Life is all about waiting for good times

Limit

2012-02-08T07:16:00.001-08:00

I have been saying for a long time about my work

6 years is a maximum

Passing the coming september will be my fifth year. Yet I am feeling the end arrived as if it were tomorrow. I desperately need a change.

I am drained.

Best saturaday

2011-12-05T04:29:00.001-08:00

The last sunday was a day of joy. Different with typical saturaday where we will lazily lying at home or getting into the shopping crowd, me and you have been to the inspirational lake with a bunch of good friends.

A little bit surreal - with the environment made me a bit reminiscent of the european trip – sunny, cloudless, pearl blue sky, each group brought food to share, run and chase in the comfortable lawn, soaked in the warmth from the sun.

It is just a great way to give away your saturaday.

dream with magic

2011-11-27T08:11:00.001-08:00

It’s a great day with you.

Though it’s not the first time I have been there, I enjoy being there. Simply when we arrived at the park we were all into the mood of joy.

Magic.

it was lucky , it was unlucky at the same time

2011-11-25T06:23:00.001-08:00

it’s 2200 , I am staying at home after another night shift, still feeling the sore of last night. A bit different with previous 10 hours, yesterday night shift was especially tired and I felt it at work. It was not about the severity of cases – usually I don’t feel it at work cause I know I am doing something I should do. It was not about my shift partner, cause she’s been very independent. For unknown reason it’s some belief stemmed long ago in mind start growing and overwhelmed my emotion.

The world has always been crazy, and i just felt how crazy it was yesterday night.

It was the case of my life

2011-11-12T17:51:00.001-08:00

Not many times in your life you can encounter a scenario when a second can be too vital to people’s life, when you have the time to press the button of defribillation button.

I was lucky. I was just like being called to the patient and witnessed ‘the scenario’. I pressed the button.

He was now in the coronary care unit. Conscious, sinus rhythm.

to those who are the supervisors of my girlfriend, fuck you !

2011-10-31T09:46:00.001-07:00

what's the point of driving one to work all day long solely as a relief of your fucking anger or dissatisfaction ?!

Germany 2011

2011-10-27T09:55:00.001-07:00

Already the 5thl, but it’s a bit different in the way I travelled, And for the book, it’s my favourite book cover.

Will show more ~

just a phase I read–intellectual currency

2011-10-27T09:48:00.001-07:00

When it came to the very end of a day, while I was waiting for her to unplug the computer to sleep I had several minutes of flipping through a book. Just a book with thoughts sharing, but i was already impressed with How Tyler Brule mentioned ‘intellectual currency’.

This was just what I , or most of the same aged group lack. You can’t get it short-term, it’s something you need to pay your time and effort into experience, learning, reading.

Do you possess any of such currency ?

Tao & Yiu’s wedding

2011-10-24T08:54:00.001-07:00

It is already 2 days after Tao & Yiu’s wedding when I started to write something back for the wedding on Saturday. The reasons are simple – first, Manutd just got the worst defeat to ManCity (I could not refrain myself from throwing things again); And Second, the rather explainable one, is I am just able to recover from the wedding physically (never in my life I have worn the formal suit for the whole day) and thus, let the memory condense to something I can write it out.

I wasn’t a guest to participate in the wedding. Instead, I was very honoured to be selected as Tao’s ‘brother’ and also the driver for the wedding, which turns out providing me a different angle to this wedding, and of course, lots of first time experiences.

I was the driver for the wedding already a day in advance to Wong’s wedding, as I was responsible to carry Tao’s family from Tuen Mun to Tao’s new home early in the morning of wedding day. I chose to arrive a day earlier, which in turn I had double ‘1^st time experience’ – a driver, and risked my life to sleep with Tao WITHOUT wingwing’s permission; And when the day continues I was then responsible to carry the filming and photoshooting crew. It’d be easy if they were not shooting when travelling, but in fact it wasn’t – I drove just like the those who were filming in the street, with hands-free talking with the couple’s car on how to drive, while at the same time being instructed to be ‘slower, faster, closer…. ‘ for good angle to shoot and tape.

Yet, when comparing the duty of driver to ‘brother’, I can say being a ‘brother’ is even more challenging to a zero-experience person like me. That’s why in a wedding so many ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ are needed, as there is always something surprising to be handled, e.g. being asked to strip for push up, or trivial details e.g. confirmation of wedding dinner tables, smooth video playing. It was lucky that on that day things went smooth, although we might haven’t captured every touching moments that made guests e.g. Sunnie, wingwing or my sister sobbed.

Yet if I was asked again to choose between working crew or guest to enjoy the wedding, considering it as privilege, it’d still be the driver and brother. After all, it’s still nice to watch in the TV downstairs to say ‘I do’.

love what you do

2011-10-14T07:43:00.001-07:00

no doubt till now what I am doing is just those i love to do. I cherish it a lot .

it is busy, yet it is awesome

2011-09-21T09:31:00.001-07:00

As the school term starts it implies i have to live with two identities for the coming 2 years. One being as an Registered Nurse – a forth year so called experienced nurse relative to the ward averagae nurses’ experience. And further advanced to other nurse is that I have to do a bit more on supervision work on specific care, which includes a never-end research.

The other identity for me is somehow quite useful for my work – a student of cardiology. People said when I have completed this course we are able to fulfill the identity of being a cardiologist…. which LOOKS like a big name to me. Yet such fame is never a consideration intially – I chose this simply for quest of knowledge.

The combination of above identities must be making a large part of my life in coming days, but i am feeling a bit more energetic than before. I just feel good of the full use of my time.

What’s more from HK ?

2011-09-09T08:51:00.001-07:00

When Swire properties is building the Opus, the building to be completed in 2012, there are two landmarks: 1. It is going to be attractive in terms of the structure with the idea of Frank Gehry ; 2. It is going to be be attractive in terms of the rent being set to be most highest in HK. But to most of the HongKongers, neither of it is going to give us any pride.

It does not belong to HK.

Free yourself

2011-07-26T20:49:00.001-07:00

Have been to kayak with superb weather.

Had the best nap of the year.

Love the freedom of going to any island you want. Unplug from the world, it is the best remedy to the busy world.

2009 , rewind…..

2011-07-12T01:08:00.001-07:00

Looked back the photos and all the memories of 2009 came back, lingered in my mind.
It was a great year. Lots of fun, lot of people met.

life experience

2011-07-10T03:31:00.001-07:00

learned from some unforgettable mistakes these days.

Admit the error, Remember the error, no more error.

something about Germany

2011-06-27T03:04:00.001-07:00

I do have good travel every time and Germany 2011 makes no exception.
Getting a life different with the one you have everyday during travel is a very important component of a good travel. Forget, immerse into the atmosphere of exotic /picturesque / natural environment, getting a little bit hyper with beer, oh what the hell, what a great life it is.

While my mind was staggering in the scence of sunset in Wurzburg, I just can’t wait for another great time somewhere out of Hong Kong.

25 | 26

2011-05-31T11:01:00.000-07:00

Days counting down for 25 with time marching on towards 26. I do have a tendency to look back how I am doing, and i am lucky to say I have actually fulfilled my little aim, the remaining time is now for consolidating it.

26 , consolidation of my little aim.

Self dialogue

2011-05-04T09:28:00.001-07:00

1: it seems you are way too silent. What’s the problem?

2. I don’t know. I just don’t want to move.

1: What’s the thing that moves you before ? Where are they ?

2: They are stiil there, but they are not that significant to my life. Things are changing in the way I don’t like. Distraction, lots of distraction.

1: Weren’t they really that important before? or there are something else ?

Cal 2010

2011-04-01T06:24:00.001-07:00

Deep in your heart there must be something pushing your everyday.

That pushes me to have the 4th book for me and you.

the happiness

2011-03-21T09:19:00.001-07:00

Days have been transforming everyone, and me makes no exception.

the more you meet, the more you learn, the more you know how incompetent you are, the more you have to work harder.

happiness, from simply eating your favourite food, has transformed to another level.

Work in Progress – monocle issue 41, vol 5, march 2011

2011-03-16T06:07:00.000-07:00

Nuria Chinchilla is anti-siesta. It's 15.00 in Barcelona, the time when every shady bench is taken up by snoozing Catalans. But Chinchilla - a professor in the department of managing people in organisations at Navarra's IESE Business School - won't be sleeping; for she has more pressing concerns to discuss.

