Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Sir X X memorial scholarship

Today I phoned the Sir X X memorial fund council dealing with some trouble of a scholarship I got many years ago. At the end when I finally mentioned my name, she said she has "a bit of impression" about my name. Gee... how could that happen??

BTW, I still keep a booklet issued by them listing all the scholarship recipients of that year. Apart from some funny names, there are actually two of my girl students / classmates in HKU. They were still in high school by then; and they probably don't remember this anyway.

Monday, May 30, 2005

pyfung @ FMO

I suppose there is someone called P. Y. Fung in the FMO (Facilities and Management Office) in CityU; I'm constantly receiving emails asking this pyfung to reserve a car park [slot], close [lock] the door of a certain room, or send a security guard to somewhere...

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

free trip

While my boss is not (yet) successful in kicking me over the Pacific Ocean, I am accidentally kicking myself the other way round, across the Asia and mainland Europe to an island. While a free trip is fine, it would be a huge trouble of thinking whether to accept it if they give me an offer. But their ad is the first one that I've ever seen that asks for people doing online algorithms...

Yesterday I have dinner with some LG101 colleagues. They discovered a "rule" that theory group PhD graduates will go overseas if get married, and will stay in Hong Kong if remain single. There are exceptions to this on one side, but not the other side. Now I'm worrying...

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

蜈蚣

I'm typing this post while inhaling pesticide...

The CS general office is under renovation and caused our office to have no electricity for the long weekend. When I come back today, I am told that they discovered there is a 蜈蚣 in our office, and pesticide is therefore applied to this room last night. As you can expect, this room is now full of the smell of pesticide...

Ar yeah, this office is shared with five other people, all from mainland. Back in HKU I also remember seeing a lot of "interesting" creatures in Haking Wong building. Hmm...

Monday, May 16, 2005

搶包山

搶包山終於再次舉辦了。如果沒有麥兜,搶包山會再舉辦嗎?難道有一天,搶包山真的會成為奧運項目??太感動了...

Saturday, May 07, 2005

so these are Hong Kong students

The HKCEE English exam this year included an article from a forum about comics, as a kind-of proofreading question. And our HK students, after the frustration of the exam, have too much idle time and dig out that article from the web, and then fxck the original author of the article. Oh well. This incident clearly demonstrates the English level of our students:

(1) An article as simple as this can be considered "very difficult" by the students.

(2) From their fxcking and other responses in the forum you can know not only their reading ability but also writing. Next year the HKCEE can simply use these responses as proofreading questions.

(3) So the difficulty of the exam declined that much after 10 years or so. Perhaps they should look at the exam papers of my time. (btw, when can they stop calling it "pass paper"?)

After lots of fxcking, people then complain the HKEAA of "stealing" the paper and infringing copyright. Guys, does that make any difference to your marks, even if it is true?

Next they go on to complain "it is not the author's fault, but the HKEAA" of (i) choosing a passage from a Dutch; (ii) choosing an informal passage; and (iii) the style of the questions changed. Well, if you can't handle informal passages I don't think you can handle articles from the Times magazine or the like, you'll only "die faster". And actually if I were the HKEAA I will change the style of the questions every year to make sure you learn the basics of the language and not "tips" from "tuition kings". Good job, HKEAA!

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

第2904次釋法

[本報訊] 由於愛國乃最大道理,其他所有道理都要讓路,因此人大第2904次釋法決定:東隧必須加價,市民亦必須繼續使用,以讓國家企業賺大錢,從而間接資助國家買更多飛機大炮,反對者即屬違法。