中国名校之最

中国名校中名气最大的两所：北京大学和清华大学
中国名校中英才辈出的两所院校:清华和科大
中国名校中最误人子弟的一所：北大（状元进去，糊涂虫出来）
中国名校中最名不符实的一所：科大（实力在十名左右却仗着计划经济的余风博取高中生的欢心）
中国名校中最具有发展潜力的两所：南京大学和浙江大学
中国名校中最自以为是的一所：华中理工大学
中国名校中最不可思义的一所：上海交大(良好的生源,优秀的学风,巨大的投入排名却每况愈下)
中国名校中最具有进取心的两所：南京大学和西安交通大学
中国名校中最缺乏进取心的两所：南开大学和武汉大学
中国名校中最自我感觉良好的两所：中国人民大学和中山大学
中国名校中最崇洋媚外的两所：复旦大学和北京外国语大学
中国名校中最易令人遗忘的两所：兰州大学和哈尔滨工业大学
中国名校中最开放的两所：哈尔滨工业大学和中山大学
中国名校中最保守的两所：武汉大学和南开大学
中国名校中最老土的两所：山东大学和吉林大学
中国名校中最会赚钱的三所：上交和浙大,中山大学
中国名校中最想赚钱的一所：没有人不想赚钱所以这应为所有大学

皇宫(?!)

忙了两整天，才感觉到疲劳真的刚刚开始。台北南京东路三段有个“六福皇宫”（THE WESTIN HOTEL）。 六福皇宫的斜对面有个叫“成吉思汗”的蒙古烤肉店， “早早”回来打算去游泳池放松一下，当然先吃个饱再说。 所谓蒙古烤肉，就是自选肉料（猪肉，鸡肉，羊肉和牛肉），蔬菜（葱，香菜，洋葱，大头菜，等等）和配料（麻油，料酒，糖水，辣椒油，等等）， 然后排队把装满的碗递给一个炒肉的师傅在一个加热的大铁盘上干炒。 这种吃法在长春的“元太祖”吃过（在那个?死人不负责的年代），可惜后来再没有机会，所以这次碰上，当然要享受。 其实肉吃太多并不健康，这让我想起我爸讲过的一个故事：

一个农民买了双新鞋，穿了几步又舍不得：“鞋破了还要买，太贵而且心疼。 脚磨破了肉还能长出来。” 于是农民脱了鞋拿在手里，光脚走路。。。

讲这个故事是说象我这种HAO ZHEN之徒（微软竟然没有这两个字！）见美食怎能放走？锻炼减肥自然痛苦，但肥肉长了还能锻炼下去 - 就像脚破了还能长出来一样，呵呵。 得，我馋，我承认。

吃完了，结帐，$460NTD。用店里的话叫“$420加一成”，不知道这“一成”是税钱还是小费。 从成吉思汗到六福皇宫用不了五分钟的路。 天还是很冷，有零星的雨点。 台北，忙碌的南京东路，冷风，灰色的天。。。六福皇宫！
。。。。。。

换了衣服准备进游泳池，后面的服务生跟上来递给我一个游泳帽。 在亚洲的游泳池游泳都需要这个。。。上次在亚洲游泳是什么时候来着？！

喘。。。游了第六圈，一共才150米。 游泳池是在一个房间里“改造”的。 就象一个大浴盆再放大好多倍。 所以进游泳池之前要先上台阶，就象从浴盆底部走到上边。 朦胧之中有个人进来穿着睡衣，开始时幻想是个丰满迷人的女人，结果我的近视眼聚焦之后发现是个戴泳冒穿睡袍而且拄着拐杖的老头！从幻梦回到现实，我一头扎进水里。。。边游边想： 拄拐杖的人能游泳吗？！

享用了2分钟的热水澡和5分钟的桑拿，干干净净出来后觉得自己象块海绵 ? 软弱无力。 舒坦而轻松，但感觉想睡在地上。。。坚持地按下电梯钮， 我还有E-MAIL没回呢。。。惨！

擦肩而过的<<雪狼湖>>

张学友本来在12月2，3，4三天会在台北巨蛋举办《雪狼湖》的演唱会。 可惜人算不如天算，学友感冒失声，演出延迟一周。我与幸运的机遇擦肩而过。 兜里带着相机和永久性碳素笔，我走进巨蛋逛了一圈。 演唱会的票虽然在网上已经卖光，但是票房还有一些不错的单票。 $3600NTD可以看“雅座”。 我无奈。 转身离开的瞬间，留下一张巨蛋的照片。。。本人到此一游。

。。。

掏出$25硬币， 买票从南京东路坐捷运到剑潭，我要去士林夜市吃臭豆腐，豪大大鸡排和珍珠奶茶。。。台北好冷，我在流鼻涕，让我想起了郑智化的《中产阶级》，我的腿好痛。。。国民党在这种天气里赢了14个北部选区（共21个），马英九在2009年会当上总统吗？

"你怎么又来了?"