Chinchilla explains that the Spanish afternoon nap is actually a relic from the civil war-ravaged years of the 1930s. "It comes from a time when people were doing two jobs," she says. "Siesta culture does not fit with modern life. A two- or three-hour lunch is not family friendly; it means we are working too late. How can you expect people to function as mothers, fathers and husbands when they are working until nine at night? We need a different, more condensed day. But in Spain, culture is very slow to change."
In fact, the whole of the industrialised world has been slow to update the shape of its working day. In 1930 the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the 21st century Europeans would enjoy a 15-hour week. He reasoned that with our sci-fi innovations and high wages, there would be no need for the 40-hour grind. But the pace of change has been glacial. In Europe, mean working hours did decrease until the 1970s, but then surged again in the 1980s, and now hover at around 37 hours a week. (In large parts of Europe, however, they are edging down.)
For all the talk of micro-jobs and "flexitime", the vast majority of the world's working population still follow a classic nine-to-five formula. EU data from 2010 also shows a cruel inversion: while hours stay more or less the same, work continues to get more intense and stressful. Computerised gadgetry, multi-tasking and modern target-driven management styles mean we pack more tasks into the working day. We've absorbed all the streamlining advancements, but stuck to a template of the past.
That's because the working week is entrenched in culture - from culinary rituals to religious work ethic - and is very difficult to shift. In Japan, where a long-hours malaise is endemic, several recent court rulings have resulted in big car giants such as Toyota paying out large sums to the wives of salaried men who officially died of karoushi (yes, they have a special word for "death from overwork") - but the punishingly industrious culture has been largely resistant to reform. The toxic mix of office politics, fierce company loyalty and peer pressure has turned work into an unshakable cult.
"People are nervous about leaving the office before others in the evening. No matter how pressing family commitments may be, nobody will leave before the boss," says Jenny Holt, a professor at Meiji University, Tokyo. "In some government offices it's usual to work until midnight or just sleep under your desk. Family life suffers, marriages end up as nothing more than two people sharing a house. [And] the population is plummeting - for obvious reasons."
Often half-hearted state interventions are a good indicator of how bad it's got. In South Korea, which has some of the longest working hours in the world at 2,316 a year (the German average is 1,141, according to figures from the International Labour Organization), the government has introduced a "procreation day", where managers snap out the lights in government offices at 19.00, telling their employees to go home and spend time with their families - or make them bigger. Should Europe worry that South Koreans are working fiendishly long hours while the French sip viognier over long lunches? The simple answer is no. Long hours are often connected in Europe with low productivity. Many wonder if, as productivity rises in Asian economies, working hours will come down. "Over time, as Korea's productivity rises they will get richer and buy more of everything they like, including leisure, so gradually they will tend to work fewer hours," says Donald Robertson, senior lecturer in macroeconomics and finance at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
But what if they catch up in technology and productivity and still choose to work super-long hours? That won't matter either, says OECD economist, Paul Swain. "In that case South Korea would end up with higher output per worker. But its society would choose a life with no free time or leisure. And no time to spend their wealth.
"Already, for instance, the French work a lot less than the Americans. [Both countries have very similar productivity scores.] So, they are a lot less affluent. But this is a cultural consensus in France. It is a lifestyle choice."
A country's working hours are often a result of a kind of national negotiation with its values. The Netherlands' low-hours culture (where men on average work 37 hours a week and women just 26) is linked to its conservative heritage and its distrust of paid-for childcare. "The Dutch have a traditional role for mothers which has become enshrined in law," says Jon Messenger, co-author of ILO publication Working Time Around the World. "Studies show that well over half of Dutch women work part-time hours. They've created rewarding, high-status part-time jobs. What's interesting here is that men are now starting to work part-time too."
Other cultures are more rigid. In fact, what's hailed as flexitime often means just a slight adjustment to the normal working rhythm. In the US (which clocks up an average of 1,792 hours a year) big firms and even civic authorities have had great success by tinkering, ever so slightly, with the nine-to-five formula. In one citywide trial in Houston, Texas, dubbed "Flex in the City", workers were asked to stagger their morning start time to reduce rush-hour traffic jams on commuter routes. The trial might have only made minuscule modifications to working life, but proved so successful it was found to slash workers' stress by 58 per cent.
But for many, the real meaning of "flex" is onerous multitasking or just unpaid overtime. This is especially true for women. Recent Finnish studies show that white-collar women found flexible regimes nearly four times more irksome than helpful.
Just as long hours don't always make for better productivity, flexible working hours don't always equal progress. "You could say that one of the tricks managers have played on us is flexibility," says Brendan Burchell, senior lecturer of sociology at Cambridge University. "They've created a very grey area. Even if trade unions did want to regulate this, it would be very difficult."
The workplace has reached a critical moment. Globalised, modern economies need to find a way to nurture a slick, competitive workforce without treating them like machines. The contagious buzz of frantic workaholism needs a firm hand. Managers need to discourage presenteeism and promote productive, healthy hours - a move which could be the key. This might even mean reintroducing a more languorous pace back into the office.
As the Texan study showed, a small amount of flexible time can go a long way - but that doesn't mean we should do away with the traditional nine-to-five paradigm. In many ways, working rhythms function to protect family and civic life. "There are good reasons we have these structures," says Burchell. "For a lot of things to work, like going to church or playing football on a Saturday afternoon, it involves people working at the same time. It would be a big mistake to assume we should have unlimited choice."
But where does this leave the 24-hour economy? As consumers get more and more demanding, unusual working hours may become inevitable. Unless anaemically-lit mini supermarkets are going to rule the world, shops may well have to extend their opening hours. The modern shopper wants to buy ingredients from a local grocer on the way home from work. In the future they may even want to buy a new suit at midnight. "If this trend continues, people working in service industry jobs such as shop assistants will be left very vulnerable," says Alexandra Beauregard, at LSE's department of management. "The care sector is geared towards nine-to-five. Will we need nurseries to open 24-hours a day?" Perhaps.
Without a nine-to-five framework flexi-workers only have their judgment - and a few steadfast national habits - between them and a constant stream of winking BlackBerries. Technology has created a dexterous workforce who can dice ingredients for their evening meal while checking their iPhones - but wise companies should reinstate the line between work and home. Some countries, such as food and drink- focused France, have more social ballast than others. "I've seen it in American films," adds the French Eurofound researcher, Agnès Parent-Thirion. "This 'having a sandwich at your desk'. For me, this is not eating. Most French people will always take time to sit down and have lunch."
Back in Barcelona, Professor Chinchilla has another cure for Spain's dilemma - shorter days altogether. She hails "family responsible" companies such as the energy giant Iberdrola, that recently restructured their working day to allow employees to go home at 15.30. "Immediately they found that absenteeism went down, as did accidents - and meanwhile productivity went up," she says. "Spanish people desperately want a more condensed day. They don't want to hang around for two hours at lunch. They want to be at home making sure their children are doing well at school and their marriages are in check."
Let's hope Chinchilla's condensed, family-friendly day doesn't backfire and leave Spaniards disgruntled and chomping a sandwich at their desks. — (M)

our first valentine’s day

2011-02-14T21:57:00.001-08:00

I love the way we celebrate. it’s way better than getting out for a dinner.

it’s a sweet sweet day.

Why can't we own the whole world ?

2011-02-11T09:16:00.001-08:00

It's weird, but having a good times doesn't mean it's really good at all.

You cannot own all the good times. You need to sacrifice something which can also be good, yet less better, in return for a comparably better ones.

I don't mind losing something, but why can't we own the whole world? Are we destined not to ?

2011

2011-02-06T22:41:00.000-08:00

I have always said 6 years is a maximum.
2011, 2 more years to go.

CAL 2010

2011-01-16T06:26:00.001-08:00

Get more hurt

2011-01-08T07:44:00.001-08:00

‘Life is not about how much hurt you can give; Life is about how much hurt you can get’

Rocky Balboa

Forecast 2011: The perceived crime threat in Japan

2011-01-03T08:42:00.001-08:00

January 2, 2011 — Tokyo
Writer: Fiona Wilson

It was not just the news itself, but the sickening familiarity of it all: a Japanese bus station in the morning rush hour, buses jammed with passengers and a 27-year-old man with a knife. His motive remains obscure; his victims, so far as one can tell, were complete strangers to him. But by the time his stabbing rampage came to an end, 13 people had been injured, 11 of them schoolchildren.

As Japanese digested the news of the latest indiscriminate knife attack they were asking themselves how this kind of thing could happen – yet again. For the half century following the war, Japan prided itself on being the most law-abiding country in the industrialised world. In the last decade, every few months seem to bring new reports of motiveless brutality, often by alarmingly young people. The question prompted by the latest incident is not “what is wrong with him?” but “what is wrong with us?”

Various explanations are offered for this apparent surge in violence, most of them connected with the social changes which have taken place in post-war Japan. Two generations ago, Japanese children grew up in large extended families; today, families are smaller, and many children grow up alone and isolated. Commentators also point to the influence of Japan’s mania for gadgetry, saying it encourages young people to spend time alone with video games or to communicate via their mobile phones rather than meeting in person. Without friends or social skills, it is argued, many young people have no release except through violence.

But another news story a few hours before the bus station massacre reveals the so-called surge in violent crime is actually an illusion. Far from painting a picture of despondency and a crime-ridden future for Japan, it turns out the opposite is true. According to Japan’s National Police Agency, the number of recorded crimes has fallen to the lowest in 23 years.

Between January and November last year, 1,465,223 cases were reported during the period, down 6.9 per cent from the previous year, the eighth consecutive year in which crime has declined. Murders and attempted murders have also declined to record levels, with 988 cases in the first 11 months of last year, a 2.8 per cent decline.

Offences like muggings, burglary and drug dealing, which city dwellers in the rest of the world have learned to accept as part of everyday life, are between four and eight times lower than in the West. By every measure, Japan is the safest and least crime-ridden country on earth – and it is becoming safer every year.

“Young Japanese probably murder the fewest people of any youth worldwide,” Mariko Hasegawa, a professor of evolutionary biology at Tokyo’s Waseda University, has said. “It is because murders in general have become so unusual that cases involving people who seem to have personality disorders stand out.”

Japanese citizens, all the statistics say, have every reason to feel more secure in 2011. The epidemic which Japan faces is not one of crime itself, but the fear of crime, fuelled by the media.

As Japanese digested the news of the latest indiscriminate knife attack, they were asking themselves how this kind of thing could happen – yet again. For the half century following the war, Japan prided itself on being the most law-abiding country in the industrialised world. In the last decade, every few months seem to bring new reports of motiveless brutality, often by alarmingly young people. The question prompted by the latest incident is not “what’s wrong with him?” but “what’s is wrong with us?”

Japanese citizens, all the statistics say, have every reason to feel more secure in 2011. The epidemic which Japan faces is not one of crime itself, but the fear of crime fuelled by the media.

Grasp the moment

2011-01-02T08:46:00.001-08:00

On the first night shift I had the worst (busiest) time for 3 years. Is there any implication of what I am going to have in the coming year – busy as hell ?

2010 was a year to expect, and i am quite sure that 2011 will be a year to give your best, because it’s a year of development. And I know it’s important to grasp the every moment to learn and grow.

Fading

2010-12-23T18:18:00.001-08:00

Why don’t just leave all the emotion here?

---------------------------------

Days are turning cooler and cooler, and my grip, that once believed to last forever, is starting to break down more and more.

With various incidence happening for some period I though I could overwhelm. I always think if the problem happens to me it’s just a piece of cake to solve with secoonds, but in fact, it does not work to others. Eventually, I found it’s not overwhelmed at all. When things go in this way undoubtedly you will think whether it’s the things’ problem or my problem.

I have tried to fix, yet things already turn in the way that no matter how hard you are going to try, it is already irreversible and I find releasing the grip may be beneficial than continual research of the problem.

I never want to see the end, but in light of such situation, I am seeing now.

---

2010-12-22T05:42:00.001-08:00

Life has got to be with ups and downs. No doubt, the length of time on downs are subjectively and objectively longer, so basically life is about how you cope with the pain and hurt, rather than enjoy happiness and love.

Lest you are crumbled by the city, you have got to be strong enough to fight for the pain and hurt. Living in dream, hoping for miracle are only for weakness. In the city, the most reliable to save you is yourself.

That’s always my belief. If one day my self-rescue has caused you any damage, sorry, but I can’t help. You have got to sink. You are the weaker one, the loser.

