Chef

Lunched alone on Saturday; it was a small Malaysian restaurant at TST.

I ordered laksa and samosa. Before they came, I was thoroughly impressed:

Two old ladies arrived soon after me and sat at the table next to mine; they were obviously new customers to this restaurant, and no doubt one was a vegetarian - she ordered tofu and fried turnip cake, and her friend the famous chicken rice.

In a moment a chubby figure marched out from the kitchen, with a small note from the waitress on his hand and the word chef written on his face; he went straight to the old women - to clarify whether egg, ginger and garlic could be used in the dish. His tone was not polite, but he was obviously serious about the dish he was going to prepare.

As I often told Bonnie, for him I put a tick on my mental personnel record.

A few minutes later my lunch appeared - on the hand of this very chef. I was sitting next to the door of the kitchen, and, seeing no waitress around, the obsessive man himself handed the laksa and samosa to me - the latter was just hot from the frying pan.

Another tick.

**************************

Our astronaut had the first space walk in the afternoon. It was of course a great success. Nonetheless I believe we could make a better country not by having more space adventures, but to have more laksa chef or people of his kind - to be serious about the small thing at his own hand, be it turnip cake, samosa, or milk.

食經

My birthday present this year is a five-volume set of [食經] by 陳夢因.

It is in fact a (selected) re-print of the newspaper columns by Chan, one of the earliest food critics in Hong Kong. Although one could never learn how to prepare any specific dish - it is not meant to be a collection of recipes - there is a wealth of insight here and there, explaining why rather than how the dishes should be prepared in the specific way.

And, just by thumbing through the pages, I have good mental pictures on how (southern) Chinese lived a century ago. For example, the strength of the stove was defined according to the number of wood burning and the diameter of the wok.

The world has changed a lot since then.

Birthday

Some weeks ago, a student who had to repeat the final year approached our man from Pluto and expressed her difficulty to grasp basic knowledge and prepare for the examination.

"Well, let me see," the chairman considered for a while, "Maybe I should ask Dr. P to give you some coaching ?" (Dr. P is one of our endocrinologists - famous for her meticulous clinical skill.)

"Em ... eh ... ah ... can I ..." the student murmured.

"Oh, do you have anyone else in your mind - whom you think could help ?" our man from Pluto quickly spotted what the girl wanted.

"Yes ! Could Dr. KM guide me through ?"

************************************

You know what: KM shares the same birthday with Confucius (孔夫子).

Happy birthday, our great teacher.

Depression

Once I think of the Japanese bubble, the story of the Great Depression comes next to my mind.

(I am certainly too impressed by Benjamin Graham's Security Analysis.)

There are many hypothesis on the cause of this tragedy in economy, but a substantial part of the event bears much similarity with the Japanese bubble: easily available loans, over-investment, decline in sales, lack of loan, reduction in investment, followed by the downward spiral of everything. The most important bit is: both took over 10 years to recover.

Yes, it was fortunate for the American economy to have the Second World War - it brought down the unemployment and gave confidence to industrial investment. That's why Uncle Sam could get out of the Great Depression after 10 years of struggle.

And he knew it just too well - so much so he is all prepared to have (start ?) another war to hasten the recovery of any economy downturn.

Well, does China know this trick ?

In a time of worldwide difficulty, would it be convenient for the super-powers to ignite fire on some corner of the earth ?

Bubble

During our amateurish discussion on world economy, I was trying to pacify Vivian, "The bear market won't last long - it is at most a year or two."

My wife was not easily moved, "Japan took 20 years and it has not really recovered yet."

Very true. Let's see some educated descriptions:

"With more money in banks, loans and credit became easier to obtain, and with Japan running large trade surpluses, the yen appreciated against foreign currencies. This allowed local companies to invest in capital resources much more easily than their competitors overseas, which reduced the price of Japanese-made goods and widened the trade surplus further. And, with the yen appreciating, financial assets became very lucrative.

With so much money readily available for investment, speculation was inevitable, particularly in the stock market and the real estate market ... banks granted increasingly risky loans.

