满乡的油菜花

婺源三重唱

The shochu which listens to music

Japan is the land where cows are massaged as they drink beer and shochu* listens to music as it is bottled.

We love quirky Japan.



*The square bottle shochu at tucked-away Mokko Bar. Apparently, music vibrates the bottle which makes the shochu better.

Teenage Stories

It was a gorgeous spring day at »MoCA today.

More on »the Teenage Stories series and »Julia Fullerton-Batten.

A day bed to curl up in

On this rainy day, I want to curl up here, read a book, then drift off to sleep...

Sorry-o!

In many areas of southern Nigeria where the Yoruba predominate, an "o" is added to the end of a word to add emphasis, a practice in the Yoruba language. Most noticeable is a shout of "Sorry-o!" to someone who trips or suffers another misfortune. -- via »IHT

An example sentence for Shanghai:

The construction next block is very loud-o! I haven't slept well in many day-o!

Grime at le petit xiaoxiao

http://lepetit-xiaoxiao.eco.to/

Those heady days of summer

I was enamoured by 《颐和园》 （English: "Summer Palace"; French: "Une Jeunesse Chinoise"*) the day I read »its NYT review. Following a »second review on the Shanghaiist, I tried to locate it a second time and this time I was successful.

蒹葭苍苍，白露为霜。所谓伊人，在水一方。
溯洄从之，道阻且长。溯游从之，宛在水中央。**

Those heady days of summer... Those alluring days of intellectual debates, of passionate belief in ideals, of heads buried in pillows and tears, of joints smoked in caravans, of hungrily devouring Barthes and Nietzsche and love alike.

And we clamour to live again, those those heady days of summer. Even if we abandon years of a steady life in quest for it. Even if it leaves us with a gaping void afterwards.





* I like noticing the different translations for film titles in different languages.
** Can I repeat for the nth time just how poetic the Chinese language is?

Bund bridge

Day 1 of the demolishment.

And we will never be able to curve into a spectacular view of the bund on a cab again.

S is for Spiderman

S is also for Superman, Spiderwoman, Santa Claus, Skeleton Gal, Sleepyheads, Miss Sheriff, Miss Splendid and Miss Siberian!

___

___

___

Of welfare, systems and the intrinsic goodness of mankind

»This article reminds me of the terribly heated argument I had with Mr C a few months ago, and I wonder if it may help to explain why our viewpoints are so divergent and polar. Out of the blue from 1 to 3 am, we started discussing, then arguing about welfare vs self-help, unemployment benefits vs rainy-day savings, luck vs hard work, high tax vs modest safety nets, and more generally, capitalism vs socialism. I remember a fitful night of sleep with all these big social concepts floating in and out of my brain, with the last remnants of the duel continuing into the next day and ending abruptly with a "do not tell me I know nothing about drug problems because my college best friend was a victim of drugs and to this day, I don't know whether she is dead or alive."

Being a disciple of behavioural economics and being from Singapore where "welfare state" is a taboo word (but as I tried to explain to Mr C for 20 minutes, we do have a welfare system), I am a firm believer that human behaviour is shaped by incentive. Therefore, social systems must be designed such that they do not contain incentives for people to cheat. For instance, I am pro-rainy-day-savings and anti-unemployment-benefits: the latter contains incentives for people to be slack about finding work. On this, Mr C attacked me for for the bourgeois assumption that people have money left over for savings. Many lower-middle class people need to count their pennies before ordering a pizza in the last few days of a month, he said. To which I countered, then there must be an underlying problem somewhere else if this is happening. If it is an alcohol abuse or depression problem in the family, there should be social support for that. If it is high rent or too-low wages, we must tackle that bigger economic problem instead. In short, I believe governments should help those in need but I also believe we cannot just hand out cash to support alcohol habits or laziness.

I remember to this day how this part of the argument ended - with a barbed chastise from Mr C:

"You are really blind to the whole problem here. You are successful, you have a good job and you assume that everyone can have it too. But sometimes, it is not about effort. It is about luck."

I couldn't respond during the moment, partly because I was still reeling from the sting of the barbs, partly because I also agree with the last statement - that luck often counts more than effort, and indeed I have been lucky in life. Yet, that is a separate issue from the fact a system cannot systemize incentives to cheat, and I could not see why Mr C could not see that.

In the following weeks when I pondered this on and off, it became clearer to me why.

