Welcome to our country! Here's a javelina!

The hottest news in Taiwan right now is the Opposition leader's visit to China, since the KMT quarreled with the communists some sixty years ago.

To show their warmest welcome, Mr Lien will be received in the most respected and and honoured manner. It is beyond red carpet and 90 degree bows: He gets to bring home a pair of panda.

Only a handful of countries are advantaged this way. They have rare, adorable cuddly animals to be their ambassadors. Australia is another one, the late Pope John Paul II for example, was thrusted with a koala the second he stepped out of the plane when he visited in the late 1980s. (In the photo, both looked dumbfound)

Not very fair is it? I bet other countries would love to have animal ambassadors to replace out of date politicians. (Taiwan, for one, is in very bad need for an animal foreign minister whose worst public behaviour will only be scratching itself in the private areas) The cruel truth is, some country's native animal is just not cute enough.

I mean, I don't think millions of Americans will want to queue up to greet the extremely rare living fossil tuatara from New Zealand as they did when President Nixon brought them the Pandas Ling-ling and Sin-sin after his trip to China.


Or bathing monkeys from Japan.

Or Javelina from Mexico.....you get the drift.

Oh but don't you worry about the tuatara's feelings. Coming from the dinasour's generation, I think they rather be feared than to be cuddled.

女生的團性

"他們分手了" 我說

"為什麼? 那麼好的女生..." 她們驚呼

"是女方提分手的"

"喔...." 她們的臉上寫滿了了然.

這是否也算是女生天性的一種? 我們會自動的第一時間假設男生個個都是負心漢. 而發現故事是相反的時候, 我們會由同仇敵氣到同情了解:本來嘛...那個男生根本不知道該如何對待她,拖了那麼久才分還是便宜到他了說!!

而事實上我們是先認識男方的

Jay Chou and Bucket of Cows

I was recently introduced to Babel Fish, the AltaVista translator that has this incredible ability to turn anything random and stupid written in non-English into something poetic in English. For example:

今晚月亮好圓

Tonight moon good circle

Rosa's translation: The moon is round tonight

我看他不爽

I thought he is feeling well

Rosa's translation: That guy bugs me

有什麼不妥 有話就直說
別窩在角落 不爽就反駁
到底跩什麼 懂不懂籃球
有種不要走 三對三鬥牛

Has any not ready to have the speech to speak frankly
other nest to be feeling well in the quoin
on retort 跩 any cannot understand the basketball
to have plants do not have to walk three pairs of three bucket of cows


This is an excerp from Jay Chou's song which I am not going to translate. Although I should make it a point that the song is about basketball, not bucket of cows....however close.

How about something actually poetic:

一曲新詞酒一盃。去年天氣舊亭臺。夕陽西下幾時迴。
無可奈何花落去，似曾相識燕歸來。小園香徑獨徘徊。

A Qu Hsintz'u a liquor cup. Last year weather old pavilion. When west the setting sun under returns. Has no alternative the flower to fall, seems to have met before the swallow return. The small garden fragrant diameter alone paces back and forth.

Rosa's translation: This is a beautiful ancient Chinese poem written by an once Prime Minister in the Song Dynasty. So...forget it. No way am I ever going to be able to translate this one. Besides, you mean you don't get it from Babel Fish?

The Differences in levels

張曼娟用虔誠的心情殲滅掉盤中美食.

張愛玲為了成全一段愛情陷滅了一座城市.

而我,
最多只能披頭散髮咬牙切齒的用托鞋一隻一隻滅掉廚房中囂張的蟑螂

Whats dangerous and eats nuts?

I am currently under a lot of stress. In less than 12 hours I would be meeting with my supervisor and I have NOTHING to show her. I am so worried about the meeting and how I will make a total fool of myself in front of her and 3 other academics that I went to this website and found the following out about myself:




"Congratulations, you're syphilis!

Transmitted by direct contact with one of your infections (usually through unprotected sex), you're one nasty STD! In your initial stages, you cause sores, usually on the genitals or in the rectum, but that's only the delicious beginning. Later on, you'll cause a rash, and then slip away ... but you won't be gone. No no, my friend. You're far too cunning.

You'll still pass yourself on to anyone the poor soul you've infected has sex with (anal, vaginal or oral), and you'll start to erode their muscles and nerves! In fact, you'll eventually lead, if left untreated, to malcoordination, blindness, paralysis, dementia and then death!

And that's not all - if you infect a pregnant women, you'll also be passed to their child! A single shot of penicillin will kill you, but shhhhh .. I won't tell anyone if you won't."

Rat cells and I

In continuing the stream of scary pictures on the blog, I introduce to you the subject of my recurring nightmares, the source of my misery, the cause of my depression, the reason behind my suicide:

Blog, PC12 cells. PC12, Blog.

Sure they are small. And look fairly harmless. But I assure you, they can give torture like no other.

Much to my supervisor's dismay, I still don't know very much about these cells. But I shall tell you what I know about them here. They are tumorous rat neurons that are terribly vulnerable to infection attacks (a major potential hazard in my way to a degree) and they love to clump together which annoys my supervisor thus another threat to my graduation. Normally, they should look like the roundish blobs you see above (actually, they should be "irregularly shaped" but whatever). If you feed to them this expensive chemical like I do called NGF, or Nerve Growth Factor, however, they grow long protrusions like what you see in the centre of the picture.

