Mindless Philosopher

Geez people, I leave the Mellman Group for a little more than a month, and look what happens! (Joking!)

Fernando Ferrer [Dem] 182273 39.95%
Anthony Weiner [Dem] 131476 28.82%
C. Virginia Fields [Dem] 72640 15.92%
Gifford Miller [Dem] 46480 10.19%

So Ferrer misses 40% by a nosehair, but Weiner just announced that he won’t contest the run-off.
Though in other news, Stringer won (I gave him a fundraising DB), and a candidate who TMG never went public about won her primary. (Her poll was the first poll I ever weighted with no one else’s help.)

I know I have some readers who live in New York City/Manhattan, so here’s a reminder to VOTE today. I would suggest Giff Miller for Mayor and Scott Stringer for Manhattan Borough President. Miller is a youthful voice for the city, and has shown how he can beat Bloomberg at the city council level (hopefully a preview of the general election). Miller was on the New York Times “short list”, and did fantastic in the most recent debate. Oh, and for all your New Yorkers who are warming to Bloomberg, have you forgotten the stadium boondoggle and his blocking of same-sex marriage?! Vote for a Democrat–your friends will thank you later.
As for Stringer, he was endorsed by The Times. I don’t have an air-tight case on why you should vote for him…but you probably don’t know much about the candidates anyway.
On a more general topic, I need a bike to get around campus. I know very little about bikes, so I’m hoping my readers can clue me in. How versatile are road bikes? For instance, will this bike work on the gravel (short-cut) road near my apartment? Or should I go with this one just to be safe? Anything I should be looking out for (wheel size, frame size)?

This week the CA state assembly passed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage. Governor Schwarzenegger has said he will veto the bill and that this issue should be “decided by voters or the courts.” Chicklet pointed out the complete nonsensical nature of this argument, given that the people and the courts are on opposite ends of the mobocracy-philosopher king spectrum, with a representative legislature somewhere in between. I knew that given the Governator’s low approval rating, he had no choice but to acquiesce to his Republican base and needed any argument to justify his position, logic be damned.
In addition, the New York Times brings up the excellent point that Schwarzenegger rode into office two years ago as a sort of uber-politician, beholden to no one. Now we see the exact opposite from him. The Califonia assembly is giving Schwarzenegger a chance to assure his place in political history (and do the right thing at the same time, no less) as the first governor to sign same sex marriage into law. But instead we see him capitulating to craven political convenience–how pathetic.

Got back to the States yesterday after a 15-hour flight from Hong Kong. Chicklet surprised me at the airport so I didn’t have to take the train back. After taking the “scenic route” back to Princeton, I returned the favor by making us dinner. Given that I had just been adventurous for 10 days, I wanted to do something very normal, so I popped in The Princess Bride and watched the movie for about the 35th time. Amazingly, Chicklet had never seen the entire movie before (?!). She seemed to enjoy it, though perhaps she’ll publish a more detailed review on her site.
For the first time since Kevin told about this program called Napster at MIT, I’m paying for my music. Not wanting to be encumbered by DRM or locked into a certain subset of music players (my Treo plays mp3s after all), I signed up for eMusic. They give you the mp3s straight up–no catches. I’ll get 40 downloads for $10 a month (so as long as I find about 1 new album a month it’ll be cheaper than iTunes). Also, when they say you get 50 free downloads they are actually being truthful. I’ve almost used up all my freebies and they have not charged by credit card. My hesitance about joining before was the lack of an extensive catalog, but I saw they now have the Decembrists. (Chu got several of their songs stuck in my head a couple months ago.)
Their catalog, which you can only view by signing up for the free trial, included several pleasant surprises (Debbie Friedman, Green Day, Carole King), but the best find was Dar Williams. Innumerable people have recommended her to me over the years, but for some reason I had not taken the hint. Well, now I’m hooked. I laughed out loud at “The Christians and The Pagans” and it’s my new (temporary) “favorite song.” It came out in 1996–okay, so maybe I’m a bit behind the times.

