Pollution and more pollution

Here is a followup to the post “Donald Tsang is a liar” where I argued that pollution has been increasing since 1997 and not decreasing as Tsang once claimed.

From Hong Kong air pollution worst since records began

The number of hours for which street-level pollution exceeded the danger level in some of the city’s busiest districts rose by 14 percent in 2008, according to Environmental Protection Department figures.
The department said air pollution levels in the three main shopping and business districts were dangerous for more than 2,000 hours last year — the highest figure since it began taking roadside recordings in 2000.

I just wonder now if the financial crisis is going to help the problem or worsening it.  Factories all across the Pearl River Delta are closing down due the crisis and other events—including a change in mainland’s economic policy for the region.  So that should be good for reducing pollution.  However, more financial pressure on the whole region may also mean more people cutting corners (e.g. using the cheapest, dirtest fuel) and less government money to support environmental policies.  So it’s not really clear either way.

Topic

I can blog with my mobile now. I got this fancy-smancy phone that has internet and the works (my previous mobile was a 6-year old hand-me-down). I should have no excuse for updating my blog. But, I still need a topic.

Depression

“We can easily be talking about a world economy that is depressed until 2011 and maybe beyond… If there’s a safe place I can’t see it.”

Those are the words of this year’s Nobel prize winner (in economics no less), Paul Krugman. His pessimistic outlook is making the rounds in the business news, which is needless to say, also mostly pessimistic.

I am not so cheery these last couple days either. A task at work has been dragging on to what seems to be infinity. I tried to avoid this for over a year, yet it’s still dogged me. Now I am trying to promise myself that if I just get it done and out of the way, I can go back to the things I really enjoy: programming and thinking up new ideas for our system.

What’s so bad about the current task? It’s writing, ugh. I really hate academic writing now. I am not sure why I have such strong feelings against it. I don’t know why it feels so painful when I do it. Lord knows, I done a lot of it by now. And actually my writing is usually well-received. But it seems the more I write, the more painful it gets. It seems more and more impossible as I go along. And my self-imposed deadlines get pushed back a little further each day. I procrastinate more and more.

So I finally understand better what people feel when they say they hate their jobs. Although I surely can’t say I hate my whole job—since there will be an end to this eventually, I do hate the work right now. And it puts me in an utter funk.

Oh, the economy. Yeah, it looks pretty miserable according to the news. But frankly I don’t understand why I am supposed to feel so bad about it. So maybe I am going to end up taking a job for less pay, doing work that I didn’t really aspire to do, and living on an even tighter budget? That sounds pretty much like life. And actually I feel better at the thought of “trimming back.” We got way too much crap in this small flat anyways (ok, Goldie might take offense at that since her stuff way outnumbers mine). Actually, I am ecstatic at the idea of the whole world trimming back, especially the disproportionately well-to-do part. Let me hold myself back from wishing for an outright doomsday, I am not trying to be that extreme here.

Still, I don’t really get the fear and pessimism going around these days. It’s not like I am just lucking out of the bad luck, right? My plans for job hunting are looking increasingly dismal too. Immigration plans might get put on hold. Hell, I may end up facing separation from Goldie if things get really bad. But—at least for today—I just feel apathetic. Life is like that. It can really suck. *shrug*

Sustainability

This is a good time to be a doomsday believer.  We’ve gone right past climate castrophe and straight into financial fallout.  I can’t help but laugh when I read the business section in the newspaper now.  Everyday there is a new headline in big bold letters of underlining how we’ve reached a new low.  There are photos of shell-shocked financial traders, hopeless quotes from “big people” who supposedly know what’s going on, and so-called analysis that doesn’t make an ounce of sense.  It’s absurd.  With all the fear-mongering, most of all are still going on with our lives without much immediate change.  No one knows what in the world is really going on with the financial tsunami, hurricane, crisis, fallout, disaster, castrophe, armageddon…  So I don’t know what else to do but laugh.

