What's pretty, pastel, and perfect for spring?
If you're thinking Easter eggs, you're not far off!

提到春天, 漂亮和pastel顏色, 會想起什麽?
如果妳在想著復活蛋,那就十分接近了!



Perhaps taking a cue from those Cadbury Mini Eggs this spring's pastel jeans come in a beautiful array of colors. Whether you crave the traditional soft hues of yellow, pink, blue, or purple, or slightly more exotic ones like peach, raspberry, mint, or seafoam, pastel jeans are a must-have this season.

或者這春季的顏色是從粒吉百利迷你復活蛋中會取得靈感的從一系列悅目的顏色中,今個春季帶來了pastel colors的牛仔褲。不論妳渴求的是傳統的柔和色彩例如yellow, pink, blue, purple,或是較有情調的peach, raspberry, mint 或 seafoam,pastel colors的牛仔褲也是今季的must-have item!

Jessica Alba was just spotted in a mint green ones during Paris Fashion Week.
Jessica Alba在Paris Fashion Week中就穿上了這條mint green的緊身褲了!


Check out ones by 7 for All Mankind and DL1961! 在7 for All Mankind 和 DL1961揀啱心水的pastel jeans吧!

These days everyone and their moms claim to be "interested in photography" on their resumes, and have all the fancy equipment and SLR cameras. I don't recall interest in photography being such a ubiquitous thing before -- perhaps the transition from film to digital has made photography more accessible since you don't have to pay for having the film developed or have to do it yourself in a dark room. Anyway, having a super shallow depth of field and cranking up the contrast on your computer, or Adobe Lightroom-ing a photo to make it all yellowy and vintagey-looking, seem to be what pass as good photography nowadays, at least on blogs (and no, I'm not saying mine are any better). It bugs me that it's a formula for creating aesthetically pleasing pictures and that's what everyone (but not literally everyone) does Where's the creativity? I just think it leaves something to be desired.

You'd think that a school with a big ass endowment can afford to spend some of it on hiring competent administrators to run it smartly and efficiently. Apparently not. In order to be cleared for this one requirement so that I can graduate, this person told me that I need to produce two letters from another office saying exactly xyz. No matter that I was only ever sent one letter -- now, instead of communicating with that other office to ascertain a fact that I've offered proof of over and over again, I'm being told that it's on me to get the other letter. Who knows how long it'll take to actually get to me, and by then it'll probably be too late anyway.

I realize it's not a big deal and that big bureaucracies need to have rules, but I think in this case it's overly rigid (there are some other details I won't bother going into -- just take my word for it :) This administration runs a school, not a country. The person I'm dealing with acts like she's afraid she'll get ripped apart by her boss if she showed some independent thinking, but she's basically the boss and one who 唔識轉彎 at that.

I guess I shouldn't be this frustrated, it's just that certain other things about my law school have already boggled my mind. In college if I needed a tax form filled out I just brought it to the registrar's and they would do it right away. Here, I have to come back the next week to pick it up. In college the IT infrastructure was coherent and efficient. Here I have four different sets of user names and passwords (btw, the email interface sucks too). And now, I'm basically acting as the go between for two different branches of this big ass bureaucracy. Effing overrated.

So after long battles with the Chinese government about censorship issues, instead of pulling out of China completely, Google decided to move its google.cn to the HK servers. So when you type in google.cn you actually get redirected to a google.com.hk page that is catered to the China market (i.e. the interface language is simplified Chinese as opposed to HK's traditional Chinese and the search results actually bring up China sites as opposed to HK, etc).


During dinner tonight we had a quick debate on whether it was a good idea for Google to do so and what the CPC's view of this is. Perhaps it actually benefited both parties, as Google hasn't pulled out completely since they're now in a free market state that's still part of China. Meanwhile, the government can save face (God knows how important face is to Chinese people) by showing that they have unwavered and Google was the one forced to make the adjustment. With the servers out of mainland China, the great firewall of China can now censor all results on the China catered google.com.hk. No Google censorship help needed; win-win situation. OR Google just made a horrible move by pissing the government off even more -almost like a "na-na-na-nana you can't catch me" taunt.

During dinner I was agreeing with the former. But on the way home, I started thinking about how the Chinese government has been handling this since the move. The first thing that came to my mind, which speaks loudly of the government's pov, is that they have combed through all Chinese bbs forums and deleted every Google-favouring post and thread. And they didn't stop there. With some social seeding work, they planted threads and posts here and there to fuel negativity towards Google.