Give myself a break

2010-12-13T03:16:00.001-08:00

Just two shifts and I felt being a in charge person of ward has pressure that is not easy to handle. Fast-thinking, clear-minded, good co-ordination are some of the key components I identified as ‘very important’ .

------

Back-breaking after all the cases are handled to the pm IC.

Soaked myself in water for an hour.

The fantastic Barcelona

2010-12-02T18:42:00.000-08:00

Even how manic you are with your favourite football team, you have to admit Barcelona is playing the best football. They are displaying the best ingredient of football - team play. Keep passing, no-ball run, adding to their exquisite talent, made even Real Mardrid succumb to them with biggest loss.

As Manutd fans, I am loving Barcelona.

-----

2010-11-28T06:51:00.001-08:00

simple.

When we can no longer walk in the same path, we need to seperate.

get lost

2010-11-28T05:52:00.001-08:00

just got a double day off and headed to Long Kei for a great wildfire camping. It’s just a remedy to damn tiring work as it let me and others to get lost a least for a night. We didn’t mind a bit alcohol intoxicated to make ourselves a bit mood-elevated and spinning, so as to get some excuses to sing madly, laugh loudly and sleep unconsciously (though some has been unconscious before asleep).

Miele, Beating the Drum –Monocle Magazine, issue 38, Vol 4, nov 2010,

2010-11-19T00:43:00.001-08:00

Beating the Drum – Gutersloh

Preface

Miele celebrated its 100^th year anniversary last year. The rason for the company’s longevity is not only its quality household appliances but successive generations who have taken over – and upheld – the family firm’s values

Most families would struggle to trace their history further than two or three generations. Perhaps a few might be able to embellish theirs with occasional accounts of heroism and adventure – an illustrious uncle’s emigration to a far-flung territory; a great grandparent’s pursuit of happiness aboard a billowing steamer, or a distant relative whose skeletons still rattle around the family closest.

Between the Mieles and the Zinkanns, however, there are fours generations of first born sons who have shouldered the hefty responsibility of heading a successful family enterprise. Few start-ups can plan on being run by future generations but the success of a single product or s4rvie can afford an enterprise the longevity to outlive its creators.

When 30-years-olds Carl Miele and Rheinhard Zinkann set up a workshop to manufacture butter churns for northern German farms in 1899, they would have fallen off their milking stools to learn 111 years later their great-grandsons would still control the family business and that their modest venture would turnover euro 2.83bn. With 16,600 employees, 10 manufacturing plants, subsidiaries in 45 countries, a domestic product range that warrants over 400 catalogue pages and a professional product division, Miele is a white goods Goliath that have never cut corners on quality or compromised on price by off-shoring outside Europe.

All product manufacturing, including washing machines, fridges, vacuum cleaners and ovens, is still carried out in Germany- the headquarters are found in Gutersloh, just a few kilometers from the original workshop in Herzebrock-Clarholz – with some assembly and electronics work being doen at two new factories in Austria and the Czech Republic.

‘At the time our ancestor didn’t know there were at least 40 other butter-churn manufacturers in the surrounding area. These days you would never start a business in such a competitive market-place,’ asys Dr Markus Miele, the current managing director and co-proprietor of Miele and Cie. Despite this, the founders persisted and just two years after they launched the company the men invented the product that would be the making of the company – the Meteor washing machine.

Carl was the original product developer and Rheinhard was the marketing meister, although technical and sales roles subsequently filled by interchanging Mieles and Zinkanns over the years. Today the status quo is restored with Markus Miele minding the design and Reinhard Zinkann running sales.

The Miele Meteor wooden washing machine was based on the same principle as the hand-driven mechanical agitation of the butter churn, thus takng the back breaking strain out the laundry day. By 1905 the two had patented an electric power-driven machine with the company’s new motto, ‘’Immer Besser’’ (For even better) emblazoned on the top. This sense of progress and experimentation would fuel the growth of Miele over the next four decades as sthe friends and partners built the domestic appliances market, adding model after model and even diversifying briefly into bicycles and cars. When both men died within a year of each other the reins were completely handed over to their sons in 1939.

More recently, Markus Miele and Reinhard Zinkann were never expected to join the firm. ‘’My father saw that when a number of his clients forced their kids into business then it was bad for the company and for the kids so everybody was losing out,’’ says Dr Miele. When both Miele and Zinkann were ready they were made aware of the hand over process that was set in motion by the founder’s sons – their grandfathers.

‘’We have written rules in the family that state you first have to attend an outside business for at least two years to prove leadership, knowledge and skills. May be our grandfathers also had it in mind that it would be better that other companies pay for our first mistakes’’ says Dr Zinkann with a chuckle. After obtaining their doctorates in business and engineering, Zinkann went to work at BMW in Munich while Dr Miele chose to work for a local family-run car company called Hella.

Walking into the Miele factory, where the washing machines and driers are manufactured in Gutersloh, is an impressive experience. Gutersloh is a small town in the Westphalia region of northern Germany and the high-speed DB ICE train from Busseldorf whisks visitors through the very pastures that inspired Miele in the first place. Far from the agricultural cosiness of the surrounding area, Miele’s plant is a shining, spotless space that turns out over 5,000 appliance a day, each one assembled by hand for different markets.

Miele has its own train line that connects to the German network for bringing in raw materials such as iron ore and sending out finished products to local distributors and on to Hamburg in order to be shipped farther afield. Miele’s fastest-growing markets at present are Austria, Canada, China and Singapore.

In Germany, Miele products have always been held in the highest regard and when asked if there was anything he wished people outside Germany knew above the company Dr Miele is direct, ‘’Germans know it is a high quality appliance. When you look at the new markets such as India people don’t’ know abobe Miele and I wish they would experience the quality.’’

Miele products have always been expansive but customers pay for the Germany precision – on first entering the complex you could be forgiven for thinking you were at the Audi works in Ingolstadt. Everything is considered, from the smart, branded uniforms to the reassuringly stringent testing processes. Miele even has its own fire brigade that is dispatched into the local community when needed.

“Miele makes the machines that make the machines,’’ beams Jochen Menke, our proud factory guide. ‘’If a particular piece of equipment to do a particular job doesn’t exist then the Miele technicians will build it.’’

Family values are placed at a premium in all aspects of running the business. ‘’We are educated to think in terms of generations, not only in our products but also in terms of our employees, ourselves and everything we do – it helps being independent,’’ says Zinkann. ‘’We don’t have to ask for any banking or for any kind of foreign capital. If we start a product it can wait two or three years until it becomes a success story. We won’t stop engineering the product in between because it takes time.’’

Yet the company is cautious in its product development, adhering closely to the ‘’Immer Besser’’ mantra whereby appliances must naturally evolve from existing lines. ‘’The founders wanted everything to be better than theirs last product. If you look at it from a long term perspective as a family business you don’t want to risk (i.e. if you started adding surprising new lines) too much because maybe you will want to hand it over to the next generations,’’ says Miele.

When asked to describe a family business devoted to craft, provenance and customer service, on automatically envisages a small workshop in a quaint village where one or two craftsmen turn out high quality handmade products for a loyal customer base. It is refreshing in this day and age to learn of a multinational, multi-billion euro company like Miele holding fast to the ideals of the very craftsmen who founded the business in that same small village.

Dr Miele and Dr Zinkann both have young first born sons to carry on the family tradition but the partners are adamant that like their partents they will not force them to join the family firm. ‘’ My father always said to me you have to do what you like, what you re best at and he was right. We will just have to wait and see,’’ reflects Miele.

A year after . Kyoto.

2010-11-12T03:22:00.000-08:00

Exactly a year before I was roaming in streets of Kyoto. I was a lonely traveller, but I was happy, happy with letting myself a week escape to a peaceful place.

A year later, though the sorching high currency rate has forbidden me to go to Japan, I am still having a great time alone for most of the time in Hong Kong. Similiar as journey, I stroll around peaceful place. Find the sunlight, choose a quiet park and read a book.

To someone that wasn't the best way to spend a holiday, but to me, it truly is.

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The next journey - Germany

OniBus 174

2010-11-10T07:59:00.001-08:00

Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers. Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence's most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.

keep moving

2010-11-08T05:34:00.001-08:00

My working holiday scheme

2010-10-25T03:27:00.001-07:00

It’s my university year when I first heard of working holiday visa in Australia and New Zealand. A whole year spending on jobs you never get in citylife of Hong Kong intersecting with journeys throughout the whole country, getting yourself into absolute beauty and on different walks of lives, this was simply at another extremes with the past twenty-few years. It deeply impacted me – not many time in your life you can simply go astray and put everything behind, solely doing on things you like, having parties or cultural talks with strangers, co-workers, or roommates before making your way into bed.

I always wish to go, yet burden and potential sacrifices has been impeding me to leave for South hemisphere. At sometimes I just hate myself of being so timid to change with some colleagues could just forget everything and go, but when I calm myself down, I know I need to look at bigger picture – future.

The right time to go has passed (I should leave at the time of graduation), and now what I can remedy is to work hard, study hard, and to open another pathway of working holidays some days, some places.

The final years

2010-10-21T08:43:00.001-07:00

There are actually a few things that pushed me back to medical dept. First, it’s the comfortable working environment – the word ‘comfortable’ refer to those diseases that I am familiar with, those working style I am fond of, and those people I would like to work with. Second it comes to the challenges I shall face with critical cases and a wide variety of diseases admitting. Third, it’s the good memory I had in A5.

When I had the news that I was not rotating back to A5 definitely it’s disappointing as I need adaptation again and I lose the chance to work with those I admire and respect. For the same diseases different specialities have different approaches, and so do different ward with different working styles, which i may need to get on with. Yet that doesn’t cause quite a problem as I am a bit okay with constant changing.

Deep down my heart that brothers me most is the loss of working with some I admired and respected. 1 year is gone, and most of those I want to work with have either resigned or rotated. The good memory was partly contributed by them, and may possibly never happen again………..

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I have promised to myself 6 years is a maximum, and till now, i still have 3 more years to prove myself the value of work.

the value of work

2010-10-18T09:39:00.001-07:00

For many occasions i have mentioned my definition of work to others: there’s nothing urgent or more focus-demanding unless it’s related to life. If someone’s paid you that amount of money you simply have to produce that equal amount of work – working days are no longer full of enthusiasm and initiatives with deception and fairy tales prevail in society, that putting extra effort into work will not gurantee you a good sit in the office. People will simply thanks and go.

time to re-think : what’s your job really for?

