Barcelona

Many of you may know Barcelona’s formula of success: It runs its own football school for kids and trains up its own players.

And the achievement is exemplary: Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta, Fabregas, Messi, you name it. They were brought up together. They are good friends ever since they were kids. They form a cohesive team.

You may argue that’s a strategy of in-breeding, and Spain may not come up with a sufficient number of good player to support the Club. (This concern is particularly relevant for Barcelona. Most of the kids recruited for its football school come from Catalonia – a small part of Spain with a population of 7.5 million.) That may be true. On the other hand, all the heroes in the Three Kingdoms Period came from a population of 8 million, and Li Shimin (李世民) chose all his remarkable ministers from a population of 12 million. The size of the selection pool may not be a problem as long as capable people are properly selected and nurtured.

PS. Our discussion illustrates indirectly another classical psychological trap: When we are making a choice, we tend to screen through as many options as possible because it seems more likely to find the best one. In reality, it is often a waste of energy, and, more often than not, we forget what we are looking for after being shown with too many alternatives. Moreover, in the scenario of training football players, we tend to neglect the importance of cultivating and taking care of the one being chosen, which are, after all, the most important steps to build a successful team.

Bolton

I may not be entirely right yesterday; some calculating football clubs do strategically recruit famous players before they retire – at a bargain price, of course.

For example, seasoned football fans may remember Bolton FC. In spite of its tight budget, it did attract a number of famous players during the years when it was staying in the English Premier League. Although they may not be in the prime time of their career, fading stars do help the reputation as well as the box office of the club. Nevertheless, it is a strategy to survive in a difficult position, not one to prosper and excel. In fact, Bolton struggled to stay in the Premier League for many years, but was relegated to the League Championship in 2008.

According to Warren Buffett, this is called the cigarette butts policy.

PS. Don’t get me wrong. I actually think Bolton did adopt a good strategy. It fails, not because the strategy is bad, but because it does not stick to one that is already working.

The real issue is, although they look very much similar, the strategies of Bolton and Real Madrid are entirely different. It is most disappointing if you are the owner of Bolton but try to run it as Real Madrid.

Madrid

If you are also a football fan, you would well predict what I'm going to say.

Real Madrid, under the direction of Florentino Pérez, is a typical high flyer. Excellent players - Luís Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Kaka, and the two Ronaldos - are recruited at the prime time of their career. Some of them prove to be very successful, others are very much less impressive. (In addition to Kaka, the list of our disappointment is long and includes McManaman, Beckham, Robinho, Owen, and many others.) Some won the FIFA World Player of the Year while playing for Real Madrid, but the more common scenario is a Player of the Year join the club afterwards. The sobering truth is quite some of them stayed in Madrid and were well paid for their declining career.

Oh, it doesn't matter. The Club is the world's richest football club - at least in terms of revenue.

Not a strategy that most of her competitors could, or should, adopt.

Football

One of my hobbies is reading columns written by football critics.

No, you didn't misunderstand. I do not watch football (soccer, I mean), but I like reading comments from the newspaper.

Seriously most of them are silly if not stupid - and that's why they are so entertaining. (For the same reason, I love reading the columns of many finance actors.) Nonetheless, by going through all those ingenuous verbosity, you do not only learn what happened in a football game, but also how well a football club is doing, and what strategy of competition it adopts.

I must say with time, I come to realize what Michael Porter says does not really apply to this circle, and, for any football club, there is really only one way to prosper: recruit and keep good players.

To achieve this goal, there are, in essence, two strategies; symbolically I shall call them Real Madrid and Bacelona.

PS. The most successful football club at this moment is, I must say, Bayern Munich. That's quite beyond the point if our focus of discussion is strategy.

Duty

While reading how a society should treat young criminals, I attended our department board meeting.

The hot topic this time was the low turn up rate of our students to bedside teaching. (Please refer to http://ccszeto.blogspot.hk/2014/01/blog-post_14.html and the subsequent posts for how this story began.)

As always, there were two sides of the argument. On one hand, our students may not be putting up the best of their effort to grasp the opportunity of learning. However, it is also possible that the standard of bedside teaching is highly variable and, as a Chinese tradition, our students vote by their legs. Unfortunately, we actually have very little say on what and how our students are taught (many of the teachers are government staff who help by good will), and a poor attendance may turn away enthusiastic helpers and inevitably jeopardize the opportunity of our students in the future.

During the meeting, one of my colleague said, "I'm not sure if attendance rate is a problem. We should try to make the bedside teaching attractive. Rather than forcing them to attend useless sessions, we should ask ourselves what we want to achieve."

