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

00 Prelude Chapter I Cities 01  - Pompeii 02  - Ercolano 03   Napoli 04   Praha 05  -  Kutná Hora 06   Wien 07   Budapest 08  - Lucca 09  - Cinque Terre 10   Pisa 11  - Siena Chapter II Museums 12  Palazzo Reale (Napoli) 13  Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Napoli) 14  Pražský hrad (Praha) 15  Lobkowicz Palace (Praha) 16  Schonbrunn Palace (Wien) 17  Imperial Apartments (Wien) 18  Sisi Museum (Wien) 19  Kunsthistorisches Museum (Wien) 20  Piazza dei Miracoli (Pisa) 21  Museo Civico (Siena) 22  Opera della Metropolitana (Siena) 23  Cappelle medicee (Firenze) Chapter III Stories 24  Dear Neapolitan Thieves 25  Laotian 26  She's Canadian!  

As a long-time Tintin fan, I was so excited to learn that Montreal would be the first to screen The Adventures of Tintin (2011)  in North America. So I wasted no time, "not a moment to lose" as Tintin would say, in buying the tickets online at my favorite downtown movie theatre,   Cinéma Banque Scotia Montréal . I was a little bit concerned because the title of the movie was presented in French, "Les aventures de Tintin", but after 3 years living in the very bilingual city that is Montreal, I have got used to people switching between or mixing English and French all the time. "It's downtown, the heart of anglophone culture", I said to myself, "even if they were so obliged to show Tintin in its absolutely original tongue, French, they would at least  show it with English subtitles to be politically correct." I was dead wrong. In hindsight, I was in denial that I made a mistake. Even when we walked into the room with a "VF" sign,...

Having had great pleasure in reading "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli , I can't help but writing down some thoughts I had in mind. With all due respect, Machiavelli's advice to a new prince may seem novel to the Greco-Roman world but are almost trite to the Sino-centric world. For example, Cesare Borgia's plan of letting Remirro de Orco, an extremely cruel person (酷吏), do all the dirty job of purging the unruly lords in the newly acquired Romagna then cutting him in half to please the people, which Machiavelli praised as an excellent example of political maneuver, was in any Chinese princes' playbook since probably the beginning of written Chinese history. What was new to me was Machiavelli's proto-scientific treatment of politics, which draws conclusions on logical analysis of the actual results of each political decision. For example, "it is better to be feared than loved." Modern political science's reliance on polls and data is sim...

I know I haven't blogged for a really long time but I can't help but paying tribute to Steve Jobs (1955-2011). Ever since I got my first Apple product, a Powerbook G4, I have never looked back. Life is too short to be wasted on figuring out how to use a computer, or using a computer that fails randomly. It should make you life easier, not harder. It should just work, like a Mac. His 2005 Stanford commencement speech is the best I have ever heard. You should watch it if you haven't already. The world would have been much more boring if it wasn't for Steve Jobs. We will miss you.