Live with you, dine with you

2010-10-04T09:59:00.001-07:00

Finally finally finally, we breathe the same air and we can live together for the autumn. We dine in front of the victoria harbour, and when I put the scallop into my mouth, I realised it’s real, though a bit surreal. All of those dreams, scenes of being with you suddenly rush into my head – they were storing in my heart for so long, so long that awaits you to do with me for re-exposure.

goodbye september, hello october

2010-09-25T01:35:00.000-07:00

A year ago, i was already thinking of a possible return to where I started to work. I was having a bad time adapting the new culture, new people, new working style - where supremes often rules over guidelines, where knowledge of yourself can be nothing helpful to people, though workload is lower.

A year after, now I am granted to return to the department of medicine, where there'll be more workload, more critical cases, and higher infectious riks.

This poses a dilemma - What is the best working place? is the work duty that allows you to be seldom stressed out, yet not fulfilling your standard better than the work duty with absolute requirement of pumping your life into such ?

Return to basic

2010-09-10T03:48:00.000-07:00

Living in the city, it is easy to get in lost. You can lose your track on your career achievement, and you can easily get adapted with the colourful night life.

We forget what we truly want from our heart.

香港地產行政區

2010-09-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

文章來源︰信報 2010年4月27日作者︰陳雲

土地的產權是國之大政，假若高地價政策延續長久，則其政治也將因之定型。閱讀的記憶所及，以賣地來充當政府的開發費用，是英國的海外殖民地策略，用意是將土地的使用權交由市場價格決定，政府依靠賣地的收入來提供基礎建設和公共服務，配合商業發展，這是一個官商合作的開發模式。

賣地予商人開發意味官商合謀、官商共治的政治。當然，殖民地准許的開發商人都是英資的或親英的，配合帝國政府在殖民地的利益，開發商人的地位猶如封建領地的諸侯。

回歸前夕，香港的地產財閥由英資慢慢轉為港資；回歸之後，港資地產財閥進駐行政會議、功能組別及政府的諮詢組織。香港的政治是地產封建主義，難怪商人眷戀功能組別，也有政客提出上議院制。

敗家與賣地

也有一些殖民地的開發策略，是不採用英國模式的，例如德國很早就知道地產炒賣會腐蝕生產力，而且引致各式各樣的詐騙，於是在中國的民初時期霸佔及經營膠州灣一帶，便立法不准炒賣土地，要將民間財力直接用到實業之上。平均地權和約束地價是德國的國政，一貫如此，也將國政伸延到殖民地之上。王朝中國及民國的大政，也是平均地權和約束地價。

中國二○○○年之後走向高地價政策和地產炒賣，香港的高地價政策在回歸之後延續，並且愈演愈烈，也可視之為是中國政治在香港的伸延，或者兩者的合流。

很多產業園區的開發都是依循賣地招商的模式，然而，這只是限於實業發展，例如工業、航運等，政府將土地託管與開發商人，有促進生產力的效率。

然而，將公家土地賣予地產商，由地產發展商包銷樓宇並包辦管理，發展商不是直接營運生產性質的實業而是轉賣或出租樓房物業，而這些土地只是用作消費性質的住宅用途，此等地產政治，就有變賣國家最後資產以推高私人消費和金融買賣的意味。

香港在工業北移和產業空洞化之後走向嚴酷的高地價政策，美國在經濟衰退之前大興房地產及其衍生的金融詐騙，中國大陸在產業轉型失敗之後出現賣地炒賣房產的地產狂潮，都是共有的現象。個人敗家之後便是賣田賣屋，一國敗家之後便是賣地。

港府地產套利術

上世紀八十年代，面對工業及資金北移之危機，前港英政府想出高地價政策一招，利用房產價格長期上漲的預期，將港商在內地賺取的利潤用樓宇投資回收返港，於是不需境外徵稅（也無法這樣做），樓房投資也可吸納國際游資、大陸的流失資金（flee capital）和南洋的避難資金。買房需要借貸，大量資金以房產的方式寄存於香港，有利銀行發展金融業務。

港府的配套措施有六項：一是限制土地供應製造市場緊張；二是以填海換取豪宅地皮拍賣，將海港兩岸的美景私有化，善價而沽，以豪宅價位帶領整體樓價上揚；三是以聯繫滙率固定幣值；四是銀行專以樓宇物業來抵押商業貸款；五是容許樓宇貸款採用無限個人責任，無法供樓的買主要個人負債，不可交回物業便脫身（即是不能如分期付款買機器一樣）。六是默許地產商出盡哄騙之術，詐騙消費者。六法齊下，樓價穩步上升。

由於房產也涉及建築、裝修、家居消費等業務，在游資充足、貸款便宜的年代，可以帶動社會經濟。

間接徵市民稅項

政府不必加稅，靠賣地就可應付公僕加薪、大型基建及不斷改善的醫療、教育和社會福利，維持治安良好，公共服務完善，令富豪世家、專業人士和跨國人員在此地安居。填海破壞香港海山美景，地產壟斷令地租騰貴，小商戶難以立足。

但是，此法可回收境外利潤及吸取外資，提早套取稅款，充實府庫，徵稅又多來自富豪和中產階級，再以公屋、教育和醫療補貼勞工階級的基本生活，只要地價平穩上升，外來資金源源流入，大家相安無事。高地價政策的政治經濟協作，是香港實存的社會合約。

港府假手地產商人，間接向市民徵巨稅。香港地產商的角色，與羅馬帝國時期的稅收包銷商（tax collector）近似。帝王將轄區（通常是新征服的郡縣）收稅之權外判予商人，商人向帝王承包固定的稅款之後，多收的稅金歸己所有，於是向庶民連哄帶騙，上下其手。

英國舊時亦一度將某些稅收外判（tax farming），由諸侯代理，此法在香港發揚光大。特別是新開發區和大型屋苑及商場，地產商兼營商場及物業管理，用私人的嚴厲方法規管居民的生活及商場的公共空間，輔助政府規訓（discipline）市民，令香港人日漸習慣於過度管理的公共生活，形成順民甚至奴民的性格，加上中產階級動輒背負三十年的樓宇借貸，更不敢亂說亂動，只能默默工作。香港的中產，可提供中產的專業服務，卻無中產的階級覺醒和文化修養。

地產影響香港的政治與文化深遠，香港在牌面是中國的特別行政區，實際是地產行政區。

Overwhelmed

2010-08-31T08:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it's the job that bring me happiness; But at the meantime, i know it's the job that bring me sadness and tiredness.
I am just overwhelmed.

halt, resume

2010-08-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

Finally I saw the light from the plight. The halt that lasted as if eternity is going to an end. What follows may be unknown to all, or familiar with my history.

Rio de Janeiro - Monocle issue 35 vol 4

2010-08-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

Introduction of Rio

Preface
Rio is blessed with more raw natural beauty than probably any other city on Earth. This, coupled with the conviviality of its residents, the forthcoming Olympics and efforts to finally reduce the poverty gap and improve infrastructure, mean the next few years promise to be among the most exciting in the city's long and rich history.

For a man deep into the last weeks of post-production on his new $20m film, director Andrucha Waddington looks fairly unbothered. The boyish 40-year-old director is rolling around his living room/work studio on his exercise ball.

Waddington admits that his breezy disposition has much to do with how he, like a lot of Cariocas, normally starts his day. An unhurried stroll along the beach, which is conveniently located across the street from his Leme apartment, a dip in the surf, a chat with any friends he might encounter. "Where else can you do that?" Waddington asks. "Then I work hard, finish at 9pm when the nightlife in Rio is only just beginning. You have everything, restaurants, music, great artists, theatre, sometimes all within a few blocks. I wouldn't change this for anything."

It's why Waddington and his partners have chosen to keep their production company, Grupo Conspiração, one of the country's largest independents, firmly in Rio even after so many in his business fled to São Paulo over the years. And while he describes the decision as an "act of resistance", these days it's a resistance with all the momentum in its favour.

A booming property market, preparations for the 2016 Olympics, and a raft of smart new developments happening across the city mean the money, and the creative people with it, are rushing back into Rio. It's a resurgence underpinned by the knowledge that Rio already possesses almost every asset it needs to rank among the world's most desirable places to live. Squeezed between jungle-clad, bosomy mountains and 53km of white-sand beaches, no city on earth presents such a stunning consummation of natural setting and urbanity.

Within the forests of Parque Nacional da Tijuca, teeming with ocelots, monkeys and sloths, Rio boasts the largest and wildest urban park in the world. Meanwhile, few cities in the Americas are home to such an eclectic and rich architectural heritage, much of it still awaiting rehabilitation.

Then there's Rio's greatest intangible. The conviviality of locals rarely figures in statistical appraisals of a city's quality of life, but the remarkable fluidity of Rio's social life is a big draw for many who make the choice to live here. Take São Paulo-born artist Vik Muniz, subject of the new documentary Waste Land. After 20 years of living in the US, Muniz recently decided it was time to get a place in Brazil again. There was no question which city offered the lifestyle that suited him best. "Social life in Rio is dynamic and complex," he says over espresso in his new pad surveying a sunny Ipanema beach. "Every day it leaves room for amazing chance encounters. You meet some strangers at the beach or at a party, and you don't know if you're talking to a dentist, an artist, a billionaire or a pot dealer from the favela."

Chalk it up, perhaps, to the beach as social leveller. Still, however much Rio has in its favour, the challenges it faces are among the most formidable of any metropolis. Its economic disparities and crime are as renowned as its beaches; a fifth of its population live in impoverished favelas, usually under the thumb of armed drug gangs. Despite recent investments in schools and export facilities, old infrastructure has been compromised by decades of neglect – something that became fatefully apparent during the April storms that tore favela houses from hillsides, killing 256 people, and submerging much of downtown.

But for the first time anyone here can remember, the mayor, currently Eduardo Paes (see issue 31), the governor and the president are political allies, unhampered by corruption allegations, and have been working in step for the betterment of the city. Suddenly Rio's challenges don't seem quite as insurmountable as they once did. After years of only venturing into the city's favelas whenever trouble erupted, police have embarked on a co-ordinated and long-term pacification campaign, driving out the armed gangs and in their stead establishing schools and social services. Upwards of 40,000 favela dwellers living in areas at risk of slope collapse are being relocated.

