In memory of.

I met a girl several years ago through work. I vividly remember the first time I met her at the HB118 conference room. I heard her spoke and knew she's from Taiwan, I reckoned she speaks a little awkwardly cause the accent was a mix of China and Taiwan,  which perhaps was a effort to blend in the business environment. She was dark, pretty, with a deep voice and an Asian American vibe.

I didn't give her much thought and assumed I'll never see her again, until my boss mentioned that I should meet up with her, since she's also from Taiwan and perhaps we have some opportunity to work together.

We met at the Sculpting in Time Coffee near the Worker Stadium. I don't really remember the details, just that we learned that we're from the same city and went to the same high school, she's two years (or three?) younger than I am. I also felt she's a bit tomboyish cause she held the door when I left.....

She went back to the States, we texted each other for a while and moved on with our lives.

This would become the pattern of our relationship.

The third time we met, was at the Swiss Hotel. I remember her sitting at the lobby.

The fourth time we met, was with my two colleagues in a hip restaurant, when we just came back from Hangzhou.

The fifth time we met was at a bar in Oakland.

(in 2015 I send her a list of song for her birthday.)

The last time we met was last month in 798 art park.

It's been two years. Still cool, funny, sunny and shinny. She shoot things with her phone often, the fake leaves on the building, graffitis, art work, us...and commented on how cheap everything is. We talk about her passion for sustainable lifestyle, her outdoor projects, a little of her family, her upbringing....we had Japanese for lunch and she went off to her deeds.

During those years I had someone and lost someone, I fell for someone and fell out of someone. Those feelings kept coming and going. I still can't pin point when the feeling begin to crystalize. When it begin to manifest. We would meet once or twice and off to our lives. All I know is I misses her when she's gone, but recovers after a while. I would move forward a little where she take a step backwards, which I would stop moving forward then we would reset.

It was a equilibrium I can handle.

I'm not sure what changed this time, maybe it's the pass away of my cousin, whom I always see during the holidays made me realized that life can be short and death can be near. I finally told her how I feel. We texted a little then the Chinese moon day came. I did something maybe a little more major step forward, then comes the long silence from other side.

--

I've miss you so, but in the same time I believe it'll all pass away and we'll get back to square one, like we always do, square one.

What do you feel about me? Your message may be loud and clear but I would still prefer you to say it to me "Sorry I just don't feel the same way.".

Sometimes I also wonder, if it just that people love in different ways, maybe being non responsive is just a personal trait, maybe it's not me, maybe she have feelings for me too, maybe she loves me but there are reasons she can't be with me, or maybe (very likely?) she just doesn't feel the same way. Maybe she forgot about me and moved on with her life already, maybe she's already with someone, maybe she's too career oriented.

These thoughts, logic, and reasons keep twirling, circling and running in my mind.

The best thing about living is hope, but hope can also be the worst.

Perhaps our feelings for each other is irrelevant.

I stuck with my principle of being non needy which I still abide today. I believe that if she feels the same way, the process should be effortless. It's a two way street, and can't be forced.

This is the reason I'm writing this, to let it out, the digest, to reboot.

--

Maybe I'm just imagining things, maybe I'm too emotionally invested, maybe this isn't healthy, maybe I'm naive, maybe I just want to feel.

But I won't regret trying, and I am grateful of someone who can make me feel again, the anxiety, the obsession, the negativities. Of course, there's also the positivities, laughing, excitement, devotions, unconditional love.
--

She is my obsession, my desire,  I stalk her on the internet just to feel closer to her.

She's also someone I feel that I can love unconditionally and made my heart full of gratefulness of existing of.

However much I don't want to let her go, it's time to close the chapter. For now.

I'm still the lone wolf, who can't commit, who believe she's never good enough for anyone, who's emotionally detached, who hurt the person she loves the most.

But this is for you. My love, my desire, my drug, my chemical, my craving, my demon, my angel, my weakness, my hope, my sun, my star, my Muse.

Change.

Had to find some stuff from my gmail inbox and glimpsed some conversation we had.

I've changed quite a bit. For better or for worse.