I guess part of my lightheartedness comes from the fact that I don’t seem to have much to lose.  During all this hoopla and my obsessive reading of the latest financial news, I have wondered several times what I should really be doing (instead of checking Google News over and over).  I’ve come to the conclusion that I should basically do nothing.  I am not invested in the stock market, I don’t own a house, and I don’t work for an organization on the verge of bankruptcy (i.e. any financial company).  I only have some modest savings in the bank.  Oh, and I have my student loan debt which means that my net worth is about….zero.  If the banks really do go bad then we are all basically screwed, so I guess won’t worry too much about that scenario.  Instead, I have wondered if there was any way to outsmart the system and make it out of this crisis better off.  But after more consideration (and acknowledgment that I know absolutely zilch on economics), I have realized that the rules of the game have completely changed.  No one at this point even knows what the rules are.  If anyone makes money out of this disaster it will most likely be from pure luck (or corruption).

What can I get out of this crisis?  Life in “interesting times,” I guess.  Hmm…I am actually not surprised to find out that phrase is not from any known Chinese proverb.  I’ve never heard anyone in Hong Kong say it’s a good thing to live in chaotic times.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

Nevertheless, I have been learning not to take life so damn seriously while living in Hong Kong.  No better way to learn this to witness firsthand what happens when you DO take life seriously.  Every morning, I watch people falling asleep on the train, sometimes on my shoulder, after working too late the night before.  I see late night rush hours on the trains and buses as people get off from work at 10, 11, or later.  I time how long it takes before the lights go out in the office building near my house.  On the street, I brush against fast-paced throngs of workers heading to work, stiffly walking in their dress shoes and suits.

It’s a depressing, life in my opinion, to work all the time.  I’m actively trying to avoid it these days.  I have set cut-off times when I promise myself I will leave work.  I bug the hell out of Goldie by calling her and telling her to come home.  I try my best to leave work at work and not to bring it home.  Somethings I have not been so successful at yet.  I’ve been thinking about trying to cook at home again instead of eating out every night.  But so far, no progress.  I also haven’t quite gotten us back to hiking regularly.  But I am still motivated to keep working on these goals.

If I could sum up the lesson I am learning from all the crazy stuff going on these days in one word it would be… sustainability.  (The royal) “we” are not living in a sustainable manner at all.  Not in terms of natural resources, finance, or mental health.  What I want to seek out in my life right now is balance.  I want to work towards life that has enough comfort and uncomfortableness that my life can be called “interesting.”  ‘Cause even though it’s not some cliche Chinese proverb, I still always wanted to live in interesting times.

Typhoons and bad timing

Welcome to the world’s equestrian capital, Typhoon Nuri!  You’ve come just in time for the Olympics and my thesis revisions.

This is the third time that a typhoon has come right as I was trying to meet an important thesis deadline.  First, Typhoon Fengshen came when I submitted my thesis for examination.  Yes, I was actually running through the outer rain bands with my final photocopies in hand for the grad school.  Then there was Kammuri which nearly threatened to cancel my thesis defense.  Thankfully, it was a little slow and just ended up giving me a free holiday the day after my defense.

Now there is Nuri—named after some cute bird—bearing down on us.  This one is actually a real typhoon and it’s forecasted to directly hit Hong Kong.  When you look at the maps, the typhoon symbol on the map completely obscures the small dot for Hong Kong.  I say it’s a “real” typhoon because, unlike most so-called typhoons that hit Hong Kong, it will have hurricane-force winds according to the common grading system used in the U.S.  Most of the typhoons that come through Hong Kong are actually tropical storms or depressions and they rarely hit the city directly.  Instead they just skirt by.   So typhoons in Hong Kong are only considered significant for one thing: free holidays.  If the winds are strong enough, the weather observatory will raise the Typhoon Signal No. 8 and the city shuts down.  Everyone cheers and rushes home.  After they get home, they don’t “hunker down” for the storm.  They just watch the TV and laugh at the pathetic scramblers who missed the last bus or ferry crawling in the windy rain with their umbrella inside-out.  Nothing much happens except some rain and a few gusts.  If we are lucky, we get an afternoon or morning off.  Rarely we get a whole day.  But most of the time, people have figured out, the No. 8 only happens on weekends.

But this time is different!  This storm has sustained winds of 120km/h and gusts to 160km/h.  It’s not that strong compared to the well-known American hurricanes, but we haven’t seen a storm like this in Hong Kong since at least 1999 (ok, I didn’t see it but I did some research).  Our last storm this year, Kammuri, caused windows to fly off one building and break windows on another one nearby.  But its winds were actually far less powerful than what is predicted from this typhoon.

