30th April, 2010

(Photo from reuters, ceremony rehearsal on 27th April)

The opening ceremony of Expo 2010 kicked off in Shanghai at 8:00 tonight. State President Hu jintao and leaders over 20 countries turned up to remarked the extravaganza. The ceremony ended at 10:00.

29th April, 2010

Taxi drivers yesterday showed grievance over the newly introduced regulation that request drivers to shut down idling engine while waiting. Under the regulation, drivers are given a three minutes "grace period" and they must turn the idling engine within the time-limit. For taxi section, the first five cabs in the taxi queue are exempted. Taxi drivers called for the government to amend the regulation that all cabs in taxi queue can be exempted, becuase turning off the engine will shut the air-condition down and the temperature inside cab can reach over 40 degree celsius under summer red-hot weather. They afraided that will drive customer out.
Authorities said they understanded all stake-holders' concerns and they would strike a balance and come a consensus.

28th April, 2010

What you see is not a bowl of spaghetti, but is a PowerPoint slide US army used to explicate the Afghan military stragetegy in last summer. General Stanley McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, remarked on this," When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war."

The joke emerged a serious fact that the US army have unduly relied on using PowerPoint. Some generals said simplicity of the software produced a illusion of understanding and control, and sometimes underestimate the complexity of problems. They said it was unlikely for the software to elaborate the reality circumstance, and they tried to ban the use of PowerPoint in reporting. However, insiders said scrapping of PowerPoint was impossible in short term due to long-time reliance.

27th April, 2010

The Buildings Department yesterday disclosed a probe result of the fatal collapse of a tenement building in To Kwa Wan, which happened in January and claimed four lifes. But the report could not satisfy the victim's families as the probe was heavily laden with technical terms and failed to determine who should be accountable for the tragedy.
The report stated some supporting structures of the building were sabotaged by an external force and caused the fatal collapse, but did not assert what kind of external force is. The department said they were still looking for evidences to prove if there were someone deliberatly removed or weakened the supporting structures of the building.

23th April, 2010 - funny(?) news

A 54-year old man was afraid to back home to his wife after spending all night drinking in a Wan Chai bar. Therefore he cooked up a tale that he had been kidnapped. He sent a message to his wife that he was being held somewhere in New Territories for $10,000 ramsom. His anixous wife called police right away. When the man heard that, he called back to his wife that he had been released for paying $1,000. But investigating police laid his story bare by finding that he had left for Macau the next morning.

The court stated this as a "extremely foolish" and fined the man $1,000 for wasting police time.

Emotion

It's something we needed to rein. One of the prominent differents bewteen human and beast is that human knows, should know, how to express their emotions in a legitimate way. I remember a story revolved around a rich woman and a man: One day, the woman said," I will only do thing that i like to." Then the man stared at the dog embraced in her arms and reply her, "My dear lady, for a being, you are same as your puppy." The story came from a renowned writer but i cannot recall his name. Pls let me know if you have heard that.

I have heard too much like "I do it my way.", "I couldn't help because i'm just this kind of person." and "it's suck please don't bother me.". I concede that it's impossible for us to be good all the time, a moment of spree is essential. But conversely it's not acceptable for someone to do everything at will. It is really a challenge to walk along with someone who doesn't know how to remain calm and says reasonably. The only way i used to cope with that is just shut my mouth up.

20th April, 2010

The global supply chain have been under predicament due to airlines halted in Europe. The huge volcano ash cloud propelled Europe flights to cancelled or delayed, and thus affected import-dependent economies such as Hong Kong. Supplies say Norwegian fresh salmon is out of stock and foods and flowers for hotels and restaurants are depleting. Thousands of traveller still stranded in Europe airports.

19th April, 2010 - nameless heroes

(Photo from Gulfnews)

The swift response to the Qinhai Yushu earthquake made by the central government should be praised, but there were many people had done their part in the rescure efforts. The media had predominately played up the smart leadership of government and marvellous work of rescure crews, but they seldom mentioned a group of people who played a crucial role in the rescure efforts - a thousands of Buddhist monks.

