” ~ wain~

3:25pm @Burton laundry again.
What a coincident. I skied on both the second day and the second last day of 2006. one in Korea and one in Minnesota. I can see myself how much I improved even without any instruction. Technically now I can comfortably complete any courses without wiping out. it was also a heap leap to overcome the fear/difficulties of the black diamonds. But the mostly significant thing was i learned to ski in control. For the whole day yesterday I was trying to perfect my turns, to balance out speed and curves. It was awesome to ski with Dave again.
Learning to ski with control is inspiring. We can always let go and ski straight down to the bottom. but there’s only so much speed we can handle, and we know that skiing without control is dangerous. Taking control is the key. To success.
Also there was a point my legs were painfully bruised and I could barely walk with the ski boot. But then it was my determination and desire to practice more on the mountain. I ignored and eventually forget the pain and went on ski 4 more hours. Taking control. It is all in my own head.

wow. too bad finally there is one thing i don’t like about firefox. when i open the same page from firefox and safari, the image in firefox is much more desaturated. its about 15-20 in photoshop saturation scale. that makes a huge different when viewing my photo jounral… anyone know how to fix it?

風景不轉心境轉

記住，記住 and focus: only one thing at a time.

an interesting movie: the girl in the cafe. simple but direct. for those activist and those who care about G8 summit. also visit www.one.org.

http://www.hbo.com/films/girlinthecafe/synopsis/index.html

HONG KONG — Hong Kong surged past New York this year and became the world’s second most popular place — after London — for companies to float new stock listings… we are not that bad after all.

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/12/25/
hong_kong_passes_new_york_for_ipo_listings/

11:53pm @Scoville. Got a lovely email from an old friend. There is a line: There’s always the pull to do something more immediate, more practical; but isn’t it right that the most abstract truth, and the most abstract rewards, are all, to the practical man, the most important?
My instant response was Yeah~ that’s what life should be! Totally agree! And that ease a lot my stressful no-plan-after-grad situation. But then the opposition seems to keep striking me back. It is not the fear that I would not get a job; it is simply the natural worry about uncertainties. As a senior we are all going through this transition period. Not many of us are determined (or lucky) enough to get a job at the moment. I mean I got a bachelor of ARTS degree, majoring computer SCIENCE from a liberal arts college. I m not educated to have a specific skill to work on any professionals. I do not have any clues what I am doing after grad, or should I?
I am spending so much time building the website and not actively looking or applying for jobs. Is that the right thing to do? I need to constantly telling myself I am doing fine.

Today’s feel good moment: talking with a good friend on phone. Yea. Simple as that.

3:10pm @Scoville. Yesterday I finally digitize the videos from the UWC period. Bluemoon 02 and 03, NAD and CLAD. Also found the video for our art exhibition. There were really many sweet memories there, but one big question I asked myself was did I enjoy the show? Putting myself behind a camera is like stepping out of the fun. You are participating and you are not. I wasn’t sitting down in the crowd cheering; couldn’t scream otherwise will blow up the audio; worrying good spot to shoot and finding constantly finding interesting scene.
I always believe that everyone spends so much effort to make a good show, and I will do my job to document it. Others may enjoy it once, but I try to let more people enjoy it later again and again. And the longer the event pasts, the more valuable my videos become. I hope.

3:00am @soville. Why do I always worry so much whenever I m thinking getting a Mac? Was it because of the price? No, it should be a nice investment. Was it because it’s Mac? Not really, I’ve used Mac for quite a while already. It may be true that it’s too extravagant (wc?) to change my notebook within an year and half. But I think the biggest problems is I m not sure I m ready to commit to the media business. Mac is known for better graphic and sound, editing images and videos. And buying a Mac means commitment to me. I don’t really care about the ads about how Mac is the new idea of life and those BS. But I care about Photoshop and FinalCut, and other applications relate to it. Buying a Mac means I m ready to spend more time doing media work.

On the argument of Mac against PC, it was funny to see myself slowly switching from one side to the other over the past few years. Growing up with PC, starting from MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, me, 2000, and finally XP, I must say there’s a lot of sentiments involved in it. Still remember typing “cd windows/win” to start windows; getting my ICQ url with 7 digits only (8282040); my first email account with hotmail (still using it!); practicing typing Chinese, editing king’s yearbook… Anyway, basically I learned about the computer world thru PC. As well as the pirated free software world.

But then my boss Paul has changed me. He has been using Mac for his profession. Over the past 4 years we have exchanged so many opinions about each other’s computer world. It was honestly quite frustrating when I first extensively used Mac in my Intro to Video Production class. It was FinalCut, a software that I want to be fluent in, and is also only available on Mac. I slowly learn about the supreme performance of Mac working with media. Even I was still lean towards PC at that time, I had to admit Mac’s rock solid stability. I remembered at one time, I opened Photoshop, FinalCut, QuickTime player, Soundtrack and Livetype, each is doing its own rendering while I was surfing the net. Nothing crash. Amazing.

But I was still in favor of PC for its cheap and customizable price. I still enjoyed the fun assembling my first AMD PC, buying only necessary and affordable components only. A Mac was over US$3000 at that time and I always asserted that if Mac cut down their price in half I will definitely get it. Well, guess what, they finally did it, starting with MacMini. I have no more complaint. I will buy one soon. I will like it.

11:20pm @scoville. The workaholic Wain is back on Earth! Besides sleeping and eating, I am now pretty much living in Scoville, aka the media lab all the time, which is about 8am till midnight. Haven’t had such eager to work for so long. I suddenly become more efficient and creative, and the problems also turn much easier as well. Instead of puzzling what those css was, I felt like I m making some progress learning it. WoW. I really gained a lot from Trinidad. Now what I should learn is really to calm down, not to burst all my energy at once but slowly pace them on my to-do list. This blog was to-do-no.1 and its done now. The photo journal will be up next.

7:45pm, 21/12/2006. it is finally on web. This historical moment deserves a post in the archive.

9:18pm @Scoville. I saw “A Beautiful Mind” again. It’s a coincident that 3 years ago I saw the same movie around this time of the year. I was so much in love back then. I loved the movie, I still remember on the night I watched it, the moment I turned my head and saw Tenzin sleeping. All I got from the movie was the power of love.
Today, I watched it again and saw it in a completely different way. I saw the strength in both John and Alicia Nash. The schizophrenia was killing everybody. But it is more a personal problem to John Nash has to fight with it. At the end, it is only he decided to apply a new formula to his mind to ignore his hallucinations and not feed his demons.
I was lucky enough to have someone to fall in love with. Now its gone, but the memory remains. To turn that memory into things that I can keep nicely in my heart or I can mourn about the past is up to me.
I need to keep feeding to keep the bad memories alive. They are not haunting us, we let them do. We assist them. I was responsible for partly letting myself depressed. I m sorry.