So aren’t people worried?  Aren’t they running around preparing like mad?  Not at all!  None of my co-workers were concerned about the storm itself, just whether or not there would be No. 8 signal.  With the way things look now, it’s likely we will be seeing No. 10 tomorrow (”full blown typhoon” signal).  And yet the final event for the Olympics tonight is proceeding as scheduled!  Already, winds are picking up on the outer islands.  I hope the event is not going to go too late…

Myself, I’m planning to tape our windows on our exposed side and move the computers away.  I’ll probably make the cat sleep with us in the bedroom (where the window is better protected) rather than the living room.  Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I really would be surprised if this storm doesn’t cause some significant damage.

Oh yeah, my thesis revisions…  I’ll probably work on those tomorrow too.

Eating

Today was family dinner at Goldie’s house, as we do every Sunday.  On the way to Happy Valley, we trudged through the rain (yes, still raining) to pick up some goose intestines and swamp vegetables with thousand year old eggs.  Goldie’s mom was worried she hadn’t cooked enough so she had asked us to get a little extra from the Chiu Chau restaurant near our house.

Over dinner, as usual, we watched food programs.  When I first started visting Goldie’s mom house for dinner a couple years ago, it seemed a little odd to me to watch a food program while eating food.  But I’ve gotten used to it now.  It does keeps everyone entertained between the quiet parts of the dinner conversation.  Tonight, one of the shows was an non-local one on cable: Bizarre Food.  The topic was Spanish food and, in particular, roast suckling pig and baby eels.  Neither dish seems very “bizarre” by Chinese standards.  But strange enough to me, Goldie and her sister both recoiled in horror over the man eating the head of the suckling pig.  I don’t really understand it since Chinese cuisine has the exact same dish, and dishes for nearly every part of the pig imaginable (including yummy pig’s ears).

But somehow we all got on the conversation of eating rodents.  I guess it started because of some anecdote that I mentioned about Dustin killing a prairie dog and making plans to eat it.  But Grandpa convinced him not to with the logic, “I never heard of the Indians eating the prairie dogs, and I bet you there is a good reason why they don’t.”

When Goldie’s father heard the story, he smiled, “Rat is the most delicious thing I ever ate.”  Everyone laughed as if he was trying to make a joke.  He continued, “Really!  When I was young, we didn’t have anything to eat.  My friend gave me a piece of rat leg to eat.  That was the most delicious thing I ever ate.  I was seven years and I still remember it today.  And after that, you know what I did?  I tried to make a rat trap to catch one for myself, but I never caught one sadly.”

I had to ask, “Did it taste like chicken?”  “No. It’s different.”

Even though everyone had a chuckle over it, there was a moment in the room where it was clear that the memory for Goldie’s father was lot more significant than any one of us could appreciate.  We could only imagine that rat really must taste awful, except when you’re starving.  But in Goldie’s father eyes, it seemed that it really was the best thing he ever ate.  The only bitterness that he could remember was the anger over the poverty of his family.

After dinner, Goldie and I headed home, stopping at Starbucks on the way.  While sipping a green tea latte with soya milk, I ran across an interesting article in the South China Morning Post.  A Chinese author, Yang Jisheng, recently published a book Tombstone about the Great Famine in China.  An estimated 30 million people died.  According to the official government position it was due to the unlucky combination of several “natural disasters.”  But in fact, it is acknowledged by most others that it was fundamentally a man-made disaster.  In some cases, people died while ample grain supplies sat in warehouses waiting for export.  The famine was during 1959-1961, the same time Goldie’s father would have been seven years old.

Goldie asked me tonight, “Do you think someday in our life we will have no food to eat?”  For a brief moment I tried to imagine it as I savored the last drop of my green tea latte.  How could I possibly imagine it?  Indeed, I do wonder about the threat of climate change.  How bad will it be?  Will my generation be witness to such horrible atrocities like the Great Famine?  How does one cope in such a cruel world?  When I imagine it, I can’t help but think that human life would be relatively meaningless in such a situation.  Well, to be more precise, perhaps the human life that I know of now would be meaningless.