I must say he was entirely correct. Nonetheless, I could not refrain from explaining an alternative view, "I think we should not consider seminars and bedside tutorials opportunities for our students to learn something. I see these sessions their duty. They may not gain anything by attending, but they have to do so all the same. If students could walk away from their duty because they see no benefit from the task, how could they become responsible doctors in the future?"

Yaiba

My recent leisure reading is by Samayou Yaiba (徬徨之刄) by Keigo Higashino (東野圭吾).

You may notice I read quite many novels by Keigo (and Miyabe Miyuki and so forth) every now and then. That’s largely the result of supply creating demand. My friend AL is a fan of the famous Japanese author and, until very recently, she keeps giving me novels that she finished reading. I consider it an excellent habit. After all, what good is there to leave used books on the shelf and let them putrefy?

How about the book?

Well, it is not an ordinary one of Keigo. The element of detection and deduction is minimal, and the focus of the story is not the case of murder. Keigo is more ambitious here and tries to discuss a difficult sociological problem: How a society should treat young criminals?

Unfortunately, Seicho Matsumoto (松本清張) is never my cup of tea.

Happiness

My recent bedtime reading is 100 Ways to Happiness by Timothy Sharp.

This is a small paperback that suggests possible ways that we busy people could make ourselves happy.

The difficulty is, happiness is a challenging goal, and staying happy ever after only happens in children’s bedtime stories. Happiness in our mind is acceleration in physics – moving forward in a constant speed doesn’t count. Even if energy is not a problem, you cannot accelerate forever because you are limited by the speed of light - by then the time stops. Similarly, to stay happy, we need new stimuli and excitements coming up time after time – an impossible mission.

I must say many of the suggestions are easier said than done. Nonetheless, a handful of them are highly practical and, according to the Pareto principle, should achieve most of the benefit. Notably, we should take regular breaks to re-charge our momentum, ease our mind before going to bed, and set a time everyday to do something we really enjoy.

To me, maybe it is writing this blog.

Study

(Our luncheon discussion continued.)

"Szeto, you are too cynical!" LS complained, "The talk of his Highness is not entirely useless. For example, he reminded us that we are entitled to take academic leaves so that we can undertake some collaborative studies with other institutes. Of course, the problem of a small and busy clinical division like us is we could find nobody to cover our clinical duty!"

I thought for a while and said, "No one to cover the clinical duty... you are quite right. Nonetheless, academic leave is an idea. I think I should take one. June is a good time as Euterpe will be doing her final exam. I propose a collaborative project with the The Hong Kong Institute of Education to study examination question of local primary school. Isn't that brilliant?"

My friends looked at me in reproach.

"Oh my. How would your proposed work benefit our faculty?"

"Em... How about using those primary school questions for our final MB examination?"

Lead

While I was thinking of threads to some famous people, Queen Marie Antoinette of Pluto came to visit us again.

(For visitors who do not know who his Highness is, please refer to http://ccszeto.blogspot.hk/2010/04/queen.html)

I must admit I did not have to privilege to meet his Highness as I had to do a presentation elsewhere. Shortly after the visit, I met my friends LS and TL during lunch. Naturally, I asked what news we have from the Palace of Versailles this time.

“Nothing. Just the old depressing idea – maybe topped by some new figures in the PowerPoint.” The professor of rheumatology said, "As always, the lovely Queen urged us to have more collaboration with other institutes."

"But his Highness did remind us to be careful while collaborating with others," TL added, "You know, when the university is looking at our research output while considering substantiation or promotion, collaboration with other institutes would be counted only if we appear as the first author."

"How ingenious!" I pursed by lips, "If we were kids, in essence we are telling the others Let's play together but I shall always be the leader. Who in the sane mind would like to play with you?"

Suitcase

My recent leisure reading is The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis.

I get this paperback from my friend and take it as an ordinary thriller detective fiction, like Il Suggeritore that I read some months ago (see http://ccszeto.blogspot.hk/2013/06/suggeritore.html).

Well, by and large it is – but not for me or someone with my background. The story has much to do with kidney transplant and organ trafficking, so much so that I could not see it from a layman point of view. I still consider it an excellent reading, but I would hardly agree the story is realistic.

Nonetheless, I must have to accept happenings in real life is often not realistic.

PS. To me, the most drastic part of the story is how the mother of that boy was drugged and imposed as an alcoholic. Quite some details are given, and it all seems very doable.