Cariocas, conditioned until now to doubt things would ever much change, have learned to live gracefully within its constraints – it's what defines Rio's often anarchic mode d'esprit, working at the edges of the impossible. And it's Cariocas, not government, who've laid the groundwork for the city's present resurgence. Twenty years ago much of Centro, the historic downtown, was derelict. Then architectural preservationists, artists, entrepreneurs and regular citizens took it upon themselves to create a "cultural corridor". With the arrival of clubs such as Rio Scenarium, a lavishly conceived, three-level antiques emporium-cum-bar, private art galleries such as Ernesto Neto's A Gentil Carioca, and the cluster of design shops and botecos around Praça XV, the nightlife and creative ferment began shifting back to Centro from Zona Sul.

Soon the remake trickled next door to Lapa, Rio's fabled former red-light district. Now Lapa is the default option for many Cariocas on weekends, just like it was in the 1920s.

Local government now realises, too, that the docklands are key to the city's future. Taking cues from the successful redevelopment of Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires, the recently unveiled Porto Maravilha project aims to rehabilitate the district with new housing, boutique shopping and cultural venues.

Rio being Rio, of course, it promises to be a bumpy road to respectability. Like preparing for Carnaval, Cariocas have a habit of bringing it all together just under the wire. Whether they meet their Olympic deadlines remains to be seen. As important, in its chase after world-class status, is whether Rio survives with its freewheeling and open-minded spirit intact. (M)

got killed by 11 days of work

2010-08-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

after the sleeping day it'll be the 11th day for me to work consecutively, and I am just killed by these 11 days.

I need a break, physically and mentally.

good days

2010-07-28T05:11:00.000-07:00

Luckily before the rainy days good days has come.

The most livable city 2010

2010-07-06T08:29:00.000-07:00

I pretty like the Quality of Life survey of World's best cities by Monocle - not only using current statistics, Monocle has even looked into the prospect and government planning for the ranking.

This year the first place comes Munich.

(Adopted from Monocle issue 35, Volume 04, July/August 2010)
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"We don't laugh, we are not colourful, we are very strict, we are orderly and proper, we are all engineers…" He laughs. "Of course, that's all true! But there is also another side: that we are a multi-shaped society, a colourful melting pot of contradictions."

Kerkloh is something of a colourful melting pot of contradictions himself. Munich Airport's CEO might have just picked up yet another Skytrax award for running Europe's Best Airport (its fifth), but when MONOCLE meets him and media relations vice president Ingo Anspach in his office fronted by views of the Alps, he's keener to show off Albin – an enormous Russian stag's head that sits on its own chair. "I am not a hunter, but I was with a Russian group. At 10am they gave me a gun and said 'At 6pm we want to eat'." Three hours of stalking through Siberian forest later they all opened fire – with only Kerkloh hitting his target. Beginners' luck, suggests MONOCLE. "Not for Albin," notes Anspach.

Such knockabout behaviour might not be every CEO's modus operandi, but then, for an airport boss, Kerkloh runs a happy ship. Thirty thousand people are employed by 500 companies at Europe's fastest-growing airport; one that's doubled in size in a decade. In part that's down to a groundbreaking 60/40 per cent partnership deal with Lufthansa. But peerless customer service has certainly helped. Commuters are promised a maximum 30-minute transfer time ("not only you but your bag as well"), they can rest at the five-star Helmut Jahn-designed Kemp-inksi Hotel (which admittedly could use an overhaul) or browse the gleaming Munich Airport Centre, a shopping, business and recreation area that connects the two terminals. Alongside outlets for the usual luxury-goods duty-free suspects, it includes everything from the world's only airport brewery (producing – what else? – Airbräu), a late-night supermarket, a dedicated FC Bayern Munich store selling 600 fan items from toasters to garden gnomes, and even a sex shop. When the Icelandic ash cloud crippled many European hubs in April, Munich worked with the Red Cross to provide beds for every one of its 2,000 stranded passengers. Factor in the anticipated green light for a third runway (although there is opposition to it), plus the proposed 2014 introduction of a €1.85bn Transrapid monorail to cut journey time for the 40km route into the Bavarian capital from 40 to 10 minutes, and you have a city taking its inhabitants' quality of life seriously.

"When I worked in Frankfurt in the 1970s," Kerkloh says of the less-progressive city, "people often said their favourite part was the airport." But that was for a different reason. "They couldn't wait to get away."

"The airport in Munich is so important," agrees Dominik Wichmann, editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, the award-winning colour supplement with Germany's largest national daily newspaper. "Really it is a microcosm of the city. It's part of the reason that for the past four or five years people are coming back to Munich – and staying."

Once described as "about as cool as polka music on cassette", Germany's third-largest city no longer finds itself overshadowed by Berlin's "poor-but-sexy" hipness. In recent years the city could scarcely have taken its unofficial slogan, "Munich Loves You", any more to heart. Some €4m has just been invested to promote Deutsche Bahn's Call a Bike scheme to get the city cycling. When MONOCLE visited the city was preparing to allow 70,000 of its citizens into its Allianz Arena stadium to watch a European Cup match on the big screen – for free. And strict rules on working hours, combined with 15 "holy" days, mean that Munich's workforce must take seven weeks off each year, whether they want to or not.

"One of the things that is never talked about in quality of life surveys is that the best cities always close down on Sundays," says the hotelier and restaurateur Rudi Kull, when we meet over cappuccino at the Louis Hotel, one of seven ventures he oversees around the central Marienplatz. "We work hard here. But you have a day off to take care of social life, meet the grandparents, visit museums or spend it in the English Garden. If you want to stay important in industry, you have to stay healthy, have friends and have time to start a family. My advice to New York is: take Sundays off!"

And Munich is a city ideally suited to enjoying. It is spotlessly clean, a breeze to navigate and has one of the fastest-growing economies and lowest unemployment and violent crime rates in Germany. You can't fail to notice how polite and helpful everyone is and even at night it's a pleasure to walk around. The construction of skyscrapers is restricted; instead, commissions for world class architects such as Herzog & de Meuron, who built the interconnected shopping courtyards of the Fünf Höfe, or Wolf Prix of Coop Himmelb(l)au, who designed the BMW Welt flagship centre, are encouraged.

Thomas Mann, the writer who lived here for many years, wrote of the city, "Munich glows". Indeed, the sky is often a vivid blue dotted with puffy white clouds, while the relaxed, Baroque atmosphere gives the city a southern European flair. Not for nothing is Munich sometimes referred to as "Italy's northernmost city".

Though it's some 400 miles inland, in spring the 3.6 sq km English Garden becomes a surfing hangout. Look down from the Prinzregentenstrasse and you'll see an orderly queue of surfers ready to take the plunge where the Eisbach (ice brook) gushes into the park. Meanwhile Munich's compact size means an evening out typically accommodates two or three stop-offs: perhaps a gallery opening followed by an aperitivo, then some classic Bavarian food – cuisine is celebrated here in a way it just isn't in Frankfurt, Hamburg or Berlin.

Combine Munich's sense of tradition with an economy driven by information technology, biotechnology and publishing sectors and you start to understand why the city's epithet "laptops and lederhosen" has stuck.

Munich is proud to mix past with future. A stable, conservative government, which has been in power for the past 40 years, has led to numerous global corporations being based here (seven of Germany's 10 biggest, according to DAX), rubbing shoulders with a thriving start-up community. Meanwhile, two large elite universities comprise some 90,000 students – the next generation of upwardly mobile citizens.

To young people in Munich today, Sergey Brin and Larry Page are the same as Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney were for my generation," says publishing baron Hubert Burda, when we meet in his penthouse office at Hubert Burda Media, surrounded by his staggering art collection.

In the 1990s Burda worked with the government to set up Munich's Digital Advisory Board, while other city authorities were still struggling to get to grips with wi-fi. Now his annual DLD (Digital, Life, Design) Conference brings together tech entrepreneurs with everyone from the American inventor Chuck Hoberman to the British environmentalist David de Rothschild. "Young people love to work with me, because we changed the way the company works. We made it much more open. With technology we have this new way of working together."

It's a sentiment echoed by Siemens' CEO Peter Löscher. "I am constantly in close contact with Munich's mayor to talk about the right solutions for the city's needs," he says. "Munich aims at cutting its CO2 emissions in half by 2030 and our study indicates that even a reduction of 90 per cent would be possible by mid-century, without losing any quality of life. With growth of our own green portfolio we managed to increase our revenue 11 per cent year-on-year, to €23bn in 2009."

Yet technology and green thinking remain balanced by the arts and the scene in this dynamic metropolis is thriving. "Chris Dercon, director of art museum Haus der Kunst, and Frank Baumbauer, director of theatre Munich Kammerspiele, are the two people responsible for the turning point in the last three or four years," says Marc Gegenfurtner, of Munich's Department Of Arts & Culture. "They have taken arts to an international level, while simultaneously opening them up to the whole of society here."

As if to illustrate the democratisation of the scene, Museum Brandhorst, the stunning new modern art centre, was celebrating its first birthday when we visited. "We had 350,000 visitors in one year," says Professor Klaus Schrenk, its director. "A truly staggering figure." In a move typical of Munich's attitude towards its citizens, it celebrated not with a VIP cocktail party in the evening but by opening its doors all day for free.

The next night at the Haus der Kunst MONOCLE attended the launch of a new exhibition by Thomas Mayfried, the acclaimed German graphic designer. "I came to Munich to study photography," Mayfried tells us. "There is so much energy, and the climate is so easy, I fell in love with it."

But perhaps the single biggest factor that illustrates Munich's booming quality of life is this: while the rest of Germany is faced with a shrinking population, leading to media scare stories about "dead cities", it is the only centre to report an upswing in birth rate. "People are at it like rabbits," says Dominik Wichmann. "The city expects to grow its population by 7 per cent over the next five years. And you only get children when people feel safe; when you want to be embedded in a place."

To return to Dr Michael Kerkloh's earlier point, just like Frankfurt in the 1970s many Munich inhabitants also say the airport is their favourite place. But not because they can't wait to leave. "No," says Kerkloh. "Here they can't wait to come back."

More on:
http://www.monocle.com/sections/affairs/Web-Articles/Most-liveable-city-Munich1/

The anaphylactic shock

2010-07-02T05:17:00.000-07:00

A patient is admitted with suspicion of appendicitis. Never has he been admitted into ward before, and never would he think this can be fatal.