It’s my last evening in Hong Kong–this has certainly been a fun vacation. I had enough time to both view all the sites and relax. Sadly, I must return to the harsh wilderness of grad school, filled with afternoon naps and ultimate frisbee :)
Thursday I visited my brother’s factory in China, where they manufacture all the robots. There were several assembly lines at the factory–the workers were fabricating all kinds of plastic goods, though mainly toys. The workers, mostly women, are poorly paid, though given that room and board are provided, the conditions seem reasonable. Whether it’s a better life than the farm workers (growing bananas and sugar cane) we passed on the car ride to the factory is probably a matter of personal preference rather than absolutes (though what do
I know).
iRobot arranged for a driver to take me on a day tour of southern China. My driver was very friendly, and though she spoke 15 words in English, and my Cantonese consisted of only greetings, our liberal use roman numerals successfully conveyed ideas. The first stop was the Boama Gardens, a national touristy locale, where they had ink pads of 18th century Emporers and bronze statues from BCE on display. Next stop was Guangzhou cultural center and local neighborhood. The center had works on display from local artists and I bought a landscape painting for my ‘rents. (I bargained the price down to two-thirds of the original.) The nearby neighborhood was very poor–school had just let out, so I saw a lot of activity. Most people ignored me, but some gave me the weirdest look, as in “what the heck are you doing here?!” Given China’s homogeneous society, it is pretty easy to stand out.
The last stop was a huge mall and outdoor market in Guangzhou. The outdoor market had one strip where shop after shop was just selling fabric, beads, and buttons. Two stores augmented these items with designer tags. Yes, they were selling the tags themselves. if you ever wondered how that $5 knock-off got its brand name on it, here’s your answer: China. For the only time on this vacation, I had trouble finding dinner at the mall because of my vegetarianism–dinner was Gatorade, an Asian pear, and the most disgusting corn I’ve ever had. I sat down to eat the corn, and this guy decided to shoot a photo of me every time I bit into the corn. Maybe I was eating it wrong or something…
On Friday I came back to Hong Kong, and went to Orthodox services. I discovered later that there were non-ortho services as well, but being the newbie that I am, I went to the first ones I could find–the Orthodox. Unsurprisingly, the Shabbat prayers, tunes, and customs were the exact same as in the US–it was quite easy to follow along in the very standard ArtScroll prayer book. (I noticed two women relegated to the balcony of the synagogue; as elsewhere, the place was dominated by men.)
After services, I stayed for Shabbat dinner. Unfortunately, I was the only person at the table that was not fluent in conversational Hebrew. The guest of honor was Israeli Knesset member Shaul Yahalom, so much of the dinner conversation occurred in Hebrew. Most of the time I knew the topic of conversation and not much else–I can tell you that disengagement was not discussed.
Yesterday we attended a Hong Kong First Division soccer match. Happy Valley tied Xiangxue Sun Hei 1-1. (Marc and I rooted for Happy Valley of course, since we couldn’t pronounce the other team’s name.) Saturday night Marc’s coworkers and I haggled at the Temple St night market. Today I finally had dim sum at Maxim’s Palace, based on Chu’s recommendation. And then I crossed the last item off the “to-do” list by buying a Lan Kwai Fong shirt at Ben&Jerry’s. And so ends my Hong Kong adventure.