Homeland marriage

So it’s late and I should sleep, but I just read the news that the U.S. Supreme Court has declared the Second Amendment protects individuals’ right to have a gun. My first reaction: wow, that’s incredibly stupid.

Funny to me that I was already thinking about the absurdity of the U.S. with regards to same-sex marriage before stumbling on the this right to bear arms news. Tonight, I also read The Stranger’s Queer Issue discussing same-sex marriage and the recent events in California. The paper somewhat tongue-in-cheek, somewhat seriously presented arguments why gays and lesbians should NOT run to California and get married. It piqued my interest because I also DON’T want to run to California to get married. But it turns out, my chief argument didn’t seem to get included in any of the various articles.

So why I don’t I want to run to California and get married? I wouldn’t get married in California because it’s a complete farce. There’s simply no “marriage equality” in the U.S. and California is no exception. A same-sex marriage in California means nothing in the eyes of the federal government and most other U.S. states. Well, perhaps, not “nothing.” A marriage certificate in California does give U.S. Immigration the right to deny my partner from ever entering the U.S. again. *pause for sarcastic burn to wear off* In the states which outright ban same-sex marriage, it also condones blatant discrimination in all levels of society. And in public opinion, it entitles one to become a “threat” to society. A marriage license between two people of the same sex also licenses the general American society—including the media—to openly debate the validity of their relationship and the soundness of their mental health. Lovely, isn’t it?

Sometimes, I am surprised why anyone would expect me to be excited at news like California allowing same-sex marriage. It’s a lot too little and lot too late. Ten years ago I would have been ecstatic. Back then, I would have thought that full marriage equality was just around the corner. I didn’t realize back then that the reason same-sex marriage wasn’t legal a long time ago was not because of the “nature of American politics” but because of the nature of America. I still stupidly believe in those days that the U.S. had some “enduring vision” (title of my college U.S. history textbook) that made it different from any other “ordinary” country. I thought that I had gained a pretty enlightened viewpoint in realizing that the U.S. had made mistakes but that it’s uniqueness was in being able to rectify its mistakes. Well, that is the sum of my college history lesson. It’s far better than my primary school history class which just taught us that the U.S. was the “bestest place in the whole wide world.”

Anyways, ten years ago I was more optimistic. After painfully realizing that *gasp* the U.S. not only has discrimination, but it’s snail-like pace in dealing with it pretty much amounts to denial of this discrimination in the first place. More simply put, poll after poll shows that Americans are perfectly content to discriminate against gays and lesbians. What I perceive to be a “problem” is a source of pride for others. That’s how much of a cultural gap there is between me and the U.S. Granted, I know there are some other Americans who agree that denying same-sex marriage is indeed discrimination, but they are still the minority for now.

But time moved on, and I had a life to live. It didn’t take more than a few years before I stopped “waiting” for the day when the majority would decide that I was an equal human being and deserved full civil rights. I took matters into my own hands and left the U.S. so I could pursue “life, liberty, and happiness”. Maybe I’m sounding like a broken record here to some people.

The fact is that I am still, for lack of a better word, grieving. It seems strange to use such a emotional word with political issues, what I used to think were fundamentally impersonal issues. But I’ve find that nationality is not equal to politics and is indeed a very personal issue. But the strange thing is that we don’t seem to have any words to give justice to this relationship between a person and their country of origin (c.f. family relationships).

I am not only grieving over the loss of identity as being part of “the bestest place in whole wide world” or at least one with an “enduring vision” (identities which I realized now never really existed). But I am also really pissed. I still, for some dumb reason, hold out hope that the U.S. really can rectify itself. I hope that this year’s election will be the mark of something better. I hope that the U.S. could be a fore-runner in the world on issues like human rights (including the right to a livable planet). But then I see news like today that the U.S. is more concerned with the right for people to own weapons of destruction than the right to breathe clean air. I feel immense disappointment.

I do believe things are changing in the U.S. and I am happy to see progress. But frankly I’ve given up in expecting much from the U.S. I’m hard pressed to think of why so many think that the U.S. is somehow “special” in the world’s nations. I can only come to the conclusion the U.S.’s strong power and influence over the world comes from a line of favorable historical “accidents”. But I fear that rejecting this doctrine of manifest destiny (which still seems to exists in modern America) is the ultimate act of “unpatriotism.” And I wonder if there is no hope for reconciling the relationship between me and the U.S.

