The Function of (I)

There are a lot of tv series out there that have one particular function. What function, you say, to entertain right? Nope, not right. The particular function is this:

......

Where the y axis is the level of excitement of the series and the x axis is the time line of the series. Here the series starts off quite well to hook the viewer, then the excitement level eases away and drones into a routine for the plain purpose of filling time. The director may choose to finish with a bang, and this is only achievable through the 'boring bits' and build up in previous episodes.

This takes me back to the question of ancient secret: "Why are some people more good-looking than others?" Well because if everyone was good-looking, then everyone would also be really ugly.

Nerdy? Yes. I see the world in graphs. I think almost everything can be plotted some way or another, including qualitative items such as interaction between people, behaviour, and love - in interesting ways.

Here is f(I):

So this is f of (I). It mainly determines the way i plan, whether it is speeches, videos (movies), activities, or the intensity of on-going dates - that is, if dating should have any climax at this stage of my life.

It is ALL (period) or Nothing Will Ever Change

I was playing...bogglific (*chhhhh*) against a man from India, and after destroying me 31 - 16, he messages: "good game, lets play some more".

doesn't that just sound so Indian?

Speaking of Indians, (who I think are quite good in some ways, especially West Indians who commentate on the cricket) I discovered on a simple stats recorder that someone from India searched Google to find this blog.

The key words he used to find me were:
'How do shopkeepers earn their margin from shop'

now hows that for sounding Indian?

Walking Ridiculously

Have you seen a particularly humorous ways of how people walk down the street?

You may have and yes I have. I've seen big dogs walking their small owners and going out of control and I've seen big owners walking their small dogs that just won't budge. I've seen mothers scolding their children while walking and dragging them along by their ears, and I've seen excited children walking their exhausted mothers along a display to show them this and show them that.

But I have never seen anything like this -->

1. A grandma is walking her grand daughter in the neighbourhood.
2. The little girl is flying on a scooter.
3. The grandma, whose running action is quite flawed, scrambles all-in to keep up.

I can just imagine:
Mother: Mum can you take my girl out to play?
Grandma: Alright dear.
Mother: Don't let her get out of sight mum. Make sure of that please.

(later on...)

Grandma: Sweety, want to go outside with grandma?
Girl: Okay grandma. Let's go.
Grandma: (At the door) Hmm, what do you want to do outside dear? Go to the park?
Girl: No I want to ride my scooter.
Grandma: Oh your mother, she got you that scooter for your birthday...hey! (panick)

I don't think I've ever seen a grandma run so fast. That, in itself, made my day.

This Is My Life

This space will no longer be devoted to the taiwan trip 06/07. I have not run out of things to write about - its just that heating up yesterday's fried rice is not as appetizing to the chef and appealing to diners as fresh ingredients put into a pot, and that my senses are able to paint a more inspired picture.

'The Taiwan Chronicles' will still make sense, because it is the chronicles of a taiwanese boy.

Thus, I hope you will enjoy - This Is My Life.

21. Bargaining Economics

I finally understand why taiwan shopkeepers always fix their eyes on a customer's every movement right from the moment when he walks through the shop door. In the case that a group of customers walk in, I now also understand why the manager would choose to pause the casual conversation with her employees to subtly assign them to look after the customers.

"Eh eh you ren lai le, gan kuai qu kan kan! (Eh eh, some customers are here, quick go have a look.)" she'd say, also picking one of the few customer to lay her eyes on as she assumes her counter position.

This is why.

From the moment you walk into the shop, the shopkeeper has already laid her eyes on you, and she studies you like a diamond. She watches your style in many aspects; intelligence through your eyes, caution through the way you step, stability through the movement of your head etc. From what she gathers, she then makes a decision on exactly how to deal with you. If you watch carefully the shopkeepers of smaller shops, she is always fidgeting with the goods inside the glass. Maybe she is adjusting to the time of day, to the weather, or to you, who has just walked through the door, and is about to be gobbled up by a crocodile without teeth, meaning that you'd come out alive, but sorry.

Some stores do not have price tags on their items, so the shopkeeper can just set her own price according to her observation of the customer. Some stores do have price tags, but they have a ridiculous price blown up to 1000% of cost, and they have a slash through them. Again, that means any price. And if you remember those times, where the shopkeeper says: "Oh you like that? You come just the right time, I have a better one of that. It is in the back, i'll get it for you." Then she goes to the back to get the goods and brings it out and explains to you: "This one from korea, has this - - - - - and this - - - - -. Oh sell so good, my last one now." And you'd be thinking that it looks pretty good, and it does look pretty good for all of the above reasons, but you'd better watch out, because you came in just in time to buy the last one of whichever that sell-so-good.

