..:. Cracking My Vainpot .:..

"There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man."

"No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle."

- Churchill

It's been so long... I will soon forget what it's like to be loved.

Ever since that bruising battle against SARS back in 2003, people from Hong Kong would flinch on any mentioning of new viruses.

My sister works as a trolly dolly for Cathay. After a lot of hoo-hah, her union finally won them the right to wear face mask whilst serving on the plane. But that wasn't enough to stop her from panicking when one of her passengers from Taiwan was later confirmed to carry that infamous swine flu.

Suddenly, she's tired all the time. Suddenly, she had this headache that just won't go away. Pacing around for half a day, she eventually checked herself into the hospital and stepped right into a disaster movie set. They kept her in isolation, bled her every hour and tested her bogey every 5 minutes. Even if she cleared all the diagnostic tests, they'd still quarantine her for at least a week.

Poor Ms Piggy.

I should've answered the phone and screamed "no, you don't even have a fever. Go back to bed!"

I don't think she kissed all her passengers...

愛慕 從來是短 ?

My number 1 healthy obsession is a she.

Shirley Kwan. SK.

An unlikely Hong Kong pop diva.

She was never immensely popular nor does she have the strongest vocal.

Dissing her is almost second nature to half of Hong Kong. In fact, telling people you like SK can be as pleasant as coming out of the closet.

But a small number of us did see the magic in her and our support, albeit minimalistic at best, has never wavered through the years.

She was always there with me. When I discovered sexuality in Australia, when I wanted to kill myself in England, when I got piss drunk lying flat on a San Francisco Muni train, when I slaved away til dawn in the lab.

She was always there.

I never thought much of pop stars and celebrities, but boy, SK got me doing a lot of unexpected, out-of-character crazy "fan" stuff.

As a token of admiration, I wrote her entire wikipedia(en) entry almost all by myself. Even got into trouble at one point cos I was selling her too much :P

Cheeky me also uploaded a picture of her taken in Toronto when we met a year ago.

Guess what, I just found that if you google "Shirley Kwan", this picture comes up as the first image result!!!

:-D

The original:-

Congratulations to Steven Chu the new Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration. Having a scientist in a position of power is like putting facts and logic before profits. Should he survive all the politics, Hope is on it's way for the planet!

"I was following this as an interested citizen. And it became more and more apparent to me that the dangers, the potential risks of climate change were looking like they were more and more likely, and that ... as a scientist, a responsible scientist, you really have to think of what you can do to help with this problem."

[NPR: Nobel Winner Chu To Land Top Energy Post]

* * *

Watching this 2004 video of Dr Chu tracing his career path is heart warming in so many levels. As a scientist, I appreciate that he truly understands our challenge to be novel and our desire to be inspired. As a Chinese, the way he described his childhood reminded me of my own and how my father tried to instill in me bits of the old Chinese culture that no longer exist. What's more, he was born in Missouri!

"One of the highest things you can aspire to is to be a scholar for scholarship sake."

"A good scientist is their worst critic. They're always trying to prove themselves wrong, which is hard."

"In science once you announce something, first everybody tells you that you're wrong, then they tell you it's trivial, and then you're not the first to discover it." 

"Science is really about describing the way the universe works... You have to have a natural curiosity for that... a really driven curiosity, you want to know the answer, and with that curiosity you have comes with a certain doggedness, because there will be setbacks, you will be discouraged, things aren't gonna work, you're gonna have troubles understanding them, things are hard to understand the first time."

Sigh. When am I going to have a normal boyfriend?! Sometimes I do think it's all my fault. Moving around too often, not giving other (+myself) a chance, unreasonable expectations... #$%&;[('@")]:/*^_-

I met the Anderson Cooper of Kansas City a while back. He's tall, handsome, famous, confident, successful, engaging, fit, VERY fit, he can fuck like a superman, he absolutely adores my coffee and it tickles my vainpot to see him on TV. Yet, I didn't feel that we connect.

What else do you want, Mr VP? What else do you want?!

For the first time in my life, I feel that America is the greatest country in the world.

For the first time in my life, I really believe that equality can be achieved.

Congratulations, Mr President! 

* * *

[Excerpt from: Obama Acceptance Speech in Chicago 11/04/2008]