Fundamentally, my beliefs had two premises: (1) most of mankind is ruled by an intrinsic profit (i.e. self-interest) motive ; and (2) the welfare system is able to correctly identify those in need. Mr C's premises are the exact opposite: he believes that cheaters are the minority and he would rather have a system that gave welfare checks so that no one will die from cold or starvation, even if it meant a few people cheating. I, on the other hand, think that cheaters are in the majority and will cause the bankruptcy of the system. We could both be right though - maybe those people he has seen in Europe are intrinsically nice / altruistic / non-cheating, whereas those I have seen in this part of the world are not.

Soon after, »a NYT article about a welfare recipient who starved to death in Japan made me re-think my position on (2) and see Mr C's point. Systems fail. The question is that when they fail, which side do we want to err on?

And the bigger question is: during the times that they do not fail, what is the cost of the cheaters (summated over time) that we are willing to put up with? This, unfortunately, is a dynamic* equilibrium model which is sadly impossible for a half-baked economist like me to solve.



*Because cheaters will increase over time when non-cheaters see cheaters succeed.

If I didn't have to worry, I'd be studying languages and anthropology

via »AWAD newsletter #291

Here in Japan, the light does not turn "green", it turns "blue"!

The Japanese word for green is "midori" (yes, of liqueur fame), and the word for blue is "ao", however, as I understand it (though I am no lexicographic historian), midori is a much younger word than ao. For reasons few seem able to articulate, Japanese historically had a somewhat limited verbal palette for the infinite variety of colors, though it is augmented by such natural constructions as "ha-iro" for "ash-color" (gray) or "mizu-iro" for the blue color of water.

Traffic signals are the same color as in the U.S. (a blue-green), but are universally referred to here as "ao-shingo" (blue light) (nothing to do with K-mart).

It's not just that they choose to label one ambiguous color as being on the other side of the line; "ao" simply has a broader meaning. Green tree frogs are "ao-gaeru", and one's youth may be referred to as "seishun" (blue spring).

I could go on about the colors of tea and others, but that's enough for now.

Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language

When I was learning Japanese, I did notice that the kanji for blue 青い is green, but didn't think about it after that since it caused me no confusion at all. Maybe it is not confusing because we have the same blue-green conflation of the word in the Chinese language as well.

Cinderella loses her sock

A crescendo of fireworks

My country is small, but it is nice

___

The cab business in Japan

Via »Japan Inc Newsletter, 30 Jan 2008

In 2001, getting into a Tokyo taxi for the first time, I remember being surprised by a number of things. The door opened before I could get a hand to it, the driver was wearing white gloves, puffing a cigarette, and when I got in, he didn't seem to have a clue where the Japanese address that I handed to him was. After a short interchange on the radio, with who I assume to have been HQ, he said 'OK' and drove me off to my destination leaving me generally rather impressed with the cleanliness and politeness of the experience.


Since that time, taking taxis in Japan has become a part of life that I spend little time dwelling on. However, there are some interesting facets to the business and culture of taking cabs here that have changed significantly in recent years. The most recent change is of course the smoking ban that has been imposed on most cabs in Tokyo this month. The two main taxi associations, The Tokyo Taxi Association and the Tokyo Kojin Taxi Association have implemented a ban covering 52,000 taxis out of the reported total of 53,619 cabs. The ban has not been extended nationally yet but will most probably be complete by the autumn. A breakthrough for the anti-smoking lobbyists, like all such regulation, the ban will rile smoking drivers and passengers and be met with applause by their non-smoking counterparts.

One thing is for sure, the trademark cigarette for cab drivers will rapidly become a thing of the past. However, while this might be referred to as 'regulation' the industry at large has been locked into a trend of deregulation for over 10 years. Before then, since the 1970s, the industry had faced major restrictions that in part resulted from the sudden surge in demand for cabs during the period of economic consolidation in the 1960s. The government was so concerned by issues such as taxis refusing customers for short distance trips that it brought in the Emergency Measures Law for Optimization of Taxi Services, in 1970.

»Read more...

Together with the existing 1951 Road Transport Law, this gave the government almost absolute control of fare prices, the number of taxis on the road, licenses granted, operating hours and allocated patches.