从加拿大回到加州两天，我就赶周六凌晨的中华航空飞台湾了。 好象在台湾人的心里，长荣永远是第一选择，结果中华航空成了印度和越南人转机用的专用航班了。 我挤在几个越南人中间，因为没有提早Check-in， 所以赶不上靠窗户的位置。 飞机起飞晚点，一路又遇到几次气流，颠颠浮浮的象在Universal Studio里感受三维电影，但却让人心里没底，胆战心惊。 着陆的瞬间，飞机在潮湿的跑道上打滑，好像是突然进入台北的冷风中打了个冷颤。 不论怎么说，总算我平安到了目的地。 天是又灰又凉。。。熟悉的台北中正机场。

Windows Vista

Got a brand new WD 250GB HDD during the Thanksgiving Weekend. Instead of stuffing it in an external HDD enclosure, I decided to give it a spin of the new Windows Longhorn/Vista for a test drive.

There are many great Vista reviews on the Internet, like the one written by Paul Thurrott. Yet I consider myself a "half-geek", and I'm not satisfied with only looking at the screen shots - gotta have my hands on the dirts! Here is my 2-cents about the experience:

Installation: One thing I can say is that the installation process for each new version of Windows is getting much better than the previous one. The one for Vista is the best one yet. If you have installed W2K or WinXP, you know that the "initial" stage is actually under DOS - all option selections are done by using Function Keys. It is only after most installation files are copied and pasted to the HDD, Windows will continue its installation in 800 x 600 resolution and support mouse commands, which reminds people of Windows 98. This is no longer true for Vista. You mouse works for the 1st screen that comes up to you (at 1024 resolution, I think), and the whole installation process ONLY needs the user to make a simple choice on the partition selection. Everything else is intelligent detected and taken care of! After a couple of clicks, my new HDD was formatted in NTFS format (I was not even noticed), and the installation kicked off in a thrill and is completed in about one hour (No, I did not log the time. And my computer is not the fastest).

User experience: Another huge difference between XP and Vista is the GUI setup. There are similar, but they’re also totally different. I hope that Mr. Gates will not hate me if I say that Microsoft literally tried to copy some of the graphical design styles of both Mac and Linux. Anyways, if my words are not good enough, check out my screen shots, and you will get the idea. Bottom line, it’s fancier. Did I mention that the size of Windows Vista is about 2.4GB (so I’m sure it will be shipped in DVD or several CDs)? It takes about 4.8GB on the HDD after the installation, and I’m sure it will be even bigger when it’s on sale next year.

Check out my screen shots below (click for bigger a picture):











Internet Explorer: I read lots of speculations and discussions about this. IE7 is definitely “re-engineered”. I’m actually a FireFox user, and I believe there is a reason that FireFox takes 10% of Internet browser share at the moment ? User friendliness and stability. Microsoft definitely learned a lot from it. They finally adopted the “tab” feature in IE7, and it supports multiple search engine choices (as oppose to stuck you with MSN) and RSS feeds.

Microsoft Desktop Search (?): I don’t know the name of this one. But if you use Google’s Desktop Search, you know that the software performs indexing at the background for better and quicker search results. Microsoft also offers their version of “Microsoft Desktop Search” in Vista, and the icon is available to check out at the right bottom corner. Does it work? I don’t know and I will tell you why in a bit.

Oh well, I did not give myself enough time to check out the stability, reliability and other fancy things of Vista. I didn’t have the time, and I knew that I would be lost in there forever if I try to make everything to work ? there is no driver available for most of the hardware in my desktop (e.g. sound card). I also don’t want to waste time and install games or document processing software to check out the system performance. After all, the installation process and the new experience was a thrill to me. Although it is sad, I formated my new HDD again and put it in my external HDD enclosure for what it was bought for. The Vista's ghost is lost forever.

After all, the new Vista looks great. But I would think twice before purchasing a Windows Vista next year since Mac OS will be available on PC by next year as well. I’m not sure which one will be “better”, but I can tell you right now that there will be lots of discussion and arguments in 2006 about these two operating systems. ? Can’t wait to see the big fight! =)

BTW, the Start-up and Shut-Down delay of Windows Vista are truly improved by Microsoft from XP. It takes the same time for Vista to turn itself off for my XP to fall asleep ? about 5 seconds. Amazing!

Bye bye bye, DTW

When I left San Jose, I thought leaving SJC was bad, but I did not know that flying from DTW was worse.

When I got up at 5:00AM, it was still dark. It was raining like crazy last night. Gusting wind and splashing rain was knocking the window. I couldn’t sleep well. I couldn’t sleep well at all in the last one week. I’m not sure if that was because of time lag or comfort.