Investments were increasingly directed out of the country, and manufacturing firms lost some degree of their technological edge. As Japanese products became less competitive overseas, the low consumption rate began to bear on the economy, causing a deflationary spiral."

(I copy it from the article Japanese Asset Price Bubble of Wikipedia.)

It looks familiar, eh ? If we change the term Japan to China, and Yen to RMB, for sure many of us would not sleep well tonight.

PS. Of course our companies have no technical edge to lose - they become less competitive because of the lack of creditability.

Quality

The typhoon signal number 8 was removed at a convenient time. The morning seemed a usual one.

At around 8:30 a.m., AZ, the secretary of JS, rang me up, "Do our medical students have to turn up for clinical teaching today ? A year-3 student rang up our office and asked."

(Dead air for 5 seconds from my side - I was trying to find a polite response without colourful vocabulary.)

"According to the notice of the Education Department this morning, they do not have to." I uttered slowly.

"But how about clinical medical students ?" AZ was unmoved - obviously being asked the same question by that student.

I repeated the same official response.

"Eh ... are you worried of anything ?" AZ noted my bradykinesia.

(Another dead air for 5 seconds.)

"No ... nothing worries me except the human quality of our students." I admitted.

PS. I believe it is an isolated incident of a few exceptional youngsters - there are many students around today.

Metal

In one of our evening chats, Vivian asked - rather seriously - whether she should buy some precious metal as part of her investment portfolio.

She had entirely logical reasons. After taking over Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, and making AIG a state-owned enterprises, the next financial giant that is going to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection would probably be the Federal Reserve per se - unless it makes (oh, sorry, prints) more money.

In other words, the risk of inflation is real.

On the other hand, global economy is expected to lie low for some years. Loan and mortgage would be more carefully scrutinized, and our biggest customer needs time to recover from his recent maniac episode and over-spending.

It implies that the stock market would take even longer to regain the momentum.

Isn't it the classical scenario for buying gold and silver ?

PS. Vivian may be right. (How else could your wife be ?) Nonetheless I have my eternal reasons against precious metal: it is not a business and therefore could not be called an investment at all. More importantly, gold or silver never pays dividend !

Circle

My friend Sam used to run a small restaurant and prepare his own lunch there.

Some years ago, he found a fast-food store Zhina next to his house - and the food was so cheap that he decided (was forced ?) to close down his own business and eat outside.

But, without an income, where came the money ? That's simple: he started borrowing money (disguised as mortgage from his house, but it didn't really cover the amount he borrowed) - and, over the years, spent every penny for his lunch.

Mr. Hu, the owner of Zhina, pocketed the money. Of course it is not a good idea to put it under his pillow; he decided to go for some investment - and began lending money to Sam.

For obvious reason a relation of this kind would not last forever. Sam bankrupted, and Mr. Hu had to write off the money he gave to the man in poverty.

Therefore, at the end of the day, Zhina was providing free lunch for Sam to enjoy all through the years !

Drama

I was always incredulous why FC agreed with the implementation of the structural reform.

Yes, there's much pressure from those extra-terrestrials. Nonetheless, we know very well the man from Chaozhou (潮州) would not easily compromise.

But I was completely mistaken - and forgot all the teachings of Humphrey Appleby:

"You should never say no to the Prime Minister. If there's any policy you foresee difficulties, find some appropriate people to sort out the details."

"Who are appropriate ?" Maybe you would like to ask, just like Bernard Woolley.

"People who are careful, opened minded, and democratic. They would provide forum to listen to the voice of every staff - so that each would have an opportunity to express their view and everyone could sit down and discuss together. They would explore in every angle all possible and impossible problems, with solutions all planned in advance. The position of every atom in the universe would be in a predictable position at all time."

"But ... how long does it take to do all these ?" the Principal Private Secretary remained at a lost.

"Not long," the Secretary of Cabinet was certainly a cut higher, "only until the attention of our prime minister is diverted to things like cutting off the breast from a wrong woman !"

Count

VW was in fact puzzled about the attitude of the university (and our government).

"Wouldn't it be of their interest to put more emphasis and reward those academic staff with excellent teaching ? From the government (i.e. money) point of view, there seems very little value for us to publish a few more papers."