The monks, some of them lived in Yushu and other came from outside, provided a indispensable help to save lives. Dressed in maroon and yellow robes, we can see them everywhere in television images and newspaper pictures. They worked along with rescurers, pulled surviors and bodies out from rubble, helped distributing necessaries and even offer counselling to the victims. In light of the authorities yesterday, the death toll had raised to 1,706 and 256 were listed missing. But according to the living Buddha of the Jiegu monastery, the death toll could reach 10,000 eventually. Indeed, many people may not have registered the death of their loved one with government, but carried their bodies directly to the monasteries. As the rescurers from outside had suffered from high altitude sickness and faced language barrier, those monks have none of these problems and did even better and efficiently to reinforce the rescure efforts.

Over 90 percent of Yushu is populated by Tibetans, and most of them are deeply religious. The Buddhist monks offer spiritual guidance and comfort the victims who needed to cope with the death of their loved one. In the foreseeable future, those monks will linger to provide help in terms of bolstering the rebuilt of the city and counselling people in the aftermath of the rescure efforts.

16th April, 2010

(Photo from Xinhua)


High-altitude sickness, cold weather and incessant aftershocks compromised the rescure efforts in Qinhai, where hit by a magnitude of 7.1 earthquake on Wednesday. Due to lack of tools and machineries, rescures used their bare hands to claw through the debris in order to pull surviors out amid bitter cold and sparse oxygen in breathing air. Rescure workers and sniffer dogs were suffered from high-altitude sickness and thus compromised the rescure efficiency. Since aftershocks with magnitude from 5 to 6 were possible, extra danger was added. Released by rescure headquarters by 4:30 pm yesterday, the dead tolls had risen to 760, 243 were missing and 11,477 were in injured. Rescurers were working around the clock since the 72-hours "golden-period" was close to an end.

15th April, 2010

A magnitude of 7.1 earthquake hit a Tibetan-populated prefecture in Qinghai province yesterday. Over 10,000 were injured and at lease 400 were killed, over 90 percent of buildings in epicentre, mainly made of wood and mud, were reduced to rubble and many people were trapped under the debris. Both President Hu Jintao and Premier Wan Jiabo ordered recure crews to go all out to save life and the central government set aside 200 million yuan for resuce effort.
Since the linking roads were severely damaged, recure operation was thus hampered.

14th April, 2010

Leaders of the BRIC nations - Brazil, Russia, India and China - will convene in Brasillia tomorrow to disscuss the use of their own currencies in bilateral trade and investment. If the disscussion can make concrete progress, it will lessen the reliance on US dollar among the BRIC nations. But analysts said it would not bring a big impact in short term as the trading size between BRIC is relatively small comparing with other major parties.

A union leader at St Teresa's hospital alleged that the hospital have compelled nurses to sign false clinical records to conceal the hospital's understaff. The Department of Health and the police are investigation the allegation and St Teresa's Hospital have denied the charge and claimed that the allegation is groundless.

8th April, 2010

US Treasury chief Geithner flown to Beijing to meet Vice-Premier Wang Qi-Shan. Analysts saw Geithner's visit as a effort to seek a deal for revaluation of the Yuan, but also agreed that the likelyhood for Yuan's appreciation would be small. Even Beijing is willing to resume its currency rise in this year, it could be limited in the range of three to five percent.
Obama administration have been under mounting pressure from Congress and businesses, which argued that an undervalued Yuan was undermining US economic.

7th April, 2010 - United Kingdom general election

The election day of the United Kingdom general election will be 6th May, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced yesterday. It triggered a month-long election campaign that Brown's Labour will battle David Cameron's Conservatives, which are ahead in opinion polls. The dates for Britain's first pre-poll live television debates in the three week before the election has been set on 15, 22 and 29 April respectively.
If Labour wins, it will be its fourth concessive term in office.

5th April, 2010

The Ladder Street escalator project have been under fire by the residents and historians. The escalator project, which aimed at mitigating traffic congestion due to the likely reprieve of the building restruction in the area, would possibly sabotage the historial heritages in the street. The bureau claimed that the project would offer benefit to the elderly, save travel time and promote tourism.