Chris and I have both used BullFighter, the subject of a New York Times piece. Don't delay: Leverage your core competencies today in communications engineering, thus maximizing yourself in the value chain and the global competitive landscape.

If I had the energy of a supernova, there would be no need to sleep. I would work all day and all night -- through the seasons of the year. The sun would rise, the snow would fall, the moon wax and wane -- but I would unceasingly, unfailingly produce.

Wouldn't it be wonderful? I could stop eating, no longer waylaid by urgent demands of body or heart. Six days and rest -- no, not for me -- that's for wimps.

And in the end, I would arrive at everything I ever wanted. My masterpiece, my magnum opus. No one else would appreciate it (or me) -- then again, who would give a damn? Would I?

Yesterday, I
wrote about the different representations I want to have available in the BDL.
Perhaps a clearer statement of the BDL's scope is that everything of relevance
to Bach should be either be directly contained by the BDL or would referable
from the BDL. There is no way a BDL can subsume all the wonderful resources
that others are developing about Bach. However, it would be great if the BDL
could know about these other resouces and "interoperate" with them
so that it would be easy for someone to make the best use of all these materials
together.

Continue reading →

Sometimes I don't know where my personal projects end and where my professional
interests begin. (Is that a good or bad thing?) Take the case of one of the
dream projects that I have recently been raving about to both friends and colleagues.
I want to build the Bach Digital Library (BDL). When I proceed to describe what
I mean by the BDL, I usually add the qualification that I don't have be the
one to mastermind the BDL -- I wouldn't mind if it came into being because of
the efforts of others. Yet's it clear that I'd be disappointed if I didn't get
to have some input into a BDL since the fun for me is not only in the Bach-part
but the digital library part.

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When talking to my Dad, he would, on occasion, exhort me with a Chinese proverb. The one that rings in my ears these days is that of the man "who has a drawerful of knives, none of which is sharp". I am such a man in his estimation.
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I'm curious about GTU professor Kah-Jin (Jeffrey) Kuan, a specialist in Old Testament studies, because of his interest in "Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics". By the time I learned that he was teaching a summer course this year on the subject, it was already too late to attend. Hmmm....do I interpret the Bible differently from my non-Asian friends because of my ethnic background (yes, I know, as a Canadian, I'm not Asian-American).

Over the last week or so, as I've started to writing in much greater detail
about my life, I've felt both exhilarated and worried. I've kept a private personal
journal (off and on) since my early teens in which I have poured out my heart
and processed my doubts and deep heart questions. I continue to value that private
space -- and no one should think that my blog is exactly the same as my journal!
But the problem with my journal writing is that it was sometimes terribly lazy.
I'd write about the same thing over and over again; I make commitments that
I soon forget and to which no one could hold me accountable -- since no one
knew of my self-promises.

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Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq was reviewed in today's SF Chronicle. The article caught my eye since I have been having a sinking feeling that the techniques that I have been using to come to a putatively well-considered consideration of political issues are not up to the task of countering the culture and sophistication of spin (i.e., propaganda) practiced in this world. I haven't come to any conclusions yet about WMDs, the war in Iraq -- that is, what the heck is really going on, whom can I trust, am I just being paranoid.

The book goes on my "maybe read" list -- not because I don't think it will useful to read -- but because I need to figure out what I need to focus on right now. I'm not sure I should invest the effort it will take to get to the bottom of these issues right now. (It pains me to say that because American foreign policy, not to mention just the core issues of war, life, death, and justice, are so important for us as a society to wrestle with.)

From Joyce Carol Oates' recent review (in the TLS) of Alice Sebold's Lucky: A Memoir:

Ours is the age of what might be called the New Memoir: the memoir of sharply focused events, very often traumatic, in distinction to the traditional life-memoir. The New Memoir is frequently written by the young or relatively young, the traditional memoir is usually the province of the older. In this sub-genre, the motive isn't to write a memoir because one is an individual of stature or accomplishment, in whom presumably readers might be interested, but to set forth out of relative anonymity the terms of one's physical/psychological ordeal; in most cases, the ordeal is survived, so that the memoirist moves through trauma into coping and eventual recovery. Though the literary structure may sound formulaic, exemplary memoirs like Lucky break the formula with their originality of insight and expression. Like most good prose works, Lucky is far from un-ambiguous: the memoir can be read as an alarming and depressing document, and it can be read as genuinely "uplifting". The pivotal point in Sebold's recovery doesn't occur until years after the rape when, ironically, she comes upon her own case discussed in Dr Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery in terms of "post traumatic stress disorder".

It seems to me that Joyce Carol Oates has a gift for coinages. Last year I noted her explication of what she calls memoirist-reportage in the New York Review.

Two days ago, in hope of ultimately connecting the disparate ramblings
of my blog, I presented a
list of my "life roles" that I use to conceptualize my life. I
set the expectation that I would come back to this list often, unpacking the
elements of the list. Before I jump into that task, however, I will offer a
chronological presentation of my life. Just like the list of life roles, this
chronological list will be sketchy. However, I hope that it provides a simple
framework to contextualize the things I write about on this blog.

(As I write this list, I have a nagging doubt that I feel the need to acknowledge,
if not fully address. I keep thinking, "Who cares about the chronology
of my life? In fact, who cares about the life roles?" It's interesting
that I should be nagged by this issue now since the "who cares?" question
should have come up long ago when I started blogging. Who cares that I love
Bach and computers?

But the "who cares" question wasn't an issue then because, maybe,
I wasn't trying to be more systematic and had presented no grand pretensions
about my blog. But now, making formal lists somehow raises the level of seriousness
of my humble blog. Am I now writing my memoirs? Why would anyone care to read
that? Again, I come back to the thought that my blog is first and foremost for
me, to help focus my life -- and if the product of the process is "useful"
to others, all the better. In the meantime, I shouldn't let these nags keep
me from continuing....[This tangent reminds me of what
Chris wrote a while back and the article by Tom Coates ("My
obligation to you") to which I referred Chris.])

I was born on March 10, 1967, making me 36 years of age at this very moment.
Major phases in my life so far map (not surprisingly) to the three cities in
which I have lived:

1. Timmins, Canada (1967-1986)
   I was born in Timmins, a small
   city of 45,000 residents located 400 miles northeast of Toronto. My parents,
   Wayne and Joanne, came from China and arrived in Timmins in the mid-fifties
   and mid-sixties, respectively. My younger sisters, Janice and Shirley, were
   also born in Timmins. I grew up in Timmins and left when I was nineteen to
   attend university in Toronto.
2. Toronto, Canada (1986-1990)
   I studied Engineering Science
   (physics option) at the University of Toronto,
   where I lived at New
   College. The single most significant event of those years -- and there
   were many -- was my conversion to Christianity during the late summer of 1988
   (a story both complex and simple).
3. Berkeley, USA (1990- present)
   I moved to Berkeley to start a Ph.D.
   program in Biophysics, which I completed in1997. (I studied electron transfer
   in photosynthetic reaction complexes under the guidance of the theoretical
   chemist David
   Chandler.) I spent four years living at the International House, which
   I thoroughly enjoyed. I was booted from the House in 1994 so that I could
   get a life. Fortunately, I then moved into the Regent/Lorina House community
   of which I have been a part for the last nine years. After finishing my graduate
   work, I decide that instead of pursuing a career in biophysics, I would worked
   as staff at UC Berkeley, first in the Statistics
   Computing Facility and then at the Interactive
   University Project (where I am still happily
   ensconced).

   Since the last thirteen years of my life -- basically all of my "adult"
   life -- has been spent in Berkeley, this period has been profoundly formative.