My Hong Kong adventure continued on Sunday, when Marc, Claire and I took the tram up to Victoria Peak. (Oh, I skipped lunch for all you food people: it was Japanese fast food.) It had been cloudy all during my stay up until that point, and since Sunday was only mostly cloudy, we played our hand and went up for the view. The tram runs on a cable with two cars balancing the weight of each other. The steepest angle of assent is 27 degrees, though it feels much higher because your body is so used to being on level ground.
The top of the Peak gives your a beautiful view of downtown Hong Kong and Kowloon, with some outlying areas in the distance. The fog obscured some of our view, so instead of soaking in the vista, we hiked around the top of the Peak. We passed several residences of wealthy people — I hope they telecommute…otherwise that’s one heck of a trip to and from work. The nature of Hong Kong is interesting: in addition to some pretty flora, we encountered butterflies and salamanders. The end of our hike led us to the Peak mall, where we did some shopping, and bought some McFlurries from McDonald’s (sometimes you just can’t beat American food).
On Monday, Claire and I took the MTR to Wong Tai Sin, a popular Taoist temple. This was by far the least touristy place we had been to–for the first time we were the only white people on the subway car. Speaking of white people and the subway, several of the ads on the MTR are blatantly racist, displaying white people as dumb and foolish. One (video) ad has two white salesman trying to sell a copier by rapping to 5-year-olds. Another has a picture of two Chinese teens in bed, with two white (computer generated) parents sitting on the sides of the bed with blank expressions on their faces: the text of the ad encourages parents not to be shy about talking to their kids about sex. I guess since we ruled them for long enough, they’re allowed to make fun of us? Or something like that…
Back to the Taoist temple, while I did forgo lighting incense with the Chinese, I partook in drawing numbers. There are sticks labeled 1 to 100 in a “Que Bueno”-sized can, which you then shake until one of the sticks falls out. I drew 13 numbers, they were: 79 97 1 40 34 46 50 46 34 100 54 12 51. I had two repeated numbers, which makes me think my shaking was not random (a random shake would produce at least two repeating numbers only 16.5% of the time*). I seem to be a centered person, given my numerical distribution:
1-20: 2
21-40: 3
41-60: 5
61-80: 1
81-100: 2
Of course, Claire insists that each one of the numbers has its own special fortune for me, but I don’t really believe in that stuff.
Tuesday I went to Lantau island to visit the largest sitting, outdoor, broze Buddha in the world. The Buddha is right next to the Po Lin monastery, who served me this great vegetarian lunch for under $10. After paying my respects to the Buddha and wandering around the monastery, I decided to hike Lantau Peak (the second highest peak in Hong Kong). Lantau Peak is best known for its sunrises, because most sane people would not hike it in the afternoon heat. I am, however, not most people, and I readily helped prove the prevailing wisdom here that white people are idiots.
Slowly but surely I climbed the winding stair to Cirth Ungol stone-stair path to the peak, desperately hoping that the clouds would cover the sun. (Somehow I managed to pick the one mostly sunny day to climb the peak.) Though there was vegetation on the path, it provided little shade. I finally made it to the top, at which point I was rewarded with an indescribably amazing view. (I half expected there to be a Buddhist monk waiting for me there as well: I had decided that the one question I would ask him/her would be “what did I have for breakfast.) Lantau Peak is above a cloudline, which makes it really cool when a cloud breaks upon the mountain, similar to waves on a rocky beach.

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The flight to Hong Kong was a good 16 hours, with only a slight delay before takeoff. I didn’t get as much sleep as I had hoped, but it was enough to set me on a reasonable Hong Kong time zone schedule. My current routine is to stay up late, go to bed early, and take a nap sometime during the day. This works well since I’m usually pretty tired after our mid-day activity.
The first night was uneventful. My brother picked me up from the airport and I rented a cell phone (not as cheap as one would hope given the ubiquitous technology here). We headed back to his place where Claire, Marc’s girlfriend, joined us and we watched an episode of the Office. I didn’t get a glimpse of the city that night, but the subway system (MTR) is (1) very clean, (2) efficient, and (3) very handicap accessible.
As I found out the next morning, the city itself is nowhere near as scrubbed-down as the MTR. I explored Hong Kong a bit and watched Tai Chi (there are 1-hour lessons for tourists this week which I plan to do). The city is very compact and has started to be built on levels, somewhat akin to the futuristic visions of Asimov, the 5th Element writers, and some Star Wars series. For instance, one of Marc’s co-workers lives in a high rise whose front door is on the ground floor and whose back door is on the 15th floor. But, instead of the levels demarcating socio-economic status (as in the sci-fi literature), pedestrians of all stripes use the second level to get away from the traffic.
On the first day, Claire and I explored Kowloon via the Star Ferry. As will be the weather for my entire stay here, there were scattered showers, but we just went inside occasionally to avoid the wetness. The good thing about the weather this time of year in HK, is that if you don’t like the conditions, just wait five minutes and they will change. We ventured into the Museum of Art and the Museum of Space (the latter of which needs some serious updating). There was a nice Indian market with some good cheap eats as well.
That night, we explored the longest series of escalators in the world and found a synagogue that hopefully I will be able to get to on Friday for Shabbat. We ate some Thai food and then went out to the infamous Lan Kwai Fong for a drink and then a nearby club for some dancing. The night scene in Hong Kong is pretty rockin, though space constraints severely limit dance floor size.
Got up early yesterday to start off my birthday celebration with some jogging. This city bustles even at 8am on a Saturday. On Chu’s recommendation, I tried some egg tart, which lived up to its reputation. We met up with Marc’s former MIT lab partner who is from Hong Kong to shop in quaint Stanley market. Supposedly, you were supposed to bargain with the shopkeepers, but (1) the items were tagged at *very* reasonable prices, and (2) the store owners didn’t show a disposition to bargaining. Several times I expressed interest in an item and walked away. In Israel that would elicit a lower price, but not here.
Saturday night we had dinner in Stanley market and watched some of the Ashes, the yearly cricket match between England and Australia. After a nap back at Marc’s place, it was off to Lan Kwai Fong again, this time for some Jazz. There was no dance floor to compliment the jazz, so the night continued with bouncing to Indian beats at Club 97. I notices a few gay couples there, and as I Googled afterwards, club 97 is a “gay club” on Fridays. That would somewhat explain why I got hit on in the bathroom… Certainly a birthday unlike any other I’ve had.