He was just a young boy working as a sales, and just like any other people with appendicitis his RLQ pain made him highly on list for surgery. Blood tests showed positive for infection, and all he needed is some radiological report to suggest the diagnosis.
He was scheduled to have ultrasound, but later the radiologist contacted us that a contrast Computed Tomography (CT) may be better for diagnosis. He was then transferred to the CT room.
Approximately the examination took 20 minutes and he was transferred back. When I saw him back his first response of seeing me is ‘My hands are so hot’.
I felt something was not going right.
The sense of hot may be due to vasodilation. The possible cause for vasodilation after CT appeared the only one to me at that time.
Allergy.
I soon applied all the vital signs machines to him, the cardiac monitor, the blood pressure monitor, the saturation of oxygen monitor (SaO2 mon). And within 1 mins he was sitting in bed I saw his whole body turning red.
And within a further 20 seconds I noticed rash.
To my experience and knowledge I knew I had to rush or he is going to collapse in front of me real soon. I informed houseman officer and later he informed his seniors.
Intravenous piriton, steroid is given soon after they arrived.
It seemed things didn’t worsen in the next 1 minute, so I decided to click a automatic check up button to monitor his blood pressure. Yet that was not right – the blood pressure dropped, and his mouth was so edematous and pale when I came back.
Oxygen, high flow, 100%, via facial non-rebreathing mask. More intravenous fluid was given, and all I was thinking at that moment was giving him adrenaline and be prepared for intubation, and bed-side cricothyrotomy.

With seconds passed away the doctors available and me was standing in front of him wishing the worst would not happen, the good time comes. The medication given started working. Rashes started subsiding.

He was transferred to ICU later, with my escort.

Some facts about anaphylaxis
Anaphylaxis is a severe allergic reaction that is rapid in onset and may cause death. There are usually prominent dermal and systemic signs and symptoms – sudden onset of skin rash, hypotension, bronchospasm (shortness of breath). The anaphylactic shock actually refers to the hypotensive stage in anaphylaxis.

The most common inciting agents in anaphylaxis are parenteral antibiotics, IV contrast materials and certain food such as peanuts, though it can also be idiopathic, which is no cause.

Anaphylaxis is a medical emergency that needs prompt, intensive and accurate management. The medical management includes oxygen, cardiac monitoring, intravenous access. Medication such as Piriton, Adrenaline and steroid are the first line medication for reversing the anaphylaxis. Adequate fluid is to be given if the person is in shock. 1 litre of normal saline is a must usually.

The worst scenario of anaphylaxis is inability to breathe due to airway edema, one of the presentations of allergic reaction. If intubation of advanced airway is not possible or prompt enough to be done, cricothyrotomy is the only option – make an incision to the neck and insert an airway for ventilation.

Backed from Journey

2010-06-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

In terms of evading from busy life, again going to California has been a very very good destination. It offers the sunlight that you never get enough in HK, and the cool weather for you to read a book under the sunlight in a huge flat lawn.

Have backed from California, and while the holiday mood is not going to diminish in a few days, I decided to strengthen it up again by writing some records of the 14 days journeys. Probably this will help me to extend the journey ....

1507, sitting in front of the library

2010-06-16T01:23:00.000-07:00

In the past few months I have to admit it is the busiest time of my life. Home renovation, 'The Place' together with my work shifts has made my seconds so fully packed. And I think it's time for me to take a break now by focusing on my personal side.
I flied to USA giving a surprising appearance to her - I wrote a letter to my girlfriend, and I asked one student in UC Berkeley to do me a favor by presenting the letter to her, after which the student told her to go to the lawn in front of the library, where I'll be waiting for her.
i know life has to be full of surprises so as to make it happier. And when she presented in front of me, I know i made my day.

Dream big, do big.

2010-06-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

The chance for Africa

2010-06-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

It’s been 4 years since last World Cup, It’s been too long for Africa.

To many of us Africa seems to be a continent of in all-time-need of support. Poverty, wars, diseases, dictatorship, corruption, instability are the symbols of second largest continent in the Earth. Years and years foods and money have been pumping into the continent, and yet they all appear on the hands of dictators and their relatives, the guerilla campaigns or soldiers of each countries. Resources are misplaced and the result is people never get their wish to fight for better future (13-15% of GDP of Africa is from financial aid) – Countries in Africa certainly do not mind being aided by posting themselves helpless, hopeless or despairing, plus suppressing the economic growth.

Africa does have fundamental problem, but the continual aid from worldwide nations certainly does not help the growth of Africa as ‘a continent in need of help’ to ‘a continent with wealth’. Giving medicine to the ill, supplying food to the hungry treats the symptoms, but they all cannot help Africa to grow independently, to be equipped with self sustainability.

That’s why Africa needs a World Cup, which they utilize it as the opportunity to create jobs, infrastructure, and most importantly, money. For long time the revenue of African nations is too much rely on international donors, 2010 is a year for them to change

Bring your revolution

2010-06-05T10:22:00.000-07:00

Please do take 20 mins to watch the speech from Sir Ken Robinson.

What went straight into my heart is when Sir Ken Robinson raised the example of fireman as to cite the importance of developing our own talent.
We need to dream, think and develop; We need not to follow the old rules of lives, we need to create our own way of life, and embrace it with your own natural resources - talent.

5 years

2010-05-30T08:41:00.000-07:00

5 years are composed of a lot of patience, together with devotion, hope of eternity and loyality.

So many people have asked how we can go through - basically i can only tell it is a matter of whether we want for a future. No doubt - it was tough, from the time of being for half year we were already separated with the fucking pacific ocean and we could no longer see each other that easily with just a 10 mins bus ride; Or sometimes we could not talk nor see with time zone difference and busy schoollife / worklife. Yet we both trust each other, and we believed there's a future, and so we have gone through years and years of separation.

And incredibly it's now the 5th year. That pacific ocean is going to dry up, and we finally meet.

the only precious thing

2010-05-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

Even i lose everything, I still have love.
I love you, wingwing.

busy , but wonderful

2010-05-26T09:59:00.001-07:00

I have said 2010 is a year of change. And yes, at the almost mid point of the year I can say I am working on change. Working for my career to be a better nurse, I have tried to be more calm doown and think alternatively during decision making process; Working for my leisure, I am putting all my effort into "The Place'. I do think it's a place where at least, 4 of us, can get lots of experience which may be usable for lifetime, and not regrettable.

God, please bear with me.

A alternative approach to see Africa

2010-05-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

Sad love

2010-05-17T09:01:00.001-07:00

Every day my job is to assist patient to heal, and definitely hope patient to recover. Yet things never go to the way you wish all the time. And if it’s hopeless to see their recovery, please just fulfill their needs.

He was an old man with activity of daily living (ADL) mostly dependent, yet he could still speak quite clearly comparing with those bed-ridden. He was admitted with repeated intestinal obstruction, anaemia, and with poor prognosis he was declared to be DNR (Do not resuscitate).

For those DNR the only thing we can do for them is to let their comfort be the top priority. Blood was transfused, the nasogastric tube once put on was removed. Gradually he was seen better and better.

Though there are signs of hope they just don’t guarantee miracle. With organs inside being too weak to maintain metabolism even one problem resolve another will eventually pop up and kill him, and yes, at one night when I was on duty he was breathing so fast and shallow; The saturation of oxygen (SaO2) inside the body was not reaching 90% with 100% oxygen given via mask.

I was standing in front of him, after 30 mins of high flow oxygen delivered and still there is no rise of SaO2; I tried to suction to see if sputum had blocked the airway, but it seemed not. All of a second when I put out the suction tube he attempted to speak to me, no longer in clear voice. ‘Are you saying you want to see your relatives??’ he nodded deliberately, with weak voice ‘yes, yes’.

When someone who was simply busy breathing for oxygen and still able to deliver their wish of seeing his/her relatives, undoubtedly he/she love them.

I called his family, urged them to come asap.

it's truly from her heart

2010-05-13T05:14:00.000-07:00

A patient was admitted a day prior to his operation for pre-operative check up. He was accompanied by his wife. Usually the patient needs to do blood taking and X ray as to qualify for elective surgery, so this means the wife was basically useless to be with him.

I politely invited his wife to leave, and for my routine nurses shall advise the relatives to take away all the valuables of the patient, and so does this time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For most of the time during my work I am facing a lot of male patients. While most often I hear from them is either 'when can i be discharged' or certain kinds of foul language today I have heard the most sweetest conversation.

'Remember to take away the valuable belongings' said the nurse, when she was walking out of the ward.

She turned back, and looked at his husband, who was waving her good-bye grining.
'The most valuable belongings was still in the ward' She was directly looking at her husband, smiling.

Damn sweet.

Welcome | Hong Kong | Monocle issue 33

2010-05-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

A great article to share

Hong Kong. A gleaming steel and glass powerhouse where the world’s financial forces converge on Asia, a neon edifice of connectivity and consumer culture, a place where customs mix and people live their lives in fast-forward.

While this image of city is certainly true, it doesn’t tell half the story. From Alex Daye and Ellis Kreuger’s fresh designs at boutique Moustache in Sheung Wan and Que Vinh Dang’s innovative dishes at TBLS in Central to chief secretary Henry Tang’s push to develop West Kowloon into a bustling art and culture district, there’s an inspiring drive by Hong Kongers to make their city an even more vibrant place to live.

The search for a better quality of life also takes Hong Kongers off the frequently cramped high-rise of Hong Kong island and into the hills of New Territories. Here neighbourhoods in Sai Kung and Clear Water Bay offer alternative view of one of the most densely populated cities on earth, with spacious residences surrounded by jungle and pristine beaches.

Hong Kong’s geography is more than pretty panorama. Sitting on the doorstep of the world’s fastest growing economy, Hong Kong is in a unique linguistic, historical and cultural position and bears the key to China’s door. Hong Kong is building even closer ties with its first high spped rail link to the mainland, deepening the economic relationship that has strengthened since the 1997 hand-over.

Perhaps more than eve, the city needs to be one its toes as everyone across Asia is vying for financial pole position and cultural credibility. Hong Kong may have enviable geographical advantage but this needs to be defended from regional competition on all fronts.

Busy week

2010-04-23T04:42:00.000-07:00

After the dinner with my cousin's family, I sat down and just found out this week was just too busy for me to sit down, review, and meditate.