Driving away from Windsor was an easy drive. The old Huron Church Road had many trucks preparing to get on the bridge and ship millions of goods as exports. I don’t see them any more in California. I used to feel a little weird driving in San Jose because there are few trucks on the highway. The U.S. Custom was alright. The same old if-you’re-Chinese-then-I-gonna-see-your-photo-ID attitude and tone, I can’t say anything about that. After all, I’m neither white nor black, and I was not born in the U.S.

I didn’t know that buying a U.S Airway ticket that is operated by America West requires to board at an America West check-in counter. Does this make sense? I know U.S. Airway is small, and I know the flight is operated by America West, but as far as I’m concerned, the money was paid to U.S. Airway. At the Smith Terminal of DTW, America West and U.S. Airway check-in counters are besides each other. The line was awfully long at American West, so I attempted to check in at U.S. Airway that had a much shorter line. However, the stupid machine couldn’t locate my reservation, and the lady at the counter was polite enough to tell me I did not belong there. So I went back to stand in line for America West, only to realize that the line became longer. I arrived DTW at about 6:15AM, and I walked into the security check at 7:05AM. One hour was spent just for check-in. I finally realized why the merge of America West and U.S. Airway call themselves “The world’s largest LOW FARE airline” ? If you want it cheap, then you need to find a trade off. America West is famous for long check-in counters and delaying people’s luggage. I’m just hoping that I can safely get back to San Jose with my bag arriving at the same time.

Security check is always a fun place to be. No, seriously. It’s a very busy place. After traveling many times for various reasons in the last year and a half, I consider myself a “mid-range” frequent flyer. And most American airports follow the same procedures. First, you walk in the line and show a person your board pass and an ID. A person must use identification to obtain a boarding pass at the check-in counter, but the home land security offices like to see them again in case someone stills another person’s boarding pass. (I guess it’s another way of creating job opportunities by the government when more high-tech positions are moved over to Asia.) Following that, I call the next procedure “Strip Dance”. Jackets, shoes, belts with metals, hats, wallets, cell phones, and any other personal belongs with metals (such as chains, etc.) need to be taken off and put in a gray plastic box. And it’s interesting to see how much stuff and how many gadget people like to carry, family pictures, poker, condom, or panties, etc. Then you walk on the dirty floor with your socks and your boarding pass in your hand/pocket to pass the meter detector (and chemical sniffer for advanced equipment). At this stage, it feels like prisoners transferred to a new facility. But the fun part is you gotta watch others around you ? Some people really get stuck. People with lots of tattoos, people from mid-east, people wear nose-ring/tone-ring, and people who look weird will be stopped regardless and checked by an officer. At the time, I was suddenly thinking that if the weather is warmer (like summer), I will have much better views of boobs and butts at this place. (No, I’m not a sexual criminal. But maybe you can call me a sex addict. Just kidding.)

Now, I just woke up from one-hour of sleep. The airplane is cruising above the clouds at a standard 33,000 feet. It’s beautiful in the sky. Nothing is around except sunshine and air turbulence. The planes shakes a bit like sitting in a jeep and rushing at 50mph on a country road. There is always some sort of “humming” noise from any airplane I took (A320, B737/740/760, etc). That’s the air noise, and it’s unavoidable. So the music from my iPod Nano sounds much weaker. Thank god the music helps me to kill lots of time, and it comforts me to catch some sleep on the flight.

I believe that when the airline charges people for renting a headset during the flight or buying a box of food, they’re trying to make money back from customers’ pockets. After all the low quality of services, one still needs to pay ~$10USD to enjoy more comfortably for the flight, and I call that ridiculousness. But the airline managers can argue that it’s better than filing a Chapter 11 case. Survival is always the No.1 choice, for any person or any organization.

The guy sits beside me is between 40 and 50 years old. I can’t always make a conclusion about people’s age, and he’s black. I believe he’s an alcoholic. At least he must have had some strong drink before getting in the plane, and it smells. Why would a regular person drink alcohol at 5 or 6AM in the morning to catch a flight? Anyways, I’m going to put my laptop into hibernate so that I can relax a bit in the next a few hours.

It’s nice to going back home (where is my “home” anyways?). But I know I have tons of things to do in the next a few weeks. This is life.

陌生男人的照片

一夜激情之后，阿林起身从裤兜中掏出一颗香烟，但却找不到他的打火机，于是阿林问那女孩身边有火吗。“第一个抽屉里好像有火柴。”女孩回答。阿林打开床头柜的抽屉，看到一个火柴盒，火柴盒的下面有一张陌生男人的照片，阿林觉得很奇怪，于是好奇地问：“他是你丈夫？”“当然不是，傻瓜！” 女孩依偎在阿林身边。“那是你男朋友？”阿林接着问。“不，也不是！”女孩一边回答，一边轻吮着阿林的耳朵。“那，这会是谁？”阿林充满疑惑地问。“那就是手术之前的我。。。。。”