I leave for Hong Kong/China in a few hours and as I was packing last night I got a call from Karen and Mike needing hints on their present! (They had to wait until after their honeymoon to give them enough time to open it.) I set up a series of riddles that they needed to solve in order to reach their present. Displaying their teamwork skills (which I’m sure will come in handy later in life), Karen and Mike solved the first three riddles with no help from me (which I thought was very well done). Those riddles led them to a USB stick and I’m sure they were frustrated to find that there was yet one more riddle to dissect. The forth riddle had a mistake, and they had one number wrong, so a help call was needed; but the situation on both sides was quickly remedied and they unlocked their present last night! Here is the (revised) forth riddle so you can entertain yourselves in my absence–when I get back I’ll post the file that was actually their present (they gave permission for me to do so last night).
I’ll try to blog once or twice from HK, but if I don’t, you’ll hear from me on the 6th!

I’ve been procrastinated unpacking/preparing for my HK trip by researching two very useful web software updates.
First, MovableType and LiveJournal now both support OpenID. The MovableType plugin is here and simple to install. You then login at this LiveJournal page. So now I have a LiveJournal page, so all you LJ users can “friend” me (or whatever you call it in your universe). The benefits of this new standard are that I can easily comment on LJ posts and now have one page to view all my friends’ recent LJ updates. However, I’m not sure how to syndicate this blog to my LJ page…perhaps some Google searches will reveal the answer.
Second, GMail now supports multiple accounts, which is perfect timing for my move to Princeton. Now, instead of having to use Princeton’s webmail to get my “From:” address to read abstraus@princeton.edu, I can use GMail. I noticed this feature when I was setting up another GMail account for myself, and looked at the Settings page. Instead of having just an “Google Account Settings” tab, GMail display an “Accounts” tab with the option to add email addresses. I checked my main GMail account, and this tab was nowhere to be found, so I wrote Google Labs asking for this feature, and today when I checked my GMail, there it was. Coincidence? Hard to say, but if you don’t have this feature on your GMail account, just wait a couple days.
The one downside is that you have one “default” account, and you have to switch mail to other accounts manually. I assume, though, that filters will soon have an “assign to _____ account” option.

Well, I’m back at school. The feeling hasn’t sunk in yet, since classes don’t start until mid-September and I have an intervening trip to Hong Kong. Miranda (along with her family) and I loaded all our stuff into a Budget truck on Friday, and drove at 45 mph up to Princeton, NJ that night.
Saturday morning we checked into our apartment only to find that we are on the third floor without an elevator. This is problematic as Miranda has a lot of heavy furniture, and all our stuff combined barely fit into the truck and three cars. But Miranda’s brother (who lifts 100 lb. scuba tanks for a living) came through big time. The move-in took about eight hours, but we came out with a very nice place. I anticipate hosting several get-togethers (a little West Wing Night: “NJ style” perhaps).
I ran a lot of errands today (phone, cable, bank, ID, parking, etc) and crossed many things off my to do list. I also spoke to a Professor about a part-time programming job–the standard grad student rate is quite the pay cut for me, but a little extra spending money never hurts. The best news of the day was that I have an office, with my name already on the door. No view of the Potomac (as I had for a few months in Georgetown), but it seems that they know how to treat us right here.
I helped Miranda with her homework tonight (all Woody Woo students have a “math camp” rite of passage). I really need to finish unpacking tonight as tomorrow will be spent preparing for my Hong Kong trip (I leave on Wednesday from Newark).