As we all know, the CPC is pretty good at telling people what and how to think. Then again, those who would actually care and notice the Google censorship issue are the more educated and hopefully can think for themselves. But most importantly, widely affected are expats who cannot live without google and those are the same expats who would have bought a VPN to climb over the great firewall of China.

Anyway, at the end of the day maybe it doesn't really matter since Baidu (a Made in China search engine) owns more than 50% of the market share and Google China only brings in 1% of their revenue.

NYT: If It's All About The Journey, Cornell Didn't Lose

Every program has a mission. Cornell’s mission is not to slay the Kentuckys of the world, but to win the Ivy League title, do as well as it can in the postseason and celebrate the journey.

The nation was captivated by a Cornell team that went further than expected and riveted by a core of Kentucky freshmen attempting to do the unthinkable.
More here and here.



It's not often that people care about Cornell sports teams in anything other than hockey (which itself isn't that big outside the northeast in the first place), Ivy League schools not exactly known for their athletic prowess. Cornell the university doesn't get much media exposure either, people go flocking to Harvard for quotes and expert opinions. So it's been a little strange seeing a different article on the basketball team on the NY Times every day this week. A former starter for Kentucky now on the Cornell bench (here). The "old, ramshackle" house that a bunch of the guys on the team live in (here) (and I know exactly how ramshackle houses in Ithaca get). A reporter signed off "From Ithaca, New York ...", words I honestly don't think I've ever heard spoken in that context before (here). It's also on ESPN, Business Week, Washington Post, numerous blogs, countless local newspapers ... and I'm not talking about recycled AP or Reuters articles either.

Needless to say, I'm covered head to toe in multiple layers of Cornell gear (yes, I am wearing three pairs of pants). Hope they win tonight's game, but either way they've come very far and have already won everyone's respect.

I recently got back from Portugal, where I went for spring break. We spent a couple of days in Lisbon then rented a car and visited some smaller towns (Sintra, Cascais, Setúbal, Tomar, Coimbra), and were in Porto the rest of the time.

Porto, Portugal
Porto (view from Vila Nova de Gaia across the river)

 Palacio da Pena
Palácio da Pena in Sintra

Some of the architecture and the Moorish-inspired mosaic walls were very pretty. Unfortunately the non-historical parts of country seem to be in some state of disrepair. There was graffiti everywhere in the cities and apparently no effort to clean it up.

As for the food, Portuguese cuisine is known for bacalhau = salted cod. I was salted cod-ed out by the second day. I also learned the hard way to not order the açorda = mushy bread.

Bacalhau à Brás
Bacalhau à Brás

On a brighter note, we went on a hike in Peneda-Gerês National Park which was beautiful. The person at the tourism office recommended that we go on this "moderate" 10km (6mi) trail, the Trilho dos Currais. It turned out to also have a 3000ft elevation gain on rugged terrain. Got to the top and rewarded myself with a pack of Haribo gummy bears, canceling out whatever number of calories I might have burned.

Peneda-Geres National Park
the view from the top

Before Portugal, I unexpectedly had to go to Hong Kong for a week. I had to fly back from Hong Kong to Vancouver to New York to Boston then to Madrid to Lisbon all in 40 hours. The tally of airports that I have flown/will fly to/from/through in 2010, up until September:
HKG-JFK-BOS-JFK-HKG-YVR-JFK-BOS-MAD-LIS-LHR-BOS-JFK-YVR-JFK-BOS-JFK-YVR-JFK-BOS-JFK-YYZ-GLA-OSL-BER-HKG
A lot for me, considering what I do doesn't involve much (or any) traveling. The lesson from this list clearly is to live in a major city with direct flights going to it.

On the knitting front, I'm currently working on a pair of socks (pattern: Rockyview Socks) for my grandma. She wanted something green so I got BMFA sock yarn in a colorway called County Clare (which I would love to visit one day). The yarn is self-striping, and this particular skein curiously is giving me radioactive green stripes.

IMG_1037

Also finally blocked a shawl (pattern: Dane Shaw) that I had finished weeks ago. I knitted this in Malabrigo Sock in the Archangel colorway, the yarn is soft and the colors are gorgeous.

IMG_0994

IMG_0989
Quatchi watching the shawl block

For now I'm back at school in Boston, with only a month to go before my final set of exams (ever! not counting the bar exam) so must buckle down. I'll be going on a hike in Mount Monadnock State Park in New Hampshire next week, maybe after that I'll be able to post some Quatchi-in-the-woods pics :)

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