During the 1990s however, reformers came into power and started to deregulate across a specturm of sectors. A paper from the Kyoto Institute of Economic Research argues that the first manifestation of deregulation in the taxi industry occurred in July 1993 which allowed for a dual price structure in Osaka allowing most cabs to start from 600 yen but some from 540.

By the turn of the century, excessive demand had turned to an excess of supply; worried that the restrictions might fuel less than savory modes of competition, and also as Diet reformers initiated a more thorough general program of deregulation, the Road Transport Law was reformed in 2002 making it much easier for new firms to enter the market.


Taking advantage of the new legislation, many operators set up fleets and the number of taxis on the roads increased dramatically. Firms such as MK Taxi, kept their prices low and managed to grow their business substantially. Liberalization thus created more jobs and introduced more competition into the industry. However, much to the confusion of economists, the government's release of control over supply and demand has not exactly gone as planned. Firstly, although the supply levels have risen, demand has actually gone down. This has led to deteriorating conditions and pay decreases for drivers and apparently there has been a downturn in the level of service.

As a recent paper by Walter Skok and Sakoto Kobayashi (in Knowledge and Process Management) observes, the reforms were intended to 'improve service quality as a result of increased competition. However, the resulting situation is the opposite to that expected.' They continue: 'Although the number of cabs has steadily increased, the demand has correspondingly decreased. This paradoxical situation may be explained by the damaging effects of the recession that had an adverse impact on personal spending power.'


Others argue that it was also the result of 'excessive competition' in the industry as a consequence of deregulation. This explanation is possible but ignores the nature of the problems that regulation caused in the first place; attempts to control supply and demand can be futile in the face of oscillating consumer spending power and discourages sorely needed entrepreneurialism. But it is also arguable that the liberalization has not really gone far enough. In particular,prices are still controlled by the government and taxi companies had to fight hard for the right to rise to 710 yen in Tokyo, effective from last month. If the government allowed companies to control pricing, this would give firms more freedom to carve out budget or luxury niches. On the other hand, when it comes to prices, passengers tend to go for the first cab to stop rather than look out for the cheapest one. Companies such as Nihon Kotsu, one of the big three companies has got around this by introducing taxi ordering services that respond to one ring of a mobile phone.


The recent fare hike has had a mixed reaction and arguably favors the bigger companies. The Nikkei reported that the fare rise was driving customers away. This can put the squeeze on the smaller operators and it has been the case that the larger
companies have been acquiring increased numbers of their smaller competitors in the last few years. Smaller operators are the least likely to be able to keep fares low and even if they do, their fleets are too small to derive major benefit from this. Last July, Nihon Kotsu bought its smaller rival Toyo Kotsu, and lower down the food chain, several midsized firms have bought out smaller ones. In terms of labor too, big companies find it easier to get staff and therefore keep expanding - another
industry paradox is that despite a falling wage, demand for drivers has gone up with the increasing number of operations.

Perhaps further deregulation would allow for more independent operators and smaller companies who could sustain their business by providing a more tailored, targeted service-once the playing field is more level.

This snow is not getting too fun anymore

Okay, this snow is not getting too fun anymore. The transport system in China is near paralysis and I am not sure if my flight tonight will fly. Fingers crossed.

Desaturated playground

Except I didn't desaturate it. I left the metering on as spot metering by mistake and couldn't have asked for a nicer effect.

Mini-snowman, Shanghai-style

Delightfully stumbled upon on Xikang Lu near Nanjing Lu.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Reminiscences of good old US days

Featured this weekend in my favourite NYT.

Winter Day Out in Boston

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

Keep warm with a meal at Fireplace restaurant, in the aisles of a university bookstore and hot chocolate on Harvard Square.

Winter Day Out in Chicago

By MONICA DAVEY

Without violating the city’s code of stoicism, one can find the ideal winter day in the Second City by alternating outdoor grit with a smattering of permitted hideaways.

Winter Day Out in Seattle

By MATT RICHTEL

Drink coffee. Put on another layer of dry clothes. Repeat. This is the formula to warm inside and out in this city.

Elegance

Elegance is when Skype knows how to pause iTunes when you start making a call.

And when it is done, fades the music back in.



P.S. The radio station »Deezer does this too.
(And is one up Skype for its spotless streaming, even in erratic Chinese broadband connections).

Little fur balls

These are the little fur balls I used to pluck from pussy willows as a kid.
They look like almost like little mice here...
Happy year of the mouse.

