idea of why I couldn’t get through others. He said the telecommunication was down for a while. Although, after my conversation with my granduncle, I still couldn’t reach any other family members.

Being told that the disturbances were mild, I felt slightly relived. It is possible that my family has decided to stay outside the buildings for the night (it is 1 am over there at the moment) as there might still be some small disturbances coming saying on the news.

Being me, I couldn’t possible stop worrying and shall try to call them again after work. Hope they are alright.

This earthquake has turned out to be a tragedy over its central area causing over 8500 death so far, many unaccounted for. Far away from my country, I could only wish the best for those affected by this devastating incident.

Our BBQ

It has been a good day really. The weather starts to convince us that the summer is really coming this time. I was invigilating all day but finished quite early. So we decided to go for a BBQ at our backyard. And who would think this is what you will get by put ASDA beef burgers on a BBQ. It added a heck lot of fun into it.

Summer Is Comming

So summer comes back, after two years. I am washing my t-shirts now and hopefully the sun won’t go away before I dry them.

It has been another two month since my last post here. I have my excuses, as usual. To be honest, it has been an eventful. There is good news and there are bad ones. I really shouldn’t be gossiping about myself because it is against the gospel of gossiping. Besides, it has been such an eventful in the world. We’ve got more interesting stuff going on that me.

Talking about interesting stuff in these two months, how could anyone leave the fantastic Olympic torch rally behind? The term fantastic here is both real and sarcastic. It is real because the Olympic torch rally should be a fantastic event. It goes over all continents in the world. It connects all races together. The flame goes around the global represents a union of the human kind regardless to their background, their belief or whatever uniqueness each individual may have. The essence of modern Olympic is the celebration of this great gathering of all human sprits. And who could ever miss such a chance to have some fun. Apparently, lots of us didn’t and some did manage to make this sarcastic.

Apparently, Olympic is no longer Olympic because China is hosting it. Therefore we should stand against it. Of course, because China is the host this time, we should dig out the ancient dusty history and point out that the Olympic torch rally was actually coined by Nazis making all the people who had ever been excited about any Olympic torch rally big fools. And surely we have to go on BBC 1 and say that it is only ‘slightly unfair to compare China with Nazis’. We have to attack China hard on this so we must not let anyone know that Tibet was operating a slavery system before someone really funny was exiled. We have to be pro-Tibet so we have to call it a conflict between Tibetan and Chinese, knowing that Chinese actually refers to a population includes 56 ethics groups such as: Tibetans, East and West Asian Muslims, Koreans, Mongolians and Hans, which would’ve made the phrase conflict between Tibetan and Chinese no sense. But it is obviously very unreasonable of us asking our news editors to research into such deep background. It might involve using Google, you know!!! Did you know there was a worldwide protest supporting Chinese Olympics? There were 2,000 people in London, and thousands in Paris, LA, and Australia. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Thankfully, our media mostly blocked it. What is the point of showing the positive side of China? It is not going to make any news.

Maybe it is strange to many people in UK but Chinese take Olympics every personally. The whole nation is so proud of it. Everyone would like to donate money, if the government would take it. Some western countries’ attitude had seriously hurt the feeling of 1,300,000,000 Chinese. But of course we shouldn’t care about people’s feeling from a communist state.

China is getting rich now. It is starting to share some of the world power. It is doing the 2008 Olympics, which will be better than ever. Get over it!

And enjoy a nice summer.

My Weekend

There goes another weekend. I was doing what I have been doing for over a year now during weekends: cleaning the local hospital. It is a part-time job I took to help with my bills. Of course, being a PhD student, I have my ridiculous proud. I didn’t really feel good about it at all in the beginning. I was even reluctant to tell people there that I was doing a PhD.

Things change. Surprisingly, I found myself quite well suited in this job. It is peaceful. I don't have to struggle with difficult questions there. Just simple sweeping and mopping are keeping everybody happy. Nurses can be rough but most people are very nice. Patients always appreciate my work. Moreover, I always take lots of funny stories back to my house. There are funny things around. Like today, one of the good looking charge nurses has been promoted to matron. One of the patients has been singing with another tone all day. I am actually having fun working there sometime.

Well, the only problem we cleaners have is to get over the hospital in the morning. We all have our magic. Some share a cab. Some get a lift. Just by chance, a very nice Spanish lady started to give me a lift. Actually, her daughter drives. She is a very nice and beautiful woman. It is never boring in the car. She always has lots to tell. To be honest, as the car is nosy and I am not quite used to her accent sometime, I will normally lost about eighty percent of her story. I will then just keep smiling and nodding and repeating: ‘is it’. It works like a charm. Hope she never finds out. I can’t thank both of them enough.