Here's a joke i read that i found interesting.
A manager of an eye care store says to a new sales recruit: "If a customer comes to you with a pair of glasses and asks for the price, tell him $4000. If his reaction is anything else but surprised, in other words without the slightest piece of concern, quickly add in that $4000 is just the frame, the lenses are $3000. Then, if he still doesn't seem to mind, quickly add in that it is $3000 for each lens, so in total for two lenses it is $6000."

You could roughly guess the cost price of an items in a shop in taiwan. Because marking up prices by a few hundred percent is the only way to survive the taiwanese bargaining culture, which involves more and more buyers becoming crocodiles that clamp their teeth together so tight that you'd need a tool to open it up. Thus by far, simply not giving money is the best way to 'win', and the pay-off is sometimes interesting.

I remember the story about J Paul Getty. He was one of the firsts in the world to hold a fortune of $1 billion. One day his son John was kidnapped and a ransom of a few million dollars was demanded.
When interviewed by the media, he answered: "I'm not paying, not even 1 cent I'm am paying."
His family and friends were shocked at his words and said to him: "What? You value money more than you value the life of your son?"
He replied: "If I paid the ransom today, when is the next time one of my many other children will be kidnapped?"
And he said firmly: "Today I oath that I will not pay even one cent, but I also oath that if the kidnapper does any harm to my son, I will use all my power and wealth to go after the kidnapper and make him miserable for the rest of his life."
Eventually, Getty didn't pay one cent, and the kidnapper let his son go and disappeared. Why? Because the kidnapper does not wish to hold something that is of no value to him, in exchange for a life time of unrest. In the same way, shopkeepers would rather get rid of items of no practical value in exchange for any accumulation of wealth and a better tomorrow.

But.

After spending time wandering on the streets, browsing night markets, and talking to owners in the stalls, I realized that sometimes it is not really about 'winning' or 'losing'.

Owners of these small stalls are people like you and me. They have fathers and mothers to feed, toys to buy for their children, gas and electricity to pay, and they may be in a lot of debt after borrowing money to send their kids to school. If you ever say 'that store price too high, i can get better at my uncle's factory', then you're probably right, because all of these stalls need to mark up from their cost price - they desperately need to find a way to pay for their fathers, mothers, spouses and children. So, there is no such word as 'rip-off' because every price is going to be specifically designed to earn the owner a profit. People get the idea of 'rip-off' by comparison. That's why the stores that do best, are the ones which have no other stores to compete with, such as the ones before the establishment of the Internet. In these cases, people have no idea what the 'standard' price is, so they buy according to their willingness to pay.

Consider a simple story. In a marketplace in a chinese village, there is a man selling meats, a woman selling vegetables, a man selling fresh water, and a woman selling fish. These people are ordinary people who have needs to provide for. They sell their goods at the intersection of a main road of the village, with one in each corner. For the particular day, the marketplace is not a very prosperous place; the number of people that have walked through in the day doesn't even amount to the number of stalls. Despite that, every once in a while, the men and the women would yell: 'meats, quality and quantity meats', and 'water, big bottles of water'. It was until evening, when a man of rich appearance strolls onto the marketplace main street. As the four marketers look at him with polite intent, he approaches the fish stall, and says: "I want to buy four fishes to cook for dinner." The fish woman is overjoyed. She picks, cuts and packs the fishes into a container and makes an exchange with the man, who strolls happily home. About ten minutes later, the man selling fresh water says: "Okay, I think that should be enough for today, I am going home." And about two minutes later, the marketplace is empty.

What happened? The four marketers are new to the market and don't know each other very well. All they ever wanted to do is to work for a day to put food on the table for their families at home. The rich man bought fish from the fish woman, who in turn set off a domino effect to provide the other three marketers enough money to provide the other three marketers enough money to provide the other three marketers enough money to buy a wholesome meal for their families that night, and still earn a small margin of profits.


If you look carefully at the stall keepers in the picture, they are not really doing their jobs properly. The girl attending the girl stall is checking out the products at the other girl stall, while the man crushing oranges is drooling over something else, possibly food.

When buying something from any shop, the question to ask is not always 'is this the cheapest item for the best quality i get?' but rather 'is this a win-win situation for you and i?' or even 'some of you and i?' If there is a price equal to or below your willingness to pay, why make them lose more when you have already won? Why thrash someone at a sport game and make them cry when you can just beat them by a whisker and then tell them: "whoa that was a close game"? I will be ever appreciative of the power that money has, to bring the giver joy when he takes a step of faith to help others in their times of need.

20. A New Level of Awareness

There is a type of people in this world called 'clean freak'. There is also another type of people in this world called 'neat freak'. In the home i live in today, there is a clean freak and there is a neat freak.