Pussy willows

When I was a little kid, I used to pluck these furry buds off the pussy willows during Chinese New Year and keep them in my pocket. So that every time I put my hands into my pockets, I would get a nice furry feeling and smile to myself.

Needless to say, laundry time was a disaster for my mum because she would be pulling out these pocketfuls of little fur balls...

As I grew older, we somehow stopped buying pussy willows at home. My mum says that it is because they breed mosquitoes (how they breed more mosquitoes than any other vase of flowers I don't understand), so maybe she just got tired of washing pocketfuls of fur balls.

Now that I have my own home and some spare cash, I plan on stuffing my whole pocket full of fur balls. In fact, I think I will buy an extra stalk tomorrow just to pluck fur balls off them.

Bedtime with Proust

Old-time Chinese brands get ordinary English names

去年8月份，北京启动了“迎奥运—传神诠释老字号”公益翻译活动，北京地区50余家老字号通过互联网，向全世界征集“洋名”；收到全球25万多名翻译志愿者提交的翻译作品25万余份，其中来自海外的翻译作品约占总数的20%，主要集中在华人聚集较多的加拿大、美国及东南亚等地区。

经过初评和复评的严格筛选，由北京外国语大学高级翻译学院院长王立弟、中科院翻译工作者协会副会长李亚舒、民俗学家赵书等翻译专家及民俗专家组成终评组委会，对参赛作品进行评审、讨论和修改，最终给6家老字号取了新“洋名”。

主办方表示，除首批公布的六家老字号企业外，数十家的老字号企业还需要全球的志愿者提交优秀的翻译作品。活动组委会日前已正式宣布启动活动第二季。市民可点击www.transn.com查询或提交作品。

　　洋名对照

　　全聚德 Quanjude Peking Roast Duck-Since 1864
　　吴裕泰 Wuyutai Tea Shop-Since 1887
　　同仁堂 Tongrentang Chinese Medicine-Since 1669
　　瑞蚨祥 Ruifuxiang Silk-Since 1862
　　荣宝斋 Rongbaozhai Art Gallery-Since 1672
　　王致和 Wangzhihe Gourmet Food- Since 1669

－－《北京6家老字号确定英文名 曾向全球征选》｜新浪报社｜2008年01月09日

I am a bit of a translation snob and was disappointed to read that despite all the worldwide entries and big-name university professors, all the translations came out quite unimpressive indeed. The "since xxx year" is quite nice, but name-wise, at least call it "Wuyutai Tea House" instead of "Tea Shop", "Tongrentang Chinese Medical Hall" instead of plain vanilla "Chinese Medicine", and then try translate the very poetic and literary "斋" into something other than "gallery". ("Gourmet Food" sounds wrong, but since I don't know "王致和" and the nature of the store, I can't comment further.)

There are quite a few well-done translations of brand names here and one of the best I have seen is that for the American stationery company Home Depot which is next door to our office. It was translated as "家得宝“ which achieved the effect of 译音又译义 (translating both the sound and the meaning)。Apparently the story goes that they spent money asking a translation company to do translate but were unsatisfied by the results. Then they happened to mention to a boss in our firm over lunch and he came up with the current one. Voila.

Post-script: I agree more whole-heartedly with the translation of Chinese dishes such as »this, though I think Kungpao Chicken should remain Kungpao Chicken... Most people who eat Chinese takeout overseas would know this.

Macau - A Charm Beyond the Jackpot

In Hong Kong, Nice Things Come in Pairs

___

___

___

___

___

More pictures »here.

Word of the Day - Sheep's Eyes

sheep's eyes (sheepz eyez) noun

Shy amorous glances.

[The origin of the term is uncertain. Various theories attribute the term to Gaelic or any of the various Germanic languages. It has also been suggested that the term refers to the docile appearance of a sheep's eyes.]

"When office temp Carolina Santos developed a crush on a man at the Brazilian oil company where she was working, she did rather more than merely make sheep's eyes at him."
- David Randall; Fatal Attraction; The Independent on Sunday (London, UK); Jan 29, 2006.

lol! That was my decade-long »AWAD mailing list today.



Post-script: According to an Italian reader who responded to the mailing list, the analogous Italian term for this is "occhi di triglia" = mullet's eyes.