But they need a yardstick. Publication and impact factor are easily measurable and you could do statistical analysis with a computer; there seems no good way to quantify the quality of teaching.

(By definition, it is impossible to quantify the quality of anything - otherwise the two words would be one.)

As KM loves to quote from Albert Einstein: Not everything that counts can be counted; not everything that can be counted counts.

I wonder if the great physicist was actually saying this to the dean of the faculty in Princeton during his staff appraisal.

Difficulty

Hiding in the back of lecture theatre with VW during medical grand round, and we had some casual discussion on our teaching evaluation system.

The double gold medalist sighed, "There's really a need to have a more objective way to evaluate our teaching - the current system simply doesn't work out as it planned."

I told him I could think of two ways to do so:

1. The number of student who take the subject (useful for non-medical university students who can choose which course to take).
   
2. The result of public examination (e.g. in USA, where medical school graduates need to sit for a licencing examination).

Unfortunately neither of them is suitable for our medical students - all subjects are compulsory, and there is no open examination.

With all these considerations, I was forced to conclude, "The only thing that the university could do is to pay less attention to the result of the current teaching evaluation - certainly not to use it as a dagger over our back. The system at the moment, if remains unchanged, could serve only one purpose: our officials could appear to be doing something on this area."

Hearing what I said, VW seemed more depressed than ever.

Nitrogen

You consider the addition of melamine to animal feed (as a source of non-protein-nitrogen) amazing ? Not at all.

That's not the worst tragedy from this kind of practice - yet. At least the current problem is a result of the creative use of the compound, and not from the feed per se.

Do you still remember the drama of bovine spongioform encephalopathy (BSE) ?

Yes, that's mad cow disease. Now we know very well it comes from the use of meat-and-bone meal for the cattle's feed.

Don't go mad. How else could those cows produce sufficient meat if they just feed on grass and grains ?

On the other hand, many cows are now feed on cottonseed meal. Doesn't it sound safe ? Well, friends, this byproduct from cotton (after the oil is extracted) is a rich source of gossypol - an excellent male contraceptive ! (OK, it is also very toxic to creatures with only one stomach - including ourselves.)

Park

At last Vivian and I visited the local theme park with Euterpe on the morning of mid-Autumn festival.

We didn't stay long and just spent some time in the huge aquarium and saw the performance of seals and dolphins. Euterpe was not at all impressed to see all those gigantic marine lives - she's still too young for that. Nonetheless it's an excellent opportunity for us to have some exercise - you would understand what I mean if you've ever been out with a child.

It was so hot that we were all soaked in less than an hour. On our way back, the little girl felt asleep promptly - with a huge appetite when she woke up later (which was rather exceptional).

Well, all the exertion becomes worthwhile if we could make our muse of poetry eat slightly more.

Lemonade

Another thing I did in a hot summer afternoon was to make my own iced lemonade.

There is, of course, nothing complicated. You just need some fresh lemon, sugar, and water. However, it was over 15 years since I last (had the mood to) make some by my own.

You know what. I had taken the trouble to do several experiments: to try lemon juice instead of sliced whole lemon, to make use of leftover from the fridge (used as smell absorbent), or to use lukewarm rather than boiling water.

What did I find ? For sure the orthodox method (i.e. sliced whole lemon and hot water, followed by sugar and ice) gives the best result - there's quite a bit of science behind which I shall not elaborate. The lessons are:

1. Every incomprehensible minor detail of a traditional teaching is probably based on wisdom and experience. Many a time an innovative method is merely another way that people did try and fail previously.
2. "Know why" is a cut higher than "know how", but the former is usually a result of multiple failures.

As Oscar Wilde said: Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement.

PS. The sobering truth is this simple fact is not appreciated by many of our extra-terrestrial educationalists.

Melamine

When I first came to hear about the story of the adulterated baby formula by the Sanlu Group (三鹿集團), I was slightly incredulous: why did they choose melamine (三聚氰胺) ?

(As I told Vivian, one may add urea to push up the nitrogen content.)