I fancy we shall see some famous people coming to us as similar cases in real life in the near future.

Fair

I must say I am not too interested in customer psychology or child upbringing; my attention is all on the philosophical implication.

But I shall begin by economics and phenomenon. Yes, nearly all adventurers in Lego are men. Same for all major characters in Transformers and most of the heroes in Avengers. They are toys and movies and comics for boys by and large anyway. Nonetheless, we have Barbie and Hello Kitty and many others. Who would remember Ken and Daniel? I agree if a country allows only Lego and Transformers, it is sexism - a specific form of violating justice, a basic virtue. But, if we ask for the same number of men and women adventurers in Lego, or as many Ken as Barbie in a toy store, we are misdirecting our effort to fairness - a pseudo-virtue.

You see, fairness is not an extension or derivative of justice, but a malignant mutant of the latter. By justice, we want everyone having a chance. By fairness, everyone should be the same. By justice, minority groups will not be barred from participating. By the name of fairness, you want them to get the same number of fruit, regardless of participation.

It is the most poisonous fruit that Satan has for us.

Go read http://ccszeto.blogspot.hk/2012/01/fifth.html

Gender

My simple phenomenological response to the letter is: What is the main kind of people who buy Lego?

No, not boys.

They are parents of boys. (And uncles and aunties, of course.) If you are the father of a girl, you would rather buy Barbie or Hello Kitty or similar kinds of puppet to cheer up your princess, but not Lego. Girls do not like playing with building blocks; they prefer dolls and pretty dresses and kitchenware and similar kinds of things - or so we think.

On the other hand, if you want to buy a set of Lego for a boy, you would not choose one with a woman adventurer. How on earth could a boy imagine role-play in that case?

Alas, you see? I should actually say or so we parents do. Yes, we shape the role of each gender when a child takes the first breathe in their life. Boys should do this and girls that. This is supported by much research in child psychology. True, there are girls who like games of boys and vice versa, but they should be in the minority. I agree we should protect their right to choose, but we should never aim to have as high as 50% of girls under that category in order to be fair.

Lego

Encounter a letter written by a 7 year-old girl to the Lego company:

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Dear Lego company:

My name is Charlotte. I am 7 years old and I love legos but I don’t like that there are more Lego boy people and barely any Lego girls.

Today I went to a store and saw legos in two sections the girls pink and the boys blue. All the girls did was sit at home, go to the beach, and shop, and they had no jobs but the boys went on adventures, worked, saved people, and had jobs, even swam with sharks.

I want you to make more Lego girl people and let them go on adventures and have fun ok!?!

Thank you.

From Charlotte.

***************************
You may find the original handwritten version in many web sites. Just search "Lego girl complaint" from Google. I have no comment on the opinion of a girl, but I am horrified to see the response of many people, in Facebook and in the media, all complaining bitterly about sexism and mourning for fairness.

Cooking

In addition to a book on European history, my recent bedtime reading is Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking.

For those who are not familiar with the field, Gordon Ramsay is one of the chefs with the most Michelin stars in the world. I must say his cookbooks are always enjoyable, but Home Cooking is better than most of the others. It is not merely a collection of recipes and tips, but covers many important but neglected areas of amateurish cooking - from what utensils to buy and how to plan a dinner party for friends to how to make use of leftovers and prepare a meal for a single person.

The lessons that he shares do not only apply to cookery but almost everything in life: Plan things well ahead, and don't be over-ambitious.

PS. Other than cookery, Ramsay is famous for his colourful and spicy vocabulary.

Go watch Hell's Kitchen.

Revolution

My recent leisure reading is Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Revolution.

Yes, this is the second book of the Age’s trilogy – the first of which I finished not too long ago.

The scope of this book is deliberately limited; it covers the short period from 1847 to 1877. Unlike the previous Capital, however, the Revolution is more global in perspective and does not discuss only on what happened in Europe. A considerable length is spent on the theory of Karl Marx and how the idea came along. More importantly, Hobsbawm did go into some depth to discuss the attempt of modernization of two ancient countries: Japan and China.

The idea of Hobsbawm was simple: Japan has a long history of adopting foreign culture, while the Middle Kingdom has its own system and has been running well for thousands of years. If you consider modernization as taking up the barbarian system, there is no way you could make any meaningful change.

I may not agree entirely with what Hobsbawm said, but that’s certainly an objective and authoritative view.

PS. Unlike Japan and China, Hobsbawm discussed very little about the development of India. I believe that’s because India was under the control of Britain during that period and there was minimal progress with regard to revolution or modernization of the social system.

