红酒·绿茶 / Red Wine & Green Tea / Vin Rouge et Thé Vert

When I checked my blog's SiteMeter , I noticed that a surprisingly large number of people were lead to my blog by googling for "phd fun". For them I have a few words: First of all, do *not* put "phd" and "fun" in the same search query. PhD is anything *but* fun. Second, if you ask someone whether PhD is fun and he/she answers "yes" or "no", that person must have not done a PhD. A real answer should start with something like "well..." Oh, by the way, I just submitted my dissertation and my PhD years are officially over. Jokes aside, getting a PhD is a unique experience. It is so unique that I believe even if I had a second chance, I would end up choosing to do it anyway. As far as I know, a person who finishes a PhD usually has a big ego, is a little idealistic and definitely lazy . I would end up doing a PhD because of my personalities. So I say to myself: stop whining and life goes on. :)

As many people point out, it takes perseverance, patience and pain to set up Chinese support in LaTeX . So after I took the pain to do it, following these two great tutorials (TeXLive users take note: DO follow instruction 4.b .), I thought I should use it more. Here it is: the bilingual pdf version of the " Analects of Confucius"（《论语》）, or "Confucian Analects", translated by James Legge and typeset by me. Many thanks to Project Gutenberg for the original plain text version!

My Birthday Treats Originally uploaded by yisu79 It's that time of year again. This year, we had delicious cakes from Patisserie Poupon for desert. The dinner itself featured a traditional dish of Szechuan Cuisine: Boiled Pork Slices（水煮肉片）, prepared by my lovely girlfriend! (BTW, don't be fooled by the dish's name; it's very hot.)

I have been playing Dynasty Warriors 5 , a beat-'em-up PS2 game about the Three Kingdoms , created by the legendary Japanese game-maker Koei . Now I can barely type this post because my thumb hurt from smashing the buttons. Due to its heavy references to Chinese history, literature and culture, this game received a relatively low rating in US. (Probably the same reason that I could never understand why Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was hailed as "the greatest video game ever" by US gamers.) I had to order it online because it wasn't available in most stores. "Three Kingdoms" is one of the most turbulent periods in the history of China. Partly due to its incomplete historical documentation, it sparked a great amount of imagination among story-tellers and novelists of the latter day. Luo Guanzhong's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" became the most famous of all. In the Asian gaming world, games based on this novel have such a great cult follow...

To hear Handel's "Messiah" in its entirety has been on my to-do list for a while; now I can finally check it off. When I was checking out Baltimore Symphony Orchestra 's schedule for December, I found two performances of "Messiah": One traditional interpretation led by Edward Polochick of Baltimore Choral Arts Society and one with a gospel twist, led by BSO's own Maestra, Marin Alsop. I ended up choosing the former because it was my first time hearing it. The latter seemed very interesting, though. Prior to this event, I have only heard two numbers from "Messiah" on CD: "Rejoice, O daughter of Zion" and "Hallelujah!" After the performance, they are still my favorites. As I learned in my music class, the main character in this oratorio is the chorus, of which I haven't been a big fan before. Strangely, many songs, especially those arias sung by the vocal soloists remained me a lot of Peking Opera , or Chinese Opera in...

Finished the story mode of the game, "Rayman: Raving Rabbids" , in less than two weeks - a personal record! It was a hysterically fun game and I just couldn't wait to see the rest of it once I started playing. Originally created for Wii, its PS2 version would not be as fun as the Wii version with the famous Wii remote controller but the rabbids still win me over with their unique personalities. Check out the following video compilation from youtube: My personal favorite is the one that they created for Valentine's Day:

Came back from my second Election Night party. This time without disappointment. We made a huge map and colored the states with blue and red crayons. We witnessed history with chips, pizza, beers and blue-colored drinks. It was fun.