Surely it is because of my ignorance in food chemistry. As I looked up the compound during my holiday, there were a number of interesting facts worth sharing.

In 1960's and 70's, melamine was often used as a source of non-protein nitrogen for feeding cows. In the stomach of ruminant animals, the compound is broken down by the bacteria, absorbed, and used for building blocks of protein.

The current problem seems to be the addition of this very compound to the milk (to fool the assay of protein content, which is part of the quality assurance procedure) rather than the feed of those cows. Non-ruminant animals - including human - could not utilize non-protein nitrogen. We could imagine infants have a permeable gut and the intact compound is absorbed, excreted, and precipitated in the urine.

Urea is in fact a commonly used non-protein nitrogen for cattle feed - usually in a resin with formaldehyde to control the release. As an additive for animal feed, ground urea-formaldehyde is sold in China with a romantic name "protein essence" (蛋白精).

Many of our people have a really wicked but poetic mind.

Holiday

Vivian was back for a holiday and we planned to pay a visit to a local theme park with Euterpe. Just before we set off, my mother-in-law fainted and collapsed, and we ended up having a day trip to a regional hospital.

Thank goodness there seemed nothing serious. As a tough surgeon who went through all the difficult times during the Cultural Revolution (in Beijing !), my half-mother rested in the emergency ward for several hours and went home in the evening - to continue with all her housework.

While she was under observation in the hospital, the three of us (Vivian, my father-in-law, and myself) lunched in Sister Wah - it is a small restaurant famous for brisket. In fact, I planned to try her brisket noodle for some time (probably in one convenient afternoon while Vivian is in Osaka), but would never imagine things turned out like this.

Life is often the pursue of some rest and pleasure on a gloomy day.

Ethics

To me, the best book on ethics was written by Benedictus Spinoza.

Ironically he was expelled by the Jewish church for his views, and was taken enemy by the Vatican all through his life. That's not unexpected; the two principal questions of ethics are:

1. Is there any thing that man should (or should not) do ?
2. If yes, what are these things ?
   

If you answer no to the first question, you are an atheist. If you say yes and try to give answer to the second question, you try to play god. Any serious study in ethics would inevitably offend the territory of the church (and other religions). Keen followers of the god are expected to say yes to the first question and follow whatever laid down in the Bible (or Qur'an) for the second.

PS. In his later years, the lens polisher was offered the chair professor of philosophy in the University of Heidelberg - provided that his teaching would not touch on theology. The great philosopher turned down the offer. After all, that's an impossible mission: philosophy and theology are the two poles of a magnet, they appear to be opposite but actually attract each other. More importantly, you could never divide a magnet and take one pole away.

Theologist

KM told me that our man from Pluto appointed a graduate of theology to coordinate a course of medical ethics for our student - the first draft consists of 50 ambitious sessions.

My jaw got dislocated - well, it fell onto the floor when I learnt that these sessions included topics like "What is Hope ?" (I certainly do not have any.)

It is unfortunately a romantic idea of many that theologists are ideal people to teach ethics. That is, no doubt, a confusion between the quality of a person and the knowledge of him. Someone with a quality close to god would be an excellent role model for our students to lead a living with a high standard of ethics. It would be quite a different story to ask a man who professes at studying (the theory of) god to teach ethical dilemma in medical practice.

I know it was not all the fault of our man from Pluto; he was very much pushed by extra-terrestrials outside the solar system (disguised in the name Council). Nonetheless, in a realistic world, it would be more beneficial to ask professors from the School of Law to teach this very topic.

PS. It seems that the program was revised - we shall see.

Warren

(My friend showed me another email with GS on the very same day. I agree it is illuminating.)

GS,

Some important survival tips that I have learned in last bear market.