I am slowing turning into a pathological liar, which we call it hustling.

Some things I shouldn't mention to certain people, and some things I should specifically bring up.

Now I speak the language Vague.

There's always a angle and always ways of bending the reality or more precisely my reality.

I traveled a little too much which causes me to have bad temper and hurt people.

QQ mail and Wechat group chat function is the best integration ever to ruin my work-life balance.

I've also learned.

Acting immediately on my feelings only brings a brief sense of winning and happiness, whereas the consequence goes a long way.

Perhaps conflicts are unavoidable and happens when your relationship deepens.

My shortcoming which are plenty.

I feel like a track being remixed by the people around me and my experience.

I don't know if I came out as a better track, as the word "better" doesn't have a clear definition anymore.

I think of you sometimes. Imagine sharing those stories with you, though the feeling of us is barely recognizable.

The adult me believe it turned out for the best.

And the rest of me misses you.

Yann Tierson

I think of all the pianist so far Yann Tierson is the one immediately clicked with me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omhHQ2mVWXU

Lexa's death and the 100

"In peace may you leave this shore. In love may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels until our final journey to the ground. May we meet again."

--The 100

 It's probably hard to describe the feeling of being this incredibly sad for the death of a fictional character.

There's a lot of hate on Twitter and Tumblr (which I start following for the gifs, fan arts and spoilers), mainly for the misrepresentation of the LGBT, lesbian pretty much always dies, especially once we find our happiness. But I have to say it could've been much worse, and I think the writers tried their best to give Lexa a proper death.

1. Before she died she made Titus promise not to hurt Clarke
2. She told Clarke the next commander will protect her
3. Clarke said she doesn't want the next commander but she wants Lexa
4. Lexa told Clarke she was right, life should be much more about surviving
5. Lexa died knowing Clarke loves her too
6. Lexa's death moved the story significantly forward

The only problem I have is the main producer who keep promoting the episode as "A major plot twist" blah blah, which is very insensitive to a community who has been discriminated and misunderstood for generations after generations.

Lexa meant a lot to a lot of people. For me, it was the happy escape from my turmoil daily life. The thought of Clexa always puts a smile on my face. Those little micro expressions of Eliza Taylor and Alycia Dabnamcarry make the emotions very real and believable. For some people, maybe is a bit more.

But in general I'm not angry, just very very sad. What really broke me is how much it reminded me the death and passage of my love ones, and how every journey comes to an end and no matter how much we love each other, how much we try to hold on, in the end death always separates us.

May we meet again, but perhaps we never do.

Alan Turing and the Universal Machine - Part 1.

So I've been reading Alan Turing: The Enigma. I'm only about 1/3rd through, but really loving it so far, and thought of writing about it.

The part that interested me the most is the part where the development of the concept of the Universal Machine. Since I am unfamiliar with mathematic philosophy, I re-read the part many times and did a lot of background research. Below is a very rough explanation of the machine.

It all begin with the definition of Mathematics. Roughly speaking it splits into three stages.

Stage I. When mathematics became more than arithmetics, and numbers are treated as symbols and follows a set of rules.

Stage II. Is mathematics complete (ie, all the truth can be derived by following the rules), consistent (no contradiction) and decidable (can determine truth or false with standard steps) under the Formal System?

Stage III. The Universal Machine that aim the solve Stage II problem 3.

Gödel proved the first two problem as false, which is you will always find a statement you know is true but can not prove, and second, which is largely derived from the first, not all mathematical statement is consistent.

Math Stackexchange does a much better explanation than I do:

http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/453503/can-someone-explain-g%C3%B6dels-incompleteness-theorems-in-layman-terms

The more I study the more I understood that the Turing Machine is to solve a logical problem. Even though it is a "Machine", it only serve as a tool to visualize the concept to solve a fundamental problem in logic.

So how does the machine solve the problem of decidability?

First we imagine a machine that does everything a human can do when solving a problem. If we break down problem solving:

1. Read/Write symbols (ie numbers, operators etc..).
2. Execute steps based on certain rules, in the machine's case would be the "Configuration".
3. Conclude.