Diary of being sick

I think I am getting the flu. I say “think” because I don’t actually have full-blown symptoms yet. I’m guessing the reader is now failing their arms, “What are you saying?! Do you want to be sick?”

No, really, I’m not hoping to be sick. I just feel I am being honest with myself by acknowledging that something is not right with me. I tried to search the internet for more information about how the flu develops, but it doesn’t seem easy to find this type information. Yes, you can find a list of common symptoms, but no explanation of the timing of them and their development. I suppose people believe that everyone gets sick differently. But after 20-some odd years of experiencing sickness in my body, I find there is a very standard routine.

If I get a cold, it first begins with slight fatigue. Sometimes, I fail to notice this first sign. I think it’s just due to lack of sleep or working too hard. But the next sign can never be missed: the tell-tale sore throat. It starts as a little scratchy nuisance and then becomes worse and worse. If it’s a bad cold, a headache is also coming on and now I really feel tired. I find myself sneezing more often than usual. By the time I am starting to suck on lozenges or drinking hot water with lemon and honey to soothe my throat, my nose is getting stuffed up. This usually all happens within a day (although the first feeling of fatigue often comes the day before). By the next day, my sore throat is mostly gone but my whole head is replaced with cotton balls (the number of cotton balls correlates to the severity of the cold). I can no longer hear clearly or breathe through my nose. At this moment I know that I definitely have a cold and will probably not being able to breathe through my nose again for at least 3 days. I begin to horde tissues. Usually, my nose starts dripping slowly at first and then grows to an accelerated pace.  For the rest of this day and the next, I suffer the wrath of the cold.  Usually I don’t have any cough, but I may lose part of my voice if the cold is particuarly bad.  Nevertheless, on the third day, I usually wake up for the first time feeling ever so “slightly” better.  Although my nose still drips constantly and I might lost my voice, the pressure in my head has decreased slightly.  By that night, I usually have accepted my fate and come to peace with suffering a cold.  In other words, I believe that I will eventually feel better (on the first and second days, I wasn’t sure about that).  The next few days each bring less suffering.  The headaches are gone, my hearing is getting better, and the nose flow decreases.  Towards the end of the week, my cold symptoms linger in the morning-time but are more or less over.  Not too long after, but always longer than I think it should be, I wake up one morning feeling completely normal.

So what about the flu?  I have only experienced it once in my life—as far as I can remember.  It occurred in winter of 2001, a few months after I had moved to Seattle.  I can’t recall the details so well of how it all started.  I just remember that in the early stages of it, I was completely exhausted.  I spent a lot of time just lying in bed with no energy to do anything else.  I also remember realizing at one point that a cold and the flu are completely different, and I will NEVER, EVER mix the two up again.  During the flu, I felt that I was going to die.  Although I may joke about that during a cold, I really felt it during the flu.  I suppose it’s the fever that does it to you.  I also developed a bad cough during that time.  So bad that I felt I was choking to death if I laid down.  So I had to sleep at night propped up with pillows.  The worst of it lasted around five days or so, though the effects lingered on much longer.  And when I started to get better, I didn’t feel “at peace with my fate”, I felt damn grateful that I was still alive.

And now for recent events.  My memory of my last day of wellness goes back to Wednesday.  I had a big meeting at work that morning and it had gone well.  That afternoon I was back at the desk grinding away on a particularly annoying problem.  Goldie and I agreed to meet at 8:00pm for sushi on the island.  Around 7:15pm, I realized I was already running late (takes me about an hour to get to the island).  So I ran down the hillside to the train station.  It was the first time I had real run in a looooong time.  Although it was downhill, so it didn’t seem so hard.  By the time I got to the train station, I felt a little winded but not too bad actually.  My legs were a little wobbly though.