When I am back to home, it is the boring bit. I am normally too tired to do anything. Now it is Sunday night and I am just annoyed that I will have to go to university to teach tomorrow knowing it is going to be raining heavily.

Over Gary's

It is 3:49 am. I am here at Gary’s to help him with some of his work. He is in bed now and will have to go to work at 6 am. The silly man just got married to an amazing girl. Every single one of us agrees that she is way out of his touch. I haven’t met Michelle, his wife, that many times but I’ve heard a lot about her, either from Gary or from the gossipy Chinese student community. She is very independent girl from a big family. Being rich back in China, she is determined to fight for a career here in London. It was actually quite a story. After Gary and Michelle graduated from Warwick, she only managed to find a position in a marketing firm with no basic salary but commissions. What she was doing was standing in the shopping mall and trying to sell insurance policies or other products of that sort to people walking around. Yes, we all know she was the kind of people we don’t even bothered to say no to while enjoying our precious time spending money that we haven’t earn yet. It was really tough for her of course. The newly graduated Chinese girl didn’t back out at all. Not even after Gary had tried hundreds of times asking her taking an easier road, which always ended up in family crisis as Gary would say. She said she’d carry on because she thought she can learn something. I actually wasn’t so convinced of that but no one could argue with her. She wasn’t doing so great at the beginning though. For mouths, she only managed to do a few deals, each of which only got 20 pound commission. The two had to struggle with Gary’s wage in London. She started to do better later but the reward was still pathetic.

One day, she was still doing her usual selling in a shopping mall and was still full of energy as always. She walked up to a woman and started her routine of persuading. Luckily, this woman appeared to be interested and stayed to listen. While she thought there was another 20 pound almost secured, the woman gave her a business card and said: You are actually very good. Why don’t you come and work for me? And there you go. She is still working in the new company that is much better and actually pays a reasonable wage. I never thought it would work out for her but it just did. I found myself have to admire her for that.

Well, that is just some story I thought I will keep telling for a long time. In order to make a better life, the couple do some causal work as well and that is what I am here to help. I had to finish it quick as I will have my thesis left to finish so I am working nights today. I actually enjoy working nights. It is so quite and I can concentrate so well despite the fact that I am exhausted. The instant cappuccino from Kenko wasn’t so tasty at all. The foam had such a dry taste and I almost felt disgusting after two cups. But I think I am almost done for tonight.

Darkness of the night always brings up the feeling of loneliness in me. Gary was lucky but I never have luck. Thinking of it, I should have saved some luck for not buying lotto for 26 years. I wonder when and how I can redeem it. And now it hits me that I still owe the newly wedded couple a wedding gift. I will need to give it some thought.

Relief

It is of course very unprofessional of me as a blogger to leave here untouched for almost another month now. Luckily we have 29 days for February this year and I get to catch the last train.

So what’s new? Plenty! This February has been such an eventful. Both my professional life and my personal life have added such strong flavour to my life. It was bitter, spicy and sour. I have been stressed into such an extent that I practically hated everything. And now I know why. I have so many expectations on so many things and when the bubbles burst I apparently can’t take it too well.

So the last bubble burst this morning. It was such a usual stressful morning and I was trying so hard to fill up my thesis. I was just moaning my less ideal life to a friend of mine and I realised that the last bubble just burst leaving no trace behind as if it was never there. There I was. Setting there finding all the expectations I had became past memory with only a pile of ‘what if..’ left. I thought I would be sad and pessimistic again like I always do. 

But I didn’t, surprisingly. I felt a relief, a long over due relief. Maybe with all the expectations gone, I felt that I then couldn’t get disappointed or upset by them anymore. So the burdens that I have been dragging along just faded into thin air. 

What bubbles did I have? I will tell one day. For now, I just feel great, calm and full of energy for the cleaning tomorrow in the local hospital. We are going to have a clean ward.

I AM Pessimistic

I thought what I wanted was so simple yet every step I took towards it was so difficult and the outcome was always less ideal or rather disappointing for many occasions. Being an atheist, I could only believe it was somewhat fate. Fate is, however, such a tricky idea. It is rather sarcastic for some atheists like me who believes no supreme power beyond our mind but think there is such matter as fate somewhere controls our uncontrollable existences. I too found it foolish and had endeavoured to actively challenge it but I was less convinced by the results of my efforts. Therefore I concluded that it must have been my expectations being so high that I ended up unsatisfied.

As a consequence, and also as a result of brought up by my father, I have grown this habit of picturing the worst outcomes of things all the time and getting myself repaired for such scenarios. In short, I am very realistic, although most of my friends disagree and crown me as pessimistic. In my defence, this is simply a form of self-protection mechanism. Equipping myself with imaginable least ideal consequences prevent me from being upset from less ideal results. A friend of mine once told me that all I was enjoying was the surprise given by the outcome of something, which at the end was proven better than I had expected. He might be right.