Respect

In general, I shall not do copy-and-paste in this site. Nonetheless, I would take the following article by our man from Pluto as an important exception. It was first published in his Facebook page (see https://www.facebook.com/notes/joseph-sung/do-they-deserve-our-respect/10152237628654188). I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I play plagiarism for once.

Here you go:

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Recently, I received a complaint from a lecturer in English Language Teaching Unit who taught in our school since 1997. As she is approaching her retirement this year, she received a statement in the Course Teaching Evaluation (an assessment form filled in by students at the end of a course) using the most obscene and rude expression asking her to… (I would not dare to repeat what he/she said). She found this comment very hurtful.

In her letter she said “My husband and I have raised a son and a daughter. Our son graduated from the NYU and even before he graduated, he had been offered a job in Boston. Our daughter is graduating early from the University of Chicago and is getting ready to enter law school there. Because both of them are about the same age as my students, I bring to classroom the same level of dedication and hard work that I have given to my children, for I see in each and every students of mine my own sons and daughters… I am truly saddened by this student’s remark for he/she wrote it under anonymity, indeed, a vindictive and coward act. The remark is an obscenity and no teacher should be subject to such a verbal abuse.” I totally agree with her.

I do not know what has happened. I do not know how good (or bad) this teacher teaches. But I can feel the pain and frustration in her, to see such behavior in our younger generations. I have gone through my days as a student, and I have been taught by lousy teachers: teachers who did not prepare his/her class well, teachers who were boring and disorganized, teachers who were stern or even rude. But never in my wildest imagination I would use such words to abuse my teachers. I do not know who this student was, and I have no intention to find out. I do not know his background or his major. I do not have a clue why he/she was so bitter and disgraceful, or was it merely a joke (but that was not even funny). Nothing would be a good enough reason for verbal abuses from a learned person.

The teacher who filed the complaint said in her letter “It is true that I am deeply offended, but this feeling will, in no time, dissipate because deep in my heart, I know that I have always taught with integrity, fairness and respect for my students. Sadly, the student is the real victim of his/her act, for he/she has no appreciation for what truly matters… the discernment to know right from wrong.” I was speaking to myself, “if we have not taught them anything, at least teach our future generations to respect others as well as respecting themselves.”
I am sad that in the current educational system, and under the big wave of commercialization of education, the teacher-student relationship has deteriorated to such level. In many colleges, especially those private universities, students become “customers” and school becomes “vendors”. In order to attract families who are capable of and willing to paying high tuition fees to some schools, the facilities are upgraded, and students’ (and their parents’) opinion are highly regarded. Yet, complains from students continue to increase, from double bunks accommodations, school bus service to quality of food at cafeteria. Teachers are supposed to give nicely printed hand-out in classes, or at least post their power-points before lectures. I have personally encountered students coming into my class late holding soft-drinks in his hands. I have stopped my lecture because I saw students talking on cell phone in my class.  Teachers would not say a word about this as this will affect their “student evaluation score”. They would rather finish their class promptly and return to their office or laboratory to continue on their research. Students become more upset as they found that their teachers are not interested in them.  And the viscous cycle simply goes on. Funding agencies and ranking organizations of university look at student evaluation and feedback as one of their most important parameter of “quality education”. Schools therefore will do everything to please their customers in order to gain reputation and higher funding.

No, let us stop this. Let us rebuild our relationship and mutual respect between teachers and students. Let all teachers treat their students as their own children, talk to them (instead of to the slides on the big screen), listen to them, and inspire them. Let students pay due respect to their teachers, greet them with a smile passing by, concentrate in classes and work on their assignment with honesty and integrity.  Teaching and learning is a two-way traffic. Confucius said “I will not enlighten a heart that is not already struggling to understand, nor will I provide the proper words to a tongue that is not already struggling to speak. If I hold up one corner of a problem and the student cannot come back to me with the other three, I will not attempt to instruct him again.” Analects 7.8

I hope that the student who wrote this remark to our English lecturer will see this blog… and go to apologize to her.

Question

You may say we should follow the advise of Tsao Chip (陶傑) and use the British system to teach history to our school children. The idea is simple: Try to arouse interest and focus on people rather than chronology.

In short, we should pay attention to his story rather than what happened in which year

But, we do not have to go that far for an example. Sima Qian (司馬遷), the great historian of our own country, used the same approach. Events were described according to the life and time of individual persons. Yes, there may be overlaps between records, but those are useful reinforcement for our memory, rather than unnecessary duplications.

