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!