There were work and exploration on The Place going in parallel this week which invade all my time other than sleep. On work I was having the most unlucky days with frequent encounter to poor-conditioned cases, together with shortage of staff that made me suffocating; On The Place, me and the co-founders were focusing on every details of set up, e.g. location confirmation, making up budget plan; I could barely remember my home is under renovation.

Time was just too short these days.

Ted | Ken Robinson on creativity restraint

2010-04-13T04:01:00.000-07:00

Renovation

2010-04-06T06:07:00.001-07:00

With the idea of soley arranging a computer desk for my sister, my mother thought so big that it turned out to be an renovation for the house. It surprised me and my sister; For my sister, she never thought wanting a computer desk can eventually end up switching room with me; And for me, definitely never have i thought the process can be swift as hell. I have to admit i underestimate my mum's crazy idea as well - of providing a double bed in my room (know the implication mates?).

Simply 10 days, most of the drawers in the house were discarded. We adopted the design draft from mark, our new house designer, for the allocation of new furniture, set up and its colour.

Anyway, by the way I am writing up this blog I am already staying at Jardine Hill, my cousin's house temporaily till the end of renovation. Look foward to the new house, and would definitely arrange a party when renovation work got finalized.

El Hierro

2010-03-23T06:14:00.001-07:00

While HK's having the most dirtiest days, El Hierro, an remote island somewhere in Spain, is trying their best to keep the sky blue and clear.

What made my job better

2010-03-10T06:45:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, when you are overwhelmed with handling patients' physical complaints, discharge documents, the most excitiing thing is to hear a word of 'thank you' from them, waving you goodbye, griming, seeing them walking out of sight.

when days are too well packed, evade

2010-03-04T03:36:00.000-08:00

Had a day off and after a day roaming around the city I deliberately hided myself from the world. Muted the phone, put on the earphones, grabbed the camera I haven't much used since travel to the pier.

Sitting in the pier promenade, quietly enjoying the millions of lights sparkling - it already made my day.

Monocle Issue 25 Volume 3 July 2009 - Perfect city

2010-02-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

She speaks out all I am craving for .......

Monika Sprüth
Co-owner, with Philomene Magers,
Sprüth Magers Galleries
London/Berlin/Köln

What elements would a perfect business city have?
It should be the place in the world where culture merges. Culture understood in a broad context reduced not only to art, music, design, architecture, theatre - The city where all contradictions of the world are experienceable and tangible.

How important is quality of life when choosing a base?
Quality of life has a practical and intellectual aspect. Creative architecture in beautiful urban or rural settings. A house with a view of a lake, a river or the sea. With young children close to good and creative schools. A mix between anonymous privacy and friends who share the same interests and discourse. And, most importantly, to have the possibility to see matches of my favourite football club - the professionals and the youth teams.

Which cities are getting it right?
Cities that understand that their strength is mainly based on their history and culture. Places that are always on the borderline between collapse and never-ending cultural regeneration - here culture can grow. Melting pots: cities such as Berlin, New York, London.

If you could be based in any city, where would that be?
I cannot make up my mind. Objectively, all cities that have charisma and vibrancy like Berlin or London are great, perfect places for our galleries. Personally, my preferences change quite often and it seems the easiest to stay where my football club 1.FC Köln is located: Köln!

14 days of holidays

2010-02-22T05:28:00.000-08:00

By the time I sat down in front of the new HP notebook after a tough game on tennis it’s the last day for my 14 days annual leave. It was tired after the game and I felt like pumping out all my energy, but still it is a good way to end the holidays with sport.

The past 2 weeks were different with the last 2 holidays which was a week travelling and a week muscle building – they are going without much planning and on everyday I just do what my intuition tells. Sleep late, wake up late, afternoon may be spent with either weight training in MegaBox or doing some reading on Monocle’s past magazine and Reuters; Night time got myself engaged in wine drinking, putting myself into photoshop or if weather did not go wrong, another sport session.

This is way too different with the past 3 months when I need to calculate how much time left after job and its mental preparation, everything got well-planned and nerve cells never rest. For sometimes life goes unplanned it just helps freshening up your minds to get ready for the coming months of work.

Meditation | Deep thinking

2010-02-21T07:33:00.000-08:00

Is internet making us smarter ?

By technological or lifestyle means internet has been fundamental to its development. Simply a click and information floods in your screen. According to the latest online research interviewing 900 scientists, consultants, business leaders, writers, technology developers and internet users by Reuters (2010), majority of them agreed that internet has an indispensible place on improving reading, writing and rendering of knowledge. 3 out of 4 experts in the study said internet enhances human intelligence.

Yet there has been argument of the use of internet on improving our IQ. Nicholas Carr, as a technology writer, attributes there is positive relationship between use of internet and people's stupidity. "What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligenc ..... Chipping away users' capacity for deep thinking or concentration," Carr said in a release accompanying the study - 'Is google making us stupid ? '. "The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking." declared Carr.

Boom de Yada

2010-02-18T07:25:00.000-08:00

A beautiful song from Discovery Channel . Another verson below, equally attactive

Rooney vs Sanchez boys

2010-02-17T23:19:00.000-08:00

Life should consists of crazy time, mate.

Congratulation !

2010-02-13T08:55:00.000-08:00

Nothing is better than having a proposal like this.

I see truth, romance.

Flash-back on the day of Tao's proposal

2010-02-13T06:45:00.000-08:00

Wine tasting

2010-02-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

The past sunday has been a day of sweetness and bitterness. It started with the orienteering competition when I was basically soaked with rain for 3 hours till home, and ended with 9 great wines with a bunch of friends in MaWan.

It was tough at the start of the day when i put myself into extreme - knowing it's heavy raining and heard thunderstorm and I was still heading to somewhere in New Territories. I ran around the hill, locating checkpoints, jumped over places where rains had been causing small scale flooding.

Yet never have I thought the day could be well finished with bottles of red wines. Headed to MaWan still with dried-up body at home, I had a night with good wines, good friends and good music. While the exhausted body got charged up with food and rest, the mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stay at adverse condition just revived with stimulation from new and old world wines, musics shared by everyone's mobiles or i-pod musics, and laughers generated within each others.

Not many sundays in your life can be vivid with such contrast.

I knew I knew

2010-02-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

A relative of a dying patient coming to me, urging me to save his father. She was lost, because she just could not accept his father's prompt deterioation of condition. One day before he was still alert to everything and even spoke to his family, and 12 hours later, the Glascow Coma Scale has reached the minimum.

She asked me to give injection to pump his heart power up, but an hour before she just accepted conservative management by not resuscitating him. She cried in front of me, and I saw her tears that normally won't be shown to a person who doesn't know her.

I knew

That's love.

What makes a city attractive ?

2010-01-31T07:14:00.000-08:00

1. Amount of sunlight
London is a great city with history, but it is never a good place to sunbath. The sun just simpy directly the mood I leave home to work.

2. Diversities of leisure resources
Sometimes, getting out for a wargame, playing grass tennis, fishing in park, staying in national parks for the weekend help you to prepare for another week of work.

3. Friends, and the interactions with them
Friends has been a very important determinants on the stay in the city. They trigger your creativity with their expertise, their knowledge, or simply their styles of living.

4. Small business availability
It is never fun to get into the same chain shops in a city, and it is never fun to sing karoake and watch movies for all the 52 weekends.

Rotation

2010-01-20T07:20:00.000-08:00

Finally handed in the application of rotation.

After the long long half year I have realised that my work does not only provide me money but unmeasurable value that cannot be found in current post.

Undoubtedly working under a lower workload environment has some positives, yet this isn't my cup of tea at this age. I prefer to be busy, to see a lot more on life/death, to get involved into the worst.

This is the value of work. This largely supports me to work.

Incomplete assessment

2010-01-14T04:07:00.000-08:00

Do you accept the fact that when you are admitted into a hospital, the doctor shall only assess only problems that they are specialize in ?

It's my job to be care all aspects of a patient, but as a layman, do you think the doctors should also do ?

This is ridiculous that doctor does not assess the patient in all aspects. Even more ridiculous, this really happens in HK public hospitals.

Doctors, you are caring the patients !!!!!!!!!!!!!! fuck !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Common interest

2010-01-11T05:29:00.000-08:00

What is your common interest ? What is our common interest ? You may say photoshooting, football, tennis or even shopping. But when the question changes a bit to ' What is our common trigger to life?' it suddenly made so much complexity.

We are not used to create, we are supposed to live in a pre-set lifestyles where you work either 9-5 or shift, companies or schools; we are not supposed to find the trigger right ?

09 | 10

2010-01-03T08:31:00.000-08:00

09

Was a year half with happiness half with frustration;
Travelled to USA to meet you; Travelled to Kyoto alone;
Worked endlessly in the first half year, and worked more endlessly in the second half;
Picked up the tennis racket, bought soccer boots

10

Should be a year of pursue.

just some thoughts

2009-12-22T06:10:00.000-08:00

Recalling last years, there are activities and another coming; Junk photo-trip, Junk-wine-night, wargame, night time cheung chau shooting; Days are well-spent.

I am feeling the time has come again.

a week of being an athletic

2009-12-19T08:03:00.000-08:00

Summarize the week:

Day 0: gym + basketball
Day 1: gym + three hours of tennis
Day 2: gym (all thigh muscles) + tennis solely with Calvin
Day 3: gym + soccer (skill train under mark sir)
Day 4: mixed double tennis for 3 hours + volleyball
Day 5: gym - sorching exhausting biceps training.
Day 6: breast work out
Day 7: really a rest day !

While the last annual leave i spent splendid time in Kyoto, this week of annual leave I chose to test my physical limit with training muscles strength and improve my sport performance.

I inreased the frequency of gym training to nearly a daily basis. One part of muscle trained per day- but that does not imply that hour easily passed as the personal trainer will never rest your trained muscles. They made sure I had to exert full power for each lift/ pull/ push . If you cannot attain their standard they will help with the contraction , but not the muscle elongation part /' relaxation' part- which is often the toughest part as you have to withstand hundreds pounds descended to the muscle.

At the same time of gym training I increased the frequency of having a regular sport. I chose tennis simply because it’s exciting with lots of dash and muscle co-ordination. It is quite a good feeling when you make a great serve, hit a return ace or just see opponents' loser faces. (promised - tennis is a wonderful sport)

The whole week workout has added 3kg to my body. Done a body analysis on Friday, it said the muscle porportion has increased for a few percents, which implies most of the weight gain goes to muscle!!!