(On that, many educationalists of my own medical school would not agree, and they try to eliminate every bits and pieces of repetition when they designed the curriculum. Jove, how often do we encounter a genius who could remember something after seeing it just once?)

Year

While talking about forgetting our own history, I learnt from the morning paper that over half of the secondary school students failed in Chinese History during the recent DSE mock examination.

No, I'm not going to say anything about their knowledge or examination technique. What really important is how the students were taught - manifested by what questions were being asked:

What happened in 1930?

Why on earth do an ordinary citizen need to know specific happenings of any year? No, hardly any number is worth remembering. Don't make a rush comment that our students could only recite facts but never understand and criticize. That's the result of our own system.

PS. I must admit there are exceptional years that we may wish to remember. For example, the one that we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War, or the one with an exceptionally long May.

Erase

One of my little friends cancelled his account in Facebook recently.

I shall not postulate why he did so - everyone seems to have their own hypothesis. Nonetheless, this incident is, as far as I could remember, the second time that this friend of mine cancelled his Facebook account.

Yes, it is simple enough. Something happens. You want a brand new start. But, history becomes a burden. Let's erase it. All silly doings in the past seem to have never taken place. You are born again. Your hands are clean. As the Big Brother says, history could be edited, created, or erased, depending on what you need.

But, at the same time, you also lost your memory of your good old days and legacy from all the experience. Many a time history repeats itself because we do not remember what happened in the past and learn from it.

And, I may not be talking about my little friend only. A good many people and countries are doing the same.

收工

While we were waiting to start the morning round after the Chinese New Year holiday, BK and I found the following Fai Chun (揮春) at the nursing station of our ward:

I could not help smiling to our ward manager, "We really should make thirty or forty copies of it and stick it on to each and every bed of our ward!"

She was obviously not amused.

Stuck

Seeing that Matthew is lost in an evening-dreaming, Simon clears his throat and said, "Em... gentlemen, you know, our problem now is we have no way out - and neither does our main tenant have one."

"That's certainly the case for Peter. Although the FSD report seems to prove his hands are clear, there is always an air of uncertainty. After all, everyone sees that he is not welcome by his tenants. No landlord elsewhere will ever accept him - and I could not imagine he would agree to move out and live alone in some nondescript village hut!" John nods.

"But, how about us?" Matthew asks.

"My friend, let's face it. With all these happenings, it is equally obvious that we are no humble and receptive tenants!" Simon sighs.

Matthew is speechless. He begins to see what problem he is facing.

Trouble

“You know, there is rumor around saying that our complaint to the Fire Services Department has been triggered by Sir Christopher – with an aim to get rid of Peter from the apartment.” John says.

“But that’s not true!” Matthew finds that he has to speak louder than he should, “If anything, the only wrongdoings of our landlord is to neglect our original complaint.”

“All the same. People like to believe juicy stories, and our main tenant is no doubt a brilliant practical psychologist. He has successfully planted the image of a victim to most people.” Simon adds.

“Matthew, I’m afraid our adversaries are not limited to ordinary people around.” John says, “Many landlords and main tenants of other apartments find our complaint disturbing.”

“How could that be?”

“Because we have opened the Pandora box – or a can of worm, whatever. Officials from the FSD are becoming more alert. All tasks about electric circuit, however simple that is, need a certified engineer from now on.”

Matthew puts up a bitter smile. All of a sudden he realises the music in the pub is Beatles’ Yesterday.

Up

Matthew pulls himself together after a prolonged day-dreaming (or evening-dreaming literally). He decides to kill the time in the pub nearby.

To his surprise, John and Simon are already there.

“Hey! What’s up, guys?” Matthew pretends to be casual.

“Man, the game is up,” Simon says, “The Fire Services Department is about to release the result of their investigation.”

“And the conclusion is…?”

“They do not think that Peter has not been working as an illegal engineer.”

“Alas, that’s the inevitable conclusion by bureaucrats,” Matthew sighed, “You could always find an explanation for every incident. But, when a series of incidents happen together, even if each of them has a specific reason, you would have to believe there must be an underlying factor in common – this is why we need statistics. When it comes to disturbing behaviour of a person, should we believe in people who actually live with him, or extraterrestrials who come and visit the site once every blue moon?”

“I’m afraid the report is just part of our trouble – and not the major one.” John added.

“Why?"

Complaint

To begin with, Matthew and other tenants made a complaint to Sir Christopher, the landlord.