It is actually just a strong form of insecurity. It might be, in fact, caused by my strong desires of the best outcomes, which led to my disappointment and not being able to believe myself again. It does sound sad and it probably makes it sadder when I am, now, speaking of it out loud, not very proudly though. But of course I am not such a sad little thing in all respects. I am extremely confident about the utterly odd Neural Network online learning framework I proposed in my PhD research. Well, I am confident that it is odd enough, at the very least. So, the light of hope is there somewhere after all, and I will propose to my PhD thesis tomorrow. I’d have to get a ring tonight somewhere.

By the way, happy Chinese New year. It is going to a splendid year of rat.

A Cold Night

After two almost half a month, I finally got the time and the mood to write something new here. So much for my resolution of ‘keep my blog updated’. It is in the middle of a cold night here and I am sitting here typing simple because the fact that I can’t handle guilt.

I totally can’t. Nowadays, as I am and always have been a nice person, my only guilty comes from not working hard enough on my thesis. Well, in my defence, you can't be nice and hard working at the same time. See I planned to get Tuesday off originally. Because my company of the day went off sick without my permission, I decided to pick up some writing up of my thesis. As I am sitting feeling because of guilt, we all know how that writing up went. I clocked it, I spent 1 hour and 9 minutes on it. And that was it. Although I did spend some quality time evolving some other hopeless project of mine, I doubt my PhD external examiner or my boss will appreciate it. So I was sitting here can't sleep. I finally had the guts to spend another 2 hours and 95 minutes on my thesis and get something done properly. Annoyingly, I found that I left my memory stick at my office so I have to finish the work off tomorrow when I get to the office.

It is actually a difficult night for me because I am fasting! Well, last time I check, I am not Muslin yet. I am starving myself because I need to do a blood test tomorrow. I have been having this strange chest pain occasionally and the doctor thought I’d better do a check out before I get closer to God by a heart attack. Now mentioned the blood test, I can’t help to recall the time I told a friend of mine that I went to see a doctor. His first reaction was: ‘oh so you went to THAT test’? I knew what he meant but I couldn’t correct him just then. Teasing people is the only nature gift built in my gene. I asked him ‘What test?’ and he clarified as I expected ‘AIDS test’. I couldn't help to have a big laugh. First of all, there is no such routine test as ‘AIDS test’. What we have is HIV test, and even if one was HIV positive didn't mean he has AIDS. Simply speaking, HIV just destroys your immune system but won’t kill you. It is the germs that we encounter everyday then give the trouble. When those germs cause mass infection in your body, the syndrome is called AIDS. So even if one was HIV+, theoretically if he lives in a germs and virus free environment, he can live as long as everybody else. My friend is such an unprofessional gay for asking that though.

Now, I only need to figure out what to do for the rest of the night. No sleep tonight, obviously. I will need to teach tomorrow afternoon. I wish my students good luck.

A Long Day. Really?

At this point, I really want to call someone up so that I can moan to them about how long my day was. Then I remembered that I need to keep a happy image basically because I complain my life way too much. Once on the phone, a friend asked how I was doing. I replied that I was actually very good. He cried out loud: what is wrong with you? That should give you a idea.

It was a long day. Actually, I had a long page full of what exacutly had made me exhausted. But when I finished it and read it through, I felt stupid. There was nothing serious and important at all but some little trouble you can expecte to go through everyday (well, second thought, probably you won't expect to have your kitchen flooded everyday). Something must be wrong with me. Many friends of mine told me that I have a pessimistic view of life. Maybe it has gone to some extreme now? I won't believe that. I rather think my view has always been objective and they are just too optimistic. So maybe it is just my life at the moment is stressing and makes my unhappy. Now, this is something else that I'd rather not say because I think it makes me sound rather pathetic.

Maybe a little bit more on this tomorrow but I have to sleep now. No matter what my mental state or view is, I am physically exhausted. Lots of things ahead tomorrow.

Don't Eat Your Muscle

Calories has become the term of evil. ‘Calorie is bad’. ‘It makes us fat.’ That is probably the generally picture of it in most of our minds now. Too much calorie can indeed kill our heart, liver and artery. But without enough calories, we won't get any better.

Before I open my big mouth to argue anything about it, I just really want to make a very misleading commercial term clear. We heard it on TV everyday that Our product only contains XXX calories each. I have no idea how could they allow this on commercials. Here, if you read at the backside of the package, you will find out that actually: 1 calorie= 1 kcal, where ‘kcal’ is the official physical measurements for energy as in ‘kilo-calorie’.