My mum is the clean freak. It is not to say that she loves to clean, it's just that she likes the things around her to be clean. She abide by the rule of 'if you can't see it, it can't hurt you', because she even uses environmentally friendly cleaners to rid all possibilities of uncleanliness - including the uncleanliness from normal dish washing liquids. And to satisfy her cleanliness, dish scrubbers must be made from environmentally friendly materials which are chemical free. Her current favourite is the sun-dried luffa (sponge gourd), which has a rough texture for scrubbing dirty dishes clean. Sometimes, her cleaning demands become so ridiculous that we engage in 'tongue battles' (she zhan), which are basically arguments, except i'd like to think that it is more sophisticated. In ancient china, when one arguer says a statement and a contestant challenges with an opposing statement that plays on the arguer's statement, a 'tongue battle' begins. The arguer would fire back words to attack the contestant, and the contestant would gentlemanly make use of the attack to convey his own message that rhymes, matches certain tones, possibly parodies, while at the same time counterattacks. The arguer would then crunch back with his own sets of plays of language and sophistication. So on and so forth, until a large crowd is gathered. My mum enjoys a sparring partner for what she does best.

My dad is the neat freak. It is not to say that he is not clean, it just means that he is especially fussy about tidiness. When he sees a sink full of dishes, he feels knots in his heart. But wait! Shouldn't a sink full of dirty dishes bother a clean freak? Yes it does, but it bothers a neat freak even more, because the dishes are not stacked neatly on the rack, and the fact that there is misplaced dirt on them, knots the heart even more. Conversely speaking, a neat freak would not mind rubbish - as long as it is placed in the correct spot e.g. at the left side of the desk, where it is labeled 'discarded papers'. A neat freak relies on order in his life to maintain his knotless heart. Before continuing with anything else, he must find the dropped rubber that has rolled under the fixed work desk and place it back into the pencil case, he must shelve his series of books in a particular order at a particular angle, straighten the painting to zero degree tilt etc. Most importantly, a neat freak must never waste. Even for the sake of saving. Although it is pouring heavily outside, my dad would still pour the vegetable washing water into the 'resources bucket'. I told him that in the past 3 seconds it rained enough on our lawn to fill 3000 of those buckets. He agreed with me, but to waste, he cannot.

I know a lot of people who have these traits, so you may be able to identify very well. Thus, i do should not be using the word 'freak'. However, after visiting and staying with my little uncle in taiwan for a few days, i can truly say that i had discovered a freak - a 'safety freak'.

Everywhere my little uncle goes, whether it is the house, the car or the office, he carries with him a few packet of wet wipers. He picked me up from the bus stop and the first thing he said to me was: "Yao bu yao ca shou? (Want to clean hands?)" He also said the same thing when i was getting out. He said the same thing when i was inside the house, and outside the house. All in all, he just kept saying it all day. Rumours has it that his family uses a box of tissues per day, and i add that 90% of the tissues is pulled out and used or distributed by him alone. This is safety via cleanliness.

Academic excellence in taiwan has much to do with university education as well as career prosperity. Little uncle knows this fact, so he does all he could to assist her daughter to the top of the class in all subjects. He really gets involved at the parent teacher interviews, sometimes makes his own appointments with teachers, and actively participates with in-class politics. He told me about the time when her daughter Ting Ting obtained an almost perfect score in her end of year test but she was still beaten to the top by the 'second smartest kid' in class. He said that it was an outrage, the 'second smartest kid' came first overall only because he scored a little higher in class tests, which are nothing compared to the big end of year test. His vivid and detailed descriptions of Ting Ting's classmates make it seem almost as though he comes to class to sit at the back just to 'check up' on the kids in the class. As the old proverb prescribes: "Know self, know else, win one hundred out of one hundred times."

I took this photo while in a zoo. During the 'sore leg' sitting break, he pulls out a social activities textbook so that they could revise for the upcoming social activities test together. This is safety via job security.

Little uncle has safety doubts/issues about a lot of people, as in people are plain not safe, especially when they are random. He says: "Ni zai che zhan ji ji ji de shi hou, yao ba bao bao na hao, qian bao fang zai li mian kou dai, xiao xin ni ji ji ji ji dong xi jiu bu jian le." ("When you squish squish squish, hold your bags close, put your wallet in safe place, in case you squish squish squish and come out with nothing." Also: "Ru guo kan dao you ren wang ni zhe bian zou, kan de guai guai de, xian duo kai la, ru guo hao xiang gen zhe ni de hua, ni jiu ke yi cha bu duo kai shi pao le." ("If you see someone walking towards you, and looks suspicious, try to avoid first, if he looks like he's following you, you should pretty much make a run for it.")

