In Memory of Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton, one of my favorite authors, passed away unexpectedly on Tuesday, November 4, 2008.

The first ever article I read was a short article called Panic in the Sheets, originally published in the December 1991 issue of Playboy Magazine. I was in the last year of getting my undergraduate degree, and homosexuality, dating and AIDS were the theme of the majority of social studies papers during that period. This particular article by Michael Crichton stood out from the rest of crowd by putting forward a clear challenge on the conventional wisdom on homosexuality, dating and AIDS.

In the following years, as I move from one set of office routine to another set of office routine in peruse of a larger paycheck, the untouchable wilderness and inspirational adventures in The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, The Lost World, Prey and State of Fear kept my sanity at night after day after day of senseless paper-shuffling during the day. With his MD received from Harvard Medical School, he challenged my conventional beliefs on a wide range of scientific and social issues, and led me to walk through another process of self-discovery with each of his books.

His death means a lot more than the death of a popular writer. It's like I've lost an old friend.

Professional Audience in Macau?

In certain places in mainland China, when the local government organized official activities such as sports games, cultural activities, they would hire extras to sit in the stands so the show would look good on television and left a good impression to their superiors, although everbody knows that the activity they organized was a complete failure. Hence came the term "professional audience" by Chinese journalists.

Although I had never heard of the term "professional audience" being used in Macau, something quite strange was spotted at Il Trittico, a collection of one-act operas, Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, by Giacomo Puccini. Five minutes before the start of the opera by the renowned Italian composer on October 31, only about one-third of the seats were occupied at the auditorium of the Macau Cultural Center. Then a group of teenagers rushed in right before the curtain was lifted. This group of casually dressed audience formed a strong contrast with the rest of the formally dressed audience, since most of them soon fall sleep on their seats 15 minutes into the performance. Some children or first-time opera goer left during the first intermission, however, nobody from this group of dedicated sleepers chose to leave. Finally, the show ended. While I was leaving the Macau Cultural Center, I overheard one of the teenager whispering to his companion, "Don't leave! We haven't collected our pay yet." Then I saw something very strange. Hundreds of teenagers who had been sleeping for three hours during the opera formed a straight line right outside the Macau Cultural Center. Five minutes later, a couple of people came, checked their identification card against a list, and handed each of them an unmarked envelope. "Let's go get some beer," was what I heard from a teenager who took his envelope.

As a long-time opera lover who stood in line since 7 o'clock in the morning and paid hard-earned cash for my tickets, I really couldn't believe what I saw was really happening. How could anyone at the Macau Cultural Institute justify wasting taxpayers' money to hire the professional audience into the auditorium such that they could still proclaim that their unpopular opera production was a success? They money should be spent on promoting classical music or other valuable art forms to the general public, not on hiring sleeping extras to fill in empty seats at the Macau International Music Festival. Not with my tax money!

CM 43953 and CM 49335

I read a couple articles on how the human brain turns words into images and then into meanings. Studies had shown that people tend to read words in the form of a picture. If we could get the shape of a word right, most people could still get the meaning of the word, for example, we could get the meaning of the word "boat" even if it's incorrectly spelled as "baot", especially when the word was placed in a sentence related to fishing or vacation.

However, something quite bizarre happened to me last Sunday. I drove my motorcycle to Mercado de San Domingos to get some fresh vegetables and fruit. When I finished my shopping, I put the key into my motorcycle and tried to jump start the engine and go home. They key was in, but I couldn't turn it. I thought was that maybe some kids had put something into the lock. So I bent over and tried to blow the stuff out of the lock, if there was any. I tried again and it still didn't work. There were a couple other people on their motorcycles waiting to park in my parking space. I could feel the pressure from their eyes as if they were saying, "get the hell out of here, you stupid!" So I put the key in again and almost broke it into halves when turning it with all the energy and force I could find. My faces turned red and I was so mad with this stupid key that I must have swear to the machine. Then I realized that a small crowd had formed around me. I put up my hands as if I was about to surrender, and told the other girl on her motorcycle, "maybe you have to find another parking space, I couldn't start the engine." Just when I was about to call the mechanics at the garage, she said calmly, "why don't you try the other motorcycle?" She pointed to the motorcycle right next to mine.

All of a sudden I felt like being stuck by lighting. I drove a Honda ZX with the license plate CM 43953 on it. And for the 10-minute or so, I had been trying to switch o KYMCO motorcycle with the license plate CM 49335 on it. Oh, my God! That has to be one of the stupidest thing I had ever done.