But they received no reply. Well, that should really be expected. Why should a nobleman soil his hands and care about the electric switch or toilet or television in one of his many houses?

Annoyed and disappointed, they wrote a letter to the Fire Services Department, stating that their main tenant - not being an electric engineer - was manipulating the electric supply and switch box of the apartment.

Alas, that's serious. The officials of the FSD came to see to the matter. As you would imagine, Peter protested vigorously. After all, it is a criminal offence if the allegation is substantiated, but there is a considerable grey zone in this area. What could be done by a layman and what calls for a trained engineer?

At the end of the day, FSD decided to set up an independent committee to investigate the case in full detail. (Discerning visitors may recognize this is the official way for bureaucrats to do away with responsibility.)

And, that marked the beginning of Matthew's nightmare - for Peter came to realize the tenants were setting plots behind him.

Apartment

Matthew is tired.

It is late in the evening, but he doesn’t want to go home. Alas, it is the home that makes him tired. Or, could that tiny room be considered his home – in its common and literal sense?

Yes, he lives there – a subdivided unit of an apartment, in which lives another six or seven people. Andrew, James, John, Philip, Thomas, and Simon. Well, it is true that each of them has their own agenda. But, who doesn’t. Matthew has his own considerations all the same. The important thing is all of them are, by and large, nice and decent people.

The problem is Peter.

He does not follow the rules of the game.

Yes, Peter is the main tenant and stays in the largest room. But it doesn't mean that he is entitled to control the electric switch, occupy the washroom for hours, or turn the volume of his television to the maximum in the middle of the night.

"We need to do something." Matthew told the other tenants a year ago.

And that began their nightmare.

(To be continued.)

Birthday

While thinking about the impact of Facebook, a slightly annoying hassle that Zuckerberg introduces is the birthday reminder.

Oh, I should actually say birthday reminders, because it is never a problem when I find one name on the list. If the name is really a friend of mine, I will try to drop a few lines on his dashboard. If that’s nothing more than a distant acquaintance, the image will not pass beyond my retina.

But, if two or more persons that I added share the same birthday, I have a problem. Shall I send my greetings to the one whom I consider a genuine friend and neglect the others? Would they see my greetings to someone else and feel unhappy? Well… It doesn’t sound right to my heart anyway. Are these persons so distant that I do not care for writing a sentence or two?

I think too much, I know.

Facebook

While thumbing through the finance section of my morning paper, my attention is caught by an editorial on the business prospect of Facebbok.

The message is simple: The prospect of this giant of social network is grim because it is becoming less popular amongst the youngsters. Since many parents are joining Facebook, with an aim to get in touch with the “private” side of their children and possibly to link up with old friends of their own, the younger generation have a feeling of being spied. They would merely keep an idle identify in the Republic of Zuckerberg, but to connect with their friends via other networks – Twitters, Whatsapp, and so forth.

On a first glance, the argument sounds entirely logical. And it fits well with what I could observe. Nonetheless, I’m not convinced that Facebook is losing its business.

Why? Because the income of Zuckerberg’s country does not (directly) depend on the number of its citizen, but, rather, on advertisement – the number and unit price of which are related to how good the country in promoting the sales, and, therefore, indirectly related to the purchasing power of its citizens. It goes without saying that the parents and middle age people are more well-to-do than their children.

For that reason, I believe running a social network is rather similar to many other kinds of business: being trendy is good, but making money is quite a different matter.

走雞

平心而論，荔芋香酥鴨上桌，心下倒是一沉。較之楓林小館，此處出品炸得略焦，鴨身稍乾而欠油潤。然而啖之卻又不錯，確實做到鴨肉香而芋泥酥脆，效果滿意。

琵琶豆腐乃另一傳統食際，以蝦膠混入豆腐打碎，搓成球形煮熟，再扣以琉璃茨。工序不少郤又難以賣錢，是以素不為食肆所喜。這裡所作，軟而不散，滑而夠味，甚是不錯。

單尾是上湯豆苗和海鮮炒飯。前者平平無奇，後者郤炒得夥粒分明而不油膩，功夫到家。甜品是栗蓉西米布甸，焦香而不溜，只是中心水份略多，是為美中不足。

總的來説，這餐吃得甚是滿意，價錢也是合理。埋單時想起原本點了炸子雞郤未有出現，賬單上也無此紀錄。竊以為新春當前，“走雞”未免意頭有所欠缺。回心細想，家人齊整團聚，原是邀天之幸。身外之物，偶有走雞，倒也無需執着。