He wanted to show me exactly how dangerous taiwan can be. So he gave me a live demonstration while picking up his daughter from school. So, he walked with me through the front gate of the primary school and sure enough we were stopped by security guards.
"Dui bu qi, wai ren bu ke yi jin qv," (Sorry no outsiders allowed) said one of the four security guards.
"Wo shi jie xiao hai de," (I'm here to pick up my kid) said my uncle as he stopped to explain.
"Jie xiao hai ah?" (Pick up kid?) said the guard, now more relaxed. "Ha-ha, hen xin ku ho?" (tough work that.)
"Yes yes," said uncle. And we were through as easily as 'open sesame'. "Ni kan ni kan! Ren he ren dou ke yi zhang de xiang shi jie xiao hai de ah. Wo zhen de bu zhi dao na ji wei zai men kou gan ma" (See see, anybody can look like they have kids. I really don't know what these guards are doing at the gate) he aired to me. This is safety via paranoia.

These safety measures are not to be underestimated.

19. By the Power of a Glance

For the 21 days on tour, i felt like i was travelling in a live taiwanese drama. There were 188 tourists, half of whom were girls, most of whom came on tour to meet other people for their own reasons, and all of whom were taiwanese. We shared university dormitories, hotels, cabins, and much more, such that on the third day, it seemed as though we had known each other since forever. In addition, the oldest organizing authority on tour was only 26, so you could imagine all the boundary stretching and rule breaking temptations that add to the very essence of taiwanese drama. Plus, every corner you turn and every pillar you stand under, you'd find guys saying the line: "ni dao di xi huan shei ah?" (who do you like tell me come on) and "ni jue de na ge xiao mei zen yang?" (you think that little girl how about?) But the most key of word in this tour sub-culture is: "zheng mei" (standard girl). 'Standard' by the meaning of standardly good or typically pretty. It is as though the guys all see themselves as 'standard' guys so wouldn't accept anything below par 'standard'. So the time comes when the girls say that they're tired and want to go to sleep, and they go back to their own rooms. As soon as the guys' room door closes, all the guys would explode into mouthfuls such as: "you mei you kan dao XX chao zheng ah!" (did you see XX super standard!) Now you know, that's all we, shallow, superficial, guys talk about. Without girls, the guys would all be standing pieces of wood with two branches neatly by each side, no one would step one step out of his room, and i dare say that there would have only been about 10 people on the tour.

There is something unfathomable about glance exchanges with the opposite sex. I chose the words 'glance exchanges' because there would be nothing weird about a one way glance. The other party wouldn't know that somebody else is looking at them, therefore there is no power in the glance. There are three general reasons for glance exchanges 1) They are interested in you 2) They think you are interested in them 3) They think that you think that they are interested in you.

I was very careful in my live-in taiwanese drama to avoid those awkward glance exchanges, however inevitable it was. I didn't think it was very healthy to build a relationship upon the awkwardness, so i almost always tried to prevent it at all cost. The experience of glance exchanges can be described for both parties using the following analogy. It is as though two magnets are placed next to each other at an influencing distance, while the poles of the two individual magnets switch at random periods. Such that one moment, the magnets are being repelled by the force field one another, yet at the next moment, the magnets find themselves attracted to each other. Sometimes, glance exchangers are just like these magnets. They feel an almost tangible force field caused by the eyes of the other person, such that it is hard to look them in the eye. But at other times, their eyes just wander wander wander into the force field's epicentre. It is as though eyes have so much power, and perhaps that is a part of the reason why it is the window to the soul.

(The girl in the photo is angela who is one of those 'nice' girls and has not much to do with the contents of 19. By the Power of a Glance)

When i get into a glance exchange, i usually pretend that nothing is wrong, and view normally, just like the way i view normal girls - look them in the eye when they talk, watch them when they move, and rest my eyes on their faces when i go off into a daze. I do that, and they don't get any ideas. They don't even look back. But there is just something profound about pretending that a glance exchanger is a normal person, because it just doesn't work. It's just not the same. It's as though she has subscribed to my force field, and where my eyes move, i give off varying strengths of different forces. I cannot look at her as she may get ideas, yet i cannot not look at her as it would be unnatural. I cannot look at her for very long as it would turn into a stare, yet i cannot look at her for very short as it would reveal my discomfort. So finally, my eyes go wandering into a lovely daze and soon after, i find myself looking at that same girl, who at the same moment turns her face to catch my glance. And i say: "Goodness, not even in my day dream can i avoid her. Now she's sunk further into my power, and i further into hers."

Among the 188, there was one girl who to me, stood out from the rest. The rest means the rest of the girls i checked out, which was pretty much all of them. I could make a list of the reason as to why she stood out to me, but i only want to talk about one thing. It was her laugh. Her laugh really touched my heart. My dad taught me some time ago that, by the way a person laughs, you