Merry, merry Christmas

Ibirapuera Auditorium - Sao Paulo - Niemeyer

The Height Tax

Should we tax tall workers at a higher rate than their shorter peers? The answer — yes — “follows inexorably” from reigning academic theories of taxation, argues Greg Mankiw, an economics professor at Harvard (and former chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers), in a working paper first circulated in April. »More...

Of course I say: 强词夺理. Even if it is my favourite NYT.

Wounds of the Revolution

Wounds of the Revolution - New York Times

The Cultural Revolution swept away much of the old Chinese culture. Dignity is now defined by money and French and Italian luxury goods.

Well-put. I alluded to this phenomenon previously in »this post.

9 Days in the Kingdom by 55 Great Photographers

Saw a very nice photography exhibition in Bangkok in honour of the King's 80th birthday (a really big thing there):



It was partly sponsored by Canon and at the exit, there was a fun sign which said:

Thank you for coming to the exhibition.
And now you have to buy a camera!

Loving Bangkok (and not for the shopping)

This time, I really like Bangkok. Apart from a familiarity which allowed a leisurely revisiting of places without maps (a la Paris), it was also helped by a conscious choice to abandon the monolithic and fanatical Asian take to Bangkok (i.e. shopping) and instead focus on a different interpretation of the city.

It was an infinitely more superior experience (even as it was predominantly a solitary one since most people are not interested in this experiment). A cocktail on the the sky-high, open-air bar of Banyan Tree was a real treat after a day of inane corporate-speak, as was the extremely value-for-money pasta at Zanotti and SUPERB Thai food at Baan Khanita. Instead of shuffling straight to Siam square blindly, I noticed how I could stroll out of a Coach store and two seconds later, be prostrating in front of the harmoniously co-existing Erawan shrine.

Then there are the polite and gentle ways of the Thais, the cars that don't assassinate you on the streets, the perfectly tropical weather which was neither humid nor to the point of perspiration, and most of all, the night scenes of working class Thailand that rivals Shanghai's and makes me want to buy a dSLR straight away. (I am getting very impatient at how crappy my Canon Powershot is with night shots.)

Absence often makes me forget, but Southeast Asia is gorgeous.



Post-script: Alright, I'll admit that I don't dig the new Bangkok airport much. I feel like I should like the minimalist steel and concrete structure, but the truth is that I don't. Did anyone also mention to the architects that metal chairs are an extremely bad idea in (cold) airports? I thought I could get some shut-eye while my flight was delayed, but it was just impossible to fall asleep even though I was lying flat across three chairs - they were sucking heat from me like vampires. So at a glorious 1 am, I had to go on a grumpy hunt of non-metal chairs in the airport. I finally found a cushioned backseat of a parked golf buggy to curl up in the end.

St Ignatius Loyola Cathedral of Xujiahui

Courtesy of the Shanghai Heritage group, I managed to get a preview of the gorgeous stained glass that were newly installed in the »St Ignatius Loyola Cathedral of Xujiahui. The original ones had been blown out during the Cultural Revolution:

More pictures »here.

Siamese twins

Float by Design Mobel

Float by Design Mobel, designed by David Trubridge

My idea of sleeping. Bonne nuit.

5 Gorgeous Pens for 5 Nobel Prize Winning Writers

via Cool Hunting by Phuong-Cac Nguyen on 11/18/07

[Very appropriate, given that I was recently reunited with my long, long-lost fountain pen again...]

A person's handwriting says a lot about his or her personality; a strong right slant suggests a fierce emotional side while small size might refer to a penchant for details. This idea wasn't lost on Italian designer Cleto Munari, who asked famous architects and designers to come up with with a set of five beautiful pens, each inspired by a Nobel Prize-winning writer. The finished writing utensils with 18kt gold details are luxurious and inspiring to those who take the handwritten word seriously.

To start, Munari asked for handwritten letters from writers Nagib Mahfouz, Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, José Saramago and Saul Bellow, which he then gave to architects and designers Toyo Ito, Alessandro Mendini, Alvaro Siza Viera and Oscar Tusquetstook. The pens are very much based on the designer's interpretation of the writer's style and form.

Designboom has excerpts from the pens' accompanying The Book of Five Pens that show these letters, essential elements for potential purchasers wanting to first connect with a pen before they buy it.

The pens, available in roller or fountain form, start from $550 from Art Brown. At that price, you won't be apt to loan it out without forgetting to ask for it back.

Sent via Google Reader