1. Buy only when Mr. Market feels hopeless, not just panic. Based on previous observations, Mr. Market is considered hopeless when the turnover of market drops by 80% compared to its peak in bull market.
2. After a drastic panic plunge, there will be 20-30% further “slow decay” despite several sizable rebounds in a typical bear market, all speculators will be driven off by then.
3. Don’t trust any “research report” or “recommendation” from the investment banks. Either they still need some “concept stocks” to speculate even in bear market or they just want to “escape” at better price.
4. “10%-cut-loss” principle doesn’t work because you will need to cut loss for all stocks you have bought in bear market. Eventually you are left either cashless or hopeless after repeated cut loss.
5. Don’t switch your provident fund to cash. This is a golden chance for your portfolio to accumulate shares at bargain price (provided you are holding an index fund or your fund manager is above-average) for your retirement.

However, nobody can accurately predict the market. My wife’s portfolio has further accumulated HSBC shares this morning at a PE of 9.8 and dividend rate of 6.1% (have you got any property with comparable rental return rate?). My portfolio is still keeping cash to wait for the massacre in A/H stock market.

Warren

Anniversary

Lunched alone on my wedding anniversary - Vivian was in Yokohama.

It's a small Italian restaurant at Fortress Hill. Vivian and I used to come very often. The risotto and pasta are second to nowhere, and the place is often half empty during weekend.

For some time we worried whether this little shop could survive - the chef seemed to be satisfied with the current status and the boss had no intention to expand. By some coincidence I found that it runs a horrifying business on weekday - full of office ladies hurrying for lunch. That's why the boss - and chef - could afford doing whatever they enjoy the rest of the time.

Yes, it needs usually more courage to focus on the present and do away with the temptation of conquering more.

At least it is a cut higher than Sisyphus.

Smaller

I was sitting next to JW in the Curriculum Retreat. In the middle of the morning he asked me, "Do you know what textbook of anatomy do our students use now ?"

"Probably the Moore," I said.

"That Moore ?" JW was incredulous - he made a gesture and showed the size of a 1500-page bible, which was what Moore used to be when we were students.

"Oh, don't be silly." I reassured him, "Yours is the Big Moore; I'm talking about the Little Moore."

"Quite right." He calmed down and remarked, "In fact we cannot blame our students for not reading much textbook. It is the trend all over the world that textbooks are getting smaller, although human structure did not change over the years."

I agreed in silence.

And he went on, "The paradox is, however, even for subjects with rapid advances, such as internal medicine, the size of the textbook also goes down. Do our students really have an information overload - as claimed by the educationalists ?"

Outcome

My nostalgia yesterday was partly a result of the Curriculum Retreat on Saturday.

For a faculty of nearly 1500 academic and honorary staff, the attendance of the retreat could hardly be called satisfactory. That's expected. This yearly event has shifted from a regular review of the curriculum to a somewhat irrelevant agenda - written in an extra-terrestrial language.

The only interesting bit of the presentation came from an unlikely corner: the professor of anesthesia talked about the admission category, criteria, and system of interview for our medical students. Although I'm around for over 15 years, this was the first time I heard of it.

And, to my amazement, the requirement now is so high that I myself would be a marginal candidate - or more likely I would end up with my second choice and became a journalist.

PS. You may wonder how could (at least some of) the crème de la crème undergo metamorphosis and become troublesome students and house officers. As our recently retired part-time endocrinologist loved to quote: Men are born ignorant but not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

Classmates

A few days ago, Vivian was in Yokohama to attend an international conference. One night, during our MSN chat, she asked, "Do you know BY ? He graduated from CU."

What a question ! BY was my university classmate, and we were in the same group during the final year. There were ten of us and it was 17 or 18 years ago. At that time, we were just a group of explorative and fun-seeking medical students, too worried about the future to imagine where and what we end up to be.

Let me see.

1. BY went to Singapore soon after he finished with the intern and is now a prominent surgeon in a university hospital.
2. KW becomes an interventional radiologist and runs an excellent private practice.
3. PY doubles his weight; he is a neurosurgeon.
4. HW works in an emergency department somewhere; his son has an IQ over 160.
5. WT becomes an oncologist.
6. PF is also an oncologist too; he repeated 6 months of medicine - that's no big deal.
   
7. RN is recently promoted to be consultant psychiatrist.
8. HT is a gastroenterologist - I probably see her husband, another of my classmate, more often.
9. RT enjoys her practice as a private gynecologist.