Or they are supposed to. Obviously they are doing anything but that in my experiment.

On the plate where I grow my cells and feed them NGF, instead of differenciating (i.e. growing their processes), they are multiplying (something they are NOT supposed to do because I am not feeding them anything to encourage proliferation), quickly filling up the area and making the plate to look like the "surface of Mars", according to a random passer by who was probably disappointed when I told him that was no Mars he was seeing.

Since this is the debut appearance of PC12 on the blog, I shall say only nice things about it.

...

Ok I give up. I have nothing more to say.

Love at first sight

Meet Blythe, cousin of Bride of Chuckie.

Ok she is not really. She is just an overly expensive doll (ranging from $AUD200 to somewhere rediculously above $AUD200) that has been around for almost 33 years and has surprising numbers of fans (mature women mostly...women who share the common claim "It's love at first sight")

Blythe was born in 1972, and did in fact freak out children when she first appeared because of her out of proportioned head with the equally out of proportioned eyes that can flap open and close. One year after her debut appearance, the production was shut down (probably due to health hazards it caused....ranging from vomitting to heart attack) for the next 30 years. That would have been it for her, (ah...if only) except the Japanese came along and through weird taste, bought the company and managed to make Blythe the hottest collectible amongst Asian women.

I have been told more than once that I have taste different to the common mass out there. But really?! Love at first sight?! To me, it is more like, Aaaaah-O-My-Gosh-Get-Away-From-Me at first sight.

Apparently, you can buy separate parts for the doll on the internet to suit different occasions. Yup, you can actually bid for her hair, her arm to even her eyeball (a tip to those who are not as financially abled, if you want a late-night look for your Blythe, just substitute for the chuckie doll eyeball...its much cheaper!) on eBay!

I would willingly pay $200 so I never see her again.

The bells. The songs. The chants

...in his loving memory

鐘聲. 歌聲. 口號聲

世界昨日送走了一位偉人.

隆 重而莊嚴的禮儀, 在第三個千禧年中, 用最古老的傳統在全球的矚目下, 淚水中, 完成了. 說起來也真了不起, 不同國家, 不同宗教, 不同理想的幾百萬人聚集在小國家內, 廣場中, 致敬他. 禮儀進行中不時有陣陣掌聲響起, 義大利的動人傳統, 代表著尊崇和緬懷.

我是透過電視的實況轉播觀禮的, 十萬八千里的距離外還是無法抑制住泊泊留下的眼淚.

喪禮完成了. 一星期的悲傷, 應該就在嘹亮的鐘聲中漸漸淡去. 可是為什麼我的難過, 越來越深?

Google and the rest

gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle!


This is a list I stole from Vic's blog of things that Google do:

通報 http://www.google.com/alerts
問答 http://answers.google.com
型錄 http://catalogs.google.com
分類 http://www.google.com/dirhp
學者 http://scholar.google.com
購物 http://froogle.google.com
群組 http://groups-beta.google.com/grphp
影像 http://images.google.com
試驗系統 http://labs.google.com
地理資訊 http://www.google.com/lochp
新聞 http://www.google.com/nwshp
特藏 http://www.google.com/options/specialsearches.html
大學 http://www.google.com/options/universities.html
無線 http://www.google.com/options/wireless.html
電郵 http://gmail.google.com
部落格 http://www.blogger.com
桌面搜尋 http://desktop.google.com
圖片管理 http://www.picasa.com
語言選擇 http://www.google.com/language_tools
衛星影像 http://www.keyhole.com
工具列 http://toolbar.google.com
程式介面 http://www.google.com/apis
原版介面 http://www.google.com

Now you notice, most of the services, you can easily tell they belong to the Google group. However, google seems to have missed a couple things. Now, I reckon, if you want to do things right, you should keep the trend going, in which case....

Blogger should become Bloogle
Picasa should become Poogle
and Keyhole should become Koogle and so on

.....and THAT is the reason why I will never be hired by Google

wiggly the taiwanese way 

Beauty and the Ughs

Just found out that in the Australian entertainment industry, the very top earner for year 2004 are The Wiggles, rolling in $5 million dollars more into their pockets than the beautiful and graceful Nicole at $45 million dollars.

"You've gotta be kidding" was what came onto my mind.

I have to admit, I don't know The Wiggles at all. So I might have missed their charm that secretly yet prominently radiates out under the overly happy, always excited look to the Aussie crowd. Truthfully, they give me the creeps, but that is beside the point. The point is, YOU'VE GOTTA BE KIDDING!!

Google took me to The Wiggle's official website (...they actually have unofficial websites?!), which has a purple welcoming page, how fitting, and The Wiggles personally greeted me into their 'wiggly' website. A closer look at the 4 middle-aged looking, not overly handsome men in bright coloured shirts did not give me more insights into their appeals, although Google did give me another surprise: The Taiwanese are so impressed of their success that we actually have our very own Taiwanese Wiggles who are equally gay and creepy!!

Maybe I am better off not knowing these things.

ADSL at dial up speed

Internet is at snail speed.

I blame Koala for it