What a great week with exercise. Fruitful with weight gain and technique improvement, though a bit tiring.

Manutd | Hong Kong

2009-12-13T00:39:00.000-08:00

At one side of the earth Manutd had the first home defeat to Aston Villa, but on another side the Manutd supporter was still joyful as Hong Kong finally topped Japan and Korea in East Asian football game.

I was sitting on the west stand of the HK stadium, and felt buzzing after the 1-1 draw, felt the power of the roar from HK supporters, and definitely went into craze when H.F.Yapp made the vital save of the game at penalties shot-out.

Oh what a great night I have had in HK stadium.....

Dream - from Monocle, issue 28, vol 2 Nov 09

2009-11-16T08:00:00.001-08:00

Read the article on the plane to Hong Kong, and after that I repeatedly read it every day.

It is a preface for the Monocle, the small business guide -

Every age has its dream of happiness and in our time, there is no more powerful or widespread desire than to start up our own business. What does this tell us about ourselves? For a start, that it isn't enough for us to make money. We need to do so in ways that make us feel connected: to products, to customers and to our colleagues.

The modern gigantic corporation undoubtedly offers humanity the most efficient means of generating capital but it has managed to brutally cut us off from people and things. We can no longer see what we have made or whom we have touched; We frequently can't stand back afer a lifetime and say, ' I did that' or I changed him or her'.

A business of one's own premises to end the alientaion. Entrepreneurial fantasies appear to be all about making more money - but in fact, as sober statisticians tell us, they are fraught with dangers. But that shouldn't put us off. Far from it, because the dream of entrepreneruship is, at heart, about an attempt to recover imaginative control over one's work. Ask people what business they might like to start and they will often speak about a desire to bgin a small restaurant or the pefect stationery shop, a little school or therapist's practice. They will cite examples of businesses where you can see the difference you are making to lives of others, where you know your customers and can have a realistic chance of making them happy. Though the idea of esrving people is often seen as demeaning, it is obviously one of the great pleasure of life (just ask kids, who like nothing better than to play at serving adults.)

Starting your own business is risky, but the recent economic turmoil suggests that we should recalibrate our notions of safety. The working world used to be divided into safte but boring jobs, and exciting but risky ones. Of late, many of the supposedly safe professions have been decimated - which should help us let go of illusions of safety (in any case - all of us are only a few rogue cancer cells away from the end at the best of times)

A world enterepreneurial start-ups wouldn't necessarily be a richer one economically. But it would be rich in a more interesting way. It would mean an increase in what we all love about owner-managed enterprises: the feeling that those who work in them genuinely care, that they are in control of their destinies, that they are able to exercise their curiosity and dthat they are enjoying serving us. I suspect that I'm not the only writer or reader at Monocle itching to plug some of the gaps of our customer society with a business of my own.

(Alain de Botton, at Monocle nov 09 issue 28, vol 2 - 'Time for a change' in small business guide)

Post Kyoto

2009-11-15T07:40:00.000-08:00

I love Kyoto.
Kyoto is a busy city when you look at the always-long queues at Kyoto station bus stop and crowded JR stations, but they are different with any other cities in the way of small businesses are simply everywhere in the city. I don’t know how many small businesses are making up the city, but what I saw during the stay at Kyoto was pretty many. From restaurants I have been to shops where I bought souvenirs or even the guesthouse I have stayed they are seldom gigantic co-operations, they are having different characters, and most importantly, they are with great services, not that kind of saying ‘Welcome’ ‘See you’ in Starbucks when getting in for a drink, but the type you feel you are the only one you will be treated in this way.
Before the trip to Kyoto I had a thought of whether it’ll be bored of just visiting temples, but it turned out with complete elimination of such thought. Unique services by small businesses make every parts of Kyoto different. I still recalled how considerate Ms Kahori was during the stay at her Chita guesthouse. I went the day before checking in just to say hello and asked if I could arrive a bit earlier the time of check-in to put the luggages at her house, and on the next day when I arrived, she said she’s already prepared for my room; She knew I love cycling around in Kyoto, so when I requested to rent her bicycle for second time she simply said to me quietly ‘no need to pay, no need, take the lock and go !!!’. And actually, it is fun to visit temples. Temples in Kyoto, other than the Buddha, have different characteristics. There is Fushimi-inari shrines where there are thousands of Tori (traditional gate usually at the entrance); There is Shoren-in temple where also opens at night time and lightens the temple in blue and yellow; There is Todaji temple where actually visitors can have fun on going through the hole of around 1.5 x 2 m which once getting through you will have enlightenment.
I made some good friendship with people around the world during the trip. Going to living room of guesthouse/ hostel every time I called it the day for the travel, I was able to meet someone. Italian, Danish, Japanese, German, Holland, Canadian, it is just the bonus from the trip that you can establish a relationship with people all around the world, and to know how different they are living. And through talking with them it is always interesting to know some information that you may not be aware of before, for example the ‘great’ attitude of Swiss towards Germans (ha, sorry Eli and Nadine) and kissing or hugging has never been welcomed in some of European countries (Please let me say it again, Davide)
The travel to Kyoto this time was excellent and I was already thinking of a re-visit in later years, probably with better Japanese the coming time.

Pre-Kyoto

2009-11-02T05:52:00.000-08:00

Before the trip time is just packed fully - not until the time I broaded into the plane I shall not get relaxed. Working has been dominated the time definitely, and it shall end just 2-3 hours before the plane flies to Japan.

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I am looking foward to the trip - Been to Kyoto once when i was young, but never have I tried to travel alone before. Excited about the problem arised, excited about everything to be occured during the travel (Hope they're not silly nor stupid things on me)

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2009-10-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

These days i am just immersing myself into the world of TV games and computer. Going to friend's house for PS3 after every am shift, played till late for shooting and controlling footballer.

I was hoping for some kind of fun filling the empty time.

Yet enlightenment on the way home tonight after another TV games noticed me of the life I am having was not that good. Suddenly I felt myself guilty of playing TV games all the time and wasted the empty time.

The time ends. Time to work.

I miss the time

2009-09-18T07:50:00.000-07:00

The first step into A5 is never that happy. With the tough placement in department of medicine during my student years plus some rude treatment by nurses I was quite lost when I was sent to be a Temporary Undergraduate Nursing student (TUNS) in A5 before I was promoted to Registered nurse in a short future.

Yet those doubt and possible fear was all gone with later experience. I was actually stepping into a ward with warm atmosphere where laughs can always happen; I grew already a lot with help from senior nurses - I can still remember how Dorothy and Irene teaching me on urgent EOT and emergency situations while I was just a TUNS. Yes the work load is the heaviest within the hospital, admissions can reach 20 in 7 hours, but all along the working time it's joyful.

What can you expect more, when you learn under warm atmosphere ?

2 Years, and now provided that an vancancy is made in isolation ward, tomorrow is the last day of my so-far medical career in A5. I'll miss the time !

Rotation

2009-09-12T06:44:00.000-07:00

Once again I need to rotate to another ward. It'll be the third ward I work in 2009, which means I have to adapt the third working style within a hospital. I think it's pretty shit - normally to adapt it takes at least a year but the circumstance is that I had 3 rotations within 2 years.

If rotation really helps people mature I'll think it's completely silly.

Woman

2009-08-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

Seen a blog about woman

Whatever you give a woman, she’s going to multiply.
If you give her sperm, she’ll give you a baby.
If you give her a house, she’ll give you a home.
If you give her groceries, she’ll give you a meal.
If you give her a smile, she’ll give you her heart.

She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her.
So…If you give her any crap, you will receive a ton of sh!t.”

This is true, really true.

Swine flu spread is not going to stop

2009-08-17T08:11:00.001-07:00

Department of medicine is admitting so many patients. With the atmosphere of flu and swine flu, I can really feel the increased admission of patients. For every shifts there must be some transferred cases from isolation ward for being ruled out swine flu, or cases from emergency department for questioning swine flu cases.

I know one day there must be a confirmed case in my ward, and yes, it comes today.

May God bless my ward, and my colleagues who are getting fever and flu symptoms.

Was | Is | Will

2009-08-15T06:47:00.000-07:00

On the coming Ma Wan photo gallery, it's all about was, is and will . I have come across a number of photos, ideas that match the topic, but none of them is comparable to the relationship between you and me.

The gallery just triggered my thinking over these years. Thinking of some important things, my jobs, life ...........

Sick leave , just make me sick.

2009-08-09T08:01:00.000-07:00

With the swine flu, the new ward I am working has to close to deploy staffs to either medical/pediatrics/isolation wards. Today is the 2nd last day of my so-far surgical life, yet I was unluckily deployed to another surgical ward. The reason is because there's a shortage of staff in there, due to sick leave.
I am okay to go if people are really sick and cannot attend duty, but what I have been hearing today is that people may not be sick. I am indeed angry, but I can say nothing.

Is that what a nurse should be ?

A month of surgical life has already let me feel this department is just shit.

4am in the morning

2009-08-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

Just earlier in the day I come across a medical doctor and he asked when I will go back, I simply replied ' I don't know' , then when I backed to the ward I received the news of return to department of medicine. I have thought of a possibly return, but never have I thought it to be that early with sudden cease of surgical life.
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It's 4 am in the morning and still there is a work-day to go in the morning, but I could not get myself asleep any more. When I close my eyes the scenes of working in medical unit pop up.

And I just cannot wait any longer.

Football

2009-07-27T05:17:00.000-07:00

Days have to be challenging. While I am trying to settle at the new working environment I am trying to do something to occupy life. Football is one of them.

Life has to be fun, and it is quite a good idea to gather boys and play some ball on grass pitch. Thus I started to arrange some game. I do not mind people are not playing well, what I mind is people are enjoying the 1.5 hour on the grass pitch.

Happiness is the most important ingredient of life !

A new working enivornment

2009-07-12T01:32:00.000-07:00

Today is the seventh day I worked in another ward. Just got home, had a late lunch, able to go internet to write something.

I am still exhausted - as I have to handle 2 full cubicles in new ward for most of the time, at the same time that I learn to follow new working way. At the first few days I was missing the days in prior ward, where I am accustomed to routines, doctors, and other working colleagues.

Going to a complete new enviornment is a tiring process, as you have to accomdoate new things, new style, new people, but that's what a life has to be.

Keep moving.