The next day, I could feel my legs aching a little.  But it didn’t seem to bad.  It was Friday that I really felt something was coming on.  I woke up that morning feeling exhausted.  I didn’t walk so much as a I stumbled.  I still went to work, but by the afternoon, I felt my brain had left the building.  I spent a lot of time staring at the computer blankly.  On my way back home, I felt like crawling might be easier.  That night, I wondered if I should cancel my tutoring lessons for Saturday morning.  But I also wondered if a good night’s sleep might be enough to bring me back to life.  This morning I woke up feeling tired, but not truly sick in any way.  So I went off to tutoring.  By the middle of the second lesson, I was counting down the minutes till I could leave.  I took the tram instead of walking like usual.  The moment I got home, I went straight for the sofa.  I haven’t done anything else except take a short excursion to the vet around the corner.  Mimi (the kitty) got a rash on stomach, so we had the vet look at it.  Just walking around the block once made was enough to get my head hurting.  I’m now back at home, lying on the bed.

So, am I sick?  I figure that if things don’t get any worse, than I am just suffering from exhaustion (maybe due to the cough that I fought off last week—during some of Hong Kong’s worst ever pollution).  But just in case this is the beginning of the flu, I’m trying to prepare psychologically for the rough times ahead.

Finally, I should add that Hong Kong is in the midst of peak flu season.  The hospitals are overcrowded and the news is talking about the flu problem every night.  So if I’m wrong about having the flu, I could just blame my mistake on the power of media suggestion.

Unprecedented moral failure

Our starting point is that the battle against climate change can–and must–be won. The world lacks neither the financial resources nor the technological capabilities to act. If we fail to prevent climate change it will be because we were unable to foster the political will to cooperate. Such an outcome would represent not just a failure of political imagination and leadership, but a moral failure on a scale unparalleled in history. (Human Development Report 2007/2008)

I went back to mainland yesterday again, after a long absence. The dark pessimism about the mainland that I felt earlier has only become darker. Crossing from Hong Kong to only a few kilometers beyond the border, it would seem that the differences should not be that great. Surely there must have been differences between Hong Kong and its bordering neighbor, Shenzhen, far more visible 30 years ago as Hong Kong’s economy was soaring and mainland was still under a radical socialist regime. Today, the differences may be more subtle, but they seem just as shocking.

The polluted air that bothers Hong Kong so much is only worse in Shenzhen. What should have been a clear blue sky was actually a murky grey with orange hues were the sun should have been. While you can actually have space to stretch your arms and not hit someone in the face, you’re far more likely to be hit by a car. The roads are vast and wide yet still packed with cars.

Everything is a little more pale, as you find it’s all covered in a grimy mixture of soot and construction dust. Young spindly trees, which have been planted in large numbers lately for “greening”, are actually grey from the dust. Or often times, just simply dead.

The university campus we visited is a branch campus of China’s “MIT”: Tsinghua. It’s recently constructed (5-6 years), yet the buildings are full of flaws. The walls are cracking, and the materials are cheap. Strangely, there are few students. It feels more like a ghost university. There are rooms that still have the original seal –unbroken–across the door jam from the construction days.

I had made a comment earlier that day to some of mainland colleagues on what I perceived as wasteful living in the U.S.: oversized houses and rampant materialism. As we toured the large but empty campus, they chuckled and said I must feel the campus was a real waste!

I admit that I might be pessimistic to a degree that is not quite justified. The sadness that I feel in mainland is overwhelming. And yet, these are the days, where mainlanders feel more optimistic than ever before. Perhaps given the history they come from, it is indeed a better situation now. But as far as I see, mainland is living on borrowed time. We are all living on borrowed time right now.

Yet I really have to read that last sentence several times to remember what it means…“a moral failure on a scale unparalleled in history.”

Yes, indeed, what crime could be worse than destroying the world?

Work and “work”

I’m working full-time now, starting since last week. It’s nice to have a “real” job. I get to crack open my computer science books again! I have more routine in my life now. And sometimes I don’t know what the hell I am supposed to be doing at work.

This week there is also another big change lurking. Goldie’s mom is supposed to move in soon. I honestly didn’t think it was possible when I first heard the proposal. Well, with enough pressure, I guess a solution is always possible. The “study” as I affectionately used to call my cubbyhole with desk, bookshelf, and computer is now the guest bedroom. I moved my computer (and all the thesis stuff that goes with it) to work. My new idea in tackling my thesis is to work on it after “real” work.

That’s all I really want to say for now.