So, WHO recommends a health amount of energy for women is 2000 kcal, and 2500 for men everyday. Ideally, the energy should be evenly distributed among our three meals a day, which means if we have no snacks or sugars in between the meal, we need about 700 kcal at least per meal. Each 700 kcal is responsible for our life activities until we have the next meal. Now, look at your cereal box and find out how much energy per serving it has. Some famous brand is proud to announce their cereal to be 105 kcal per serving or something like that. That's 600kcal short of energy for your body until lunch. Here comes the good bit. Many of us will say: that's good, the other 600 kcal will go from my fat and I will get thin. Unfortunately, it doen't work like that. For many of us, the majority of the energy we consume is to support our brain activity. You may not feel as sweaty as exercising but brain consumes no less than that. But if there is not enough energy for the brain, the body get it mostly from ..fat? we wish.

Idealy, it will be carbohydrates we eat. Carbohydrates are the real green energy for our body. Unlike protein and fat, carbohydrates produces fast energy supply to our body without harmful residue but H2O and CO2. However our body can't store carbohydrates. So when our brain needs more energy than we eat, it gets from our protein, not fat which is the last choice for brain to get energy from. So what protein does our body use first for energy? Muscle. We will lose weight no doubt, as muscle weight much more than fat. But we are not getting rid of any fat. Of course, when we are down to the degree that our body has to consume fat for brain activity, our brain probably will starve and we should keep our fingers crossed hoping we won't get fired.

Don't have enough energy each meal is like eating our own muscle, unless we don't use our brain at all, again we wish.

Not Enough Women in China

It has been reported that in China now, the ratio between male and female is 100:109. It is actually so obvious to us Chinese now that it is harder and harder for men to find wives. Also as a result, women are getting pickier and pickier. This was marriage advertisement posted by some women in Beijing:

Wanted: born in 1976-1978; no shorter than 180cm; weight 75-80 kg; Beijing residency; stable income (no less than mine); not wear glasses; no spot on the face; good physical condition; responsible, hard working, good personality and good sense of humour. These conditions are not negotiable.

Yeah, the women in China can really afford to be like that. The only unfortunate thing about this post is that it was posted on Tsinghua University BBS, one of the best universities in China and it is doomed to be humoured. The following is one of the replies:

Here is a rough calculation. The number of newborn in Beijing is about 70,000 every year. Thus there are about 210,000 newborn from 1976 to 1978. Assume half of those were man, and then it’s about 105,000. Chinese average male height is now about 170cm, based on Gaussian distribution, there are about 7,000 who are 180-183cm, 4,500 of which are temporarily 75-80kg. The author of the post probably has a income of 4000 Yuan/month. Optimistically, another 1000 people is off the list. No glasses and no spot? That must be joking. If it weren't, another 3000 is probably off the list. For the rest 500, excluding married, engaged, divorced, coupled and gay…good luck sexy.

This wasn't a joke. they were real advertisement and real reply. Lots of Chinese women are like that now, simply because they can afford to. They are romantic in love but deadly realistic in marriage.

Well, I am just so happy I am gay.

Here Goes 2008

Ok, it is 2008 now and I know I have to write something here. It is rather a shame that I didn’t manage to get a post here in the New Year’s Eve. I was enjoying the telly way too much. Yeah, I know it is sad. But that was not the worst part yet. On the New Year’s Eve, I followed the old tradition of all man kind: I sent greeting SMS to all my friends. I planned it so well so they would get my message right after the midnight. Unfortunately, I forgot to get the quality of the 3’s network into account. Anyway, I sent them off and I waited. Of course I wanted some of them to message me back so I know my list of phone numbers were not totally out of date yet. The clock was ticking coldly and my phone remained deadly quiet. Just right at the minute I was about to collapse mentally and swear to be a loner for the rest of the year, there it was. The lovely tone of my phone came up and it was a lovely girl I know. Her message was so simple but so precise. The emotion among the words was so frank, open and fearless. It was that three words that can reach deep into a man’s heart and he could never forget it. And those three words were right there on the screen of my phone. I didn’t know what to say and what to do. I was totally still and just let my eye sight land on that three words: WHO ARE YOU. Yeah, I deleted her number right away and didn’t speak to her since.

Jokes aside, this year is going to be a big year for me, because I going to finish my PhD. How exciting! Although I am still struggling to get my thesis finished as soon as possible, which is very depressing, I still can help to be excited of the thoughts that I going to finished. It is like a new beginning of my life is coming, it is like a dusty old book is finally turning to the new chapter. Of course I made some new years resolutions. Personally I think it is very important for anyone of us to do it otherwise we will have nothing to regret at the end of the year. My resolutions include things such as get up earlier and go to gym more often. In order to make sure I have things to regret at the end of 2008, I added quite smoking. That ought to do it.

Happy 2008 everyone!