Although the years may have been tough, it remained an enjoyable period of time.

Emails

(Copy of emails between two friends of mine - on 22 January 2008.)

Dear Warren,

The index closed below 22000 this morning. If Branicke announces some drastic strategies tonight e.g. immediate interest cut >0.75%, there will be a rebound tomorrow. Otherwise, the HSI will continue to fall tomorrow. The latter is in fact a good thing because rapid and deep correction will usually finish early. If you are not holding many stocks and your aim is long-term investment, I think you can start considering the following stocks if their prices fall further by another 5-10% e.g. 2628 (current price $28), 941 (current $110), 1800 (current $17.46), and 5 (current price $106). For myself, I have enough long-term investment from my xyz retirement funds/stocks. Now I am holding a lot of cash for short-term technical rebound - remember my "10%-RULE" if you want to play short term game.

What do you think?

GS

******************************

Dear GS,

Bull market is dead.

However this will be a relatively gentle bear market so the magnitude of drop won’t be more than 50% from the peak. I guess a reasonable trough would be around 15800-17380 (~45-50% drop).

It doesn’t mean that HSBC will drop at the same magnitude to $75. If that’s really the case, it will be traded at PE of 7, PB 0.9 and dividend rate of 7.5% (similar to a cheap industry stock). I will beg/rob/steal/lend so that I can buy more HSBC shares. On the other hand, for those hottest stocks in hottest industries (Chinese insurance, property developer, retail), their share prices will vaporize by 60-80%. To me, the current prices for these companies are still exceedingly high.

10% drop from maximal gain usually means a few % cut loss from the capital because it is very difficult to gain 11% by speculation in bear market. That’s why most short term speculators will disappear at the trough of bear market when they become hopeless or cashless after repeated cut loss.

In fact the most difficult question is: how long will the bear market last? I have no idea but Joseph Yam (Monetary Authority CE) and Steven Green (HSBC Chairman) may give quite accurate estimation. Previous statistics suggests duration of 1.5 year and trough will be reached in 12 months time.

Warren

Conflict

If we take aside the name of the parties, we would find some similarity between our election and what's happening in Thailand.

Samak Sundaravej, the current prime minister, came to the power by a democratic election. He gained much of the support from farmers in the village and rural areas - because his policy includes major subsidies to the poor and less well developed parts of the country.

His opponents, who are largely middle-class in Bangkok and other large cities, tell another story. The subsides are no different from bribery for votes. (Some say Samak does buy for the votes.) Policies that are in favour of the poor also mean they put the middle-class people into disadvantage, and the voice of the latter group is never represented because they are out-numbered in a fair election system of one-person-one-vote.

Yes, you may say there is much corruption amongst government officials of Thailand. Nonetheless the conflict at hand is not because of a corrupted government, but that the current government, by her corruption or policy, harms a few badly but gives a trace of sweetness to many - with the officials pocketing all the margin.

Well, I decide not to declare there exists any difference in our own government - once I think of the recent happenings of Leung Chin-Man (梁展文).

PS. Another similarity is, of course, the presence of an ultimate power - the King Bhumibol Adulyadej in Thailand. I shall not elaborate further.

Communist

Dined with Jenny, my sister, on Saturday. We were again discussing who to vote on the coming Sunday.

"Are you going to vote for the lawyer's party ?" She asked. (Jenny, Louis - her husband, and I worked in three different sectors; all we could discuss was the Geographical Constituency and some general principles.)

Vivian gave me the same question some days ago. My answer has been rehearsed for so many times that it has become the official one: I do not have strong objection against nominal communists, but I shall never vote for real ones !

Alas, I have very little doubt that the objective of those barristers is a noble one. Nonetheless they are probably direct descendants of Karl Marx or Sun Yat-Sen without any evolution. Their ideals, if materialized, would be nothing but a road to serfdom - leading us to the Utopia of absolute zero.

PS. It doesn't necessarily mean that I shall support those nominal communists. A few of them are really things other than cream but rise to the top.

Poem

You consider my dream yesterday weired ? Not at all.