Therefore theoretically you can solve any problem a human can solve within the Mathematical system with the Machine, as long as you have the configuration. The Universal Machine, is a machine that is encrypted with all the configuration (which can also be a machine itself) of modern mathematics, therefore solving all the modern mathematical problem.

Turing called the results the machine able to churn out: computable numbers.

Turing proved that not all problems can be decided by giving a example of a paradoxical question: the halting problem.

First you imagine a machine that asks the question: does the machine halts?

And set up the configuration as below:

a. Yes: loop
b. No: halt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=macM_MtS_w4

If you really think deeply, you would see the configuration itself is a paradox can not be solved. Let's imagine if the input is:

1. Halt -> Yes, loop (Doesn't halt)
2. No -> Halt (but it is looping since the input is no halt)

Therefore creates a contradiction, and Turing determined that not all statements are decidable.

Ok. This is pretty much for part one. There's a lot of resource online for this question,  Udacity and Mathematics Stackexchange has been very helpful. Go check it out!

Anti-corruptions in China

So this post is really about the stories Hao heard from a Mr. Yu. Below is just a bit of a discussion we had, feel free to skip to the story part.


We began our discussion about the slowed economy in China, and Mr. Hao mentioned how locking up people does not that solve corruption, since it is a rather systematic issue. 

The rationale is that public servants in China typically have salary of 2 - 3 thousand RMB per month. "If you're a public servant, you're either politically well-connected, or you've studied very hard." , while the system itself is already a bit of a limbo, there is no clear roadmap for career advancement or whatsoever in the public sector.

To make ends meet, most people resort to taking under the table money, mostly from large infrastructure projects. The bribes gives the public servant incentives to push forward deals, and thereby more projects are build. By threatening people with jail time, you take away to incentives, and no deals are made, aka slows down the economy.

This argument may sound like a legit reason to take bribe. Coming back to the systematic issue, in my opinion, the first issue lies the lack of (or lack of execution) clear investment standards and procedures in SOEs (Stand Owned Enterprise), which thereby leave out grey area to influence and take bribes, the second, of course is the low salary.

Therefore in my opinion, the worst thing about this wave of anti corruption is because it's a personal fix rather than a system fix, and the effect is rather short-term than long term. In the end it serves more for Mr. Xi's political agenda, than structuring a more transparent and fair political system for China. 

Of course the above is a lot of hearsay and admittedly a very shallow analysis. I think I'll do a blog post later (or maybe never....) with a deeper research and analysis of the issue. 

---

The background is we have a project in XXX province, and few of my colleagues went there to scout the project and had dinner with the head of the county Mr. Yu. 

Story 1. "I'm keeping you on file."

Ever since the anti-corruption started, authorities have been visiting Mr. Yu everyday, to "collect evidence". And after a while they told Mr. Yu "I'm keeping you on file.", then left. Mr. Yu doesn't know what's "on the file", but was pretty sure that one day if he's on the wrong side whatever is on the file will come back to haunt him.

Story 2. "The Text."

One day Mr. Yu received a photo of him and a naked girl in a motel room, with a note saying "Dear Mr. Yu, you're a good fella and certainly would be ashamed you lose your job and integrity over this, please transfer 150,000 rmb to XXX account.". 

Upon receiving the photo, Mr. Yu first panic for a while, but then thought closely "I'm pre---tty sure I've never sleep with this one". He did some research and found out the photo was photoshopped. Seems like they found his picture online and photoshopped his face with a naked girl.

Since it's a fairly small county, Mr. Yu phoned the head of the police department directly to try to get the blackmailer. Apparently someone within the police department was also blackmailed "Oh yeh, someone in our department received the same photo. The guy reported to me immediately. I asked him if he did it." 

"I'm really not sure........I must have!!"

  

Best storyteller on earth (at least top 5% anyways.)

I've befriended with the best storyteller on earth for 2 years now, and thought I should record some of the stories and topic we've discuss. Most are just random stuff, like some theories we developed, history, science, life, business, etc..

It's aim to be more a entertaining read than anything, hope the readers will enjoy!