On a second thought, the Chinese man who should be most thankful for not being awarded with the Nobel Prize should be Lao She (老舍). (Well, he did not get the prize because the Nobel Prize committee only came to know that the famous Chinese writer had already drowned himself by the time they decided to give him the long deserved award. As you know, the prize is only meant for living people.)

Alas, if our great novelist did get the prize, he would certainly be asked to follow the footsteps of Cao Zhi (曹植) and demonstrate how to write a poem in seven paces: by the overjoyed audience or the Red Guards - who could tell ? And is there any difference ?

PS. Although the poem on bean and beanstalk is all too famous, our ancient giant of literature actually wrote two poems within seven paces each. Here is the other one:

兩肉齊道行，頭上帶凹骨。
相遇凸山下，欻起相搪突。
二敵不俱剛，一肉臥土窟。
非是力不如，盛氣不泄畢。

Don't be taken aback if you do not understand, Cao Pi (曹丕) didn't either. Otherwise there would not be the second one !

Performance

It comes as great news that Professor X, the prominent scientist of our country, is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year.

Although he is not the first Chinese who wins this prize, he is certainly remarkable - he was born and educated in the mainland; all his work was done under the Republic College of Science, of which he is a fellow.

The government of the Special Administration Region is no less joyful. To allow the citizens of the SAR to share the happiness of the whole country, the People's Government has asked Professor X to visit Hong Kong - right after he's back from Stockholm with his medal.

You may wonder what the great chemist is going to do here. A scientific lecture ? Oh, that's beyond the comprehension of the general public. Our government has reserved the Hong Kong Stadium to welcome our distinguished professor.

And, the Nobel Laureate will be singing a few songs as well as showing the ex-colonial people his talent in chemistry.

How ? By vanishing the China Bank Tower, walking across the Victoria Harbour, and many more conjurations !

How thoughtful is our government.

You may think Professor X would not be all happy. On that, you are wrong. He finds it quite a relief - once he knows that his colleague who get the Nobel Prize in Economics is asked to demonstrate how to compare prices between local supermarkets, and the Prize in Peace winner to show how to settle an argument between certain Mrs. Yip Lau and the Long Hair !

****************

Oh, I just doze off in the middle of the performance of those Olympic medal winners. My apology.

Evaluation

Shared the same table with Y and TL during the farewell dinner of CSC. Our discussion inevitably fell on to the plan of revising the current system of our teaching evaluation.

For sure the problem began when the university tried to evaluate the quality of teaching of individual academic staff by the students. (We never dreamed of such a thing when we were undergraduates.) Well, there's nothing wrong with this assessment - except the fact that the evaluation was entirely by the students and, at least it appears possible that, the system favours lecturers who are good at telling jokes and giving tips during examination.

And Y, together with LY, was asked to consider how the evaluation could be improved.

Many of the recommendations are workable and entirely reasonable; I shall not elaborate here. The only courageous (as defined by Sir Humphrey Appleby) suggestion, however, is to take a video for one bedside teaching - yearly for each academic staff - for the evaluation by other colleagues within the department.

I gasped before the vibration wave of Y's vocal cord settled. (My face probably turned green - I hallucinated someone asked if I needed some oxygen.)

PS. On a second thought, Socrates would not survive with such an assessment: his tutorials would be nothing but kept firing questions to his students - without even knowing the answer himself !

Farewell

Went to the farewell dinner of CSC last evening.

To the surprise of many of us, we found our dean and two previous deans amongst the guests. Our previous Secretary for Education and Manpower remained handsome and full of humour; the only trace of aging was the wrinkles on the face - of his secretary. In contrast, I have not seen the surgeon after he's back from New Guinea. Is he an incubating Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Futaro Yamada (山田風太郎) ?

(As the part-time endocrinologist himself commented: Old deans never die, they just lose their faculties.)

TW was certainly naive on this because each of them did make a short speech and everything became very artificial. I was about to come to the conclusion that the last tribute we paid to the retiring general physician was to give face and attend a dinner of this kind.

PS. There was also a saying that old teachers never die, they just lose their class. I'm sure our English professor has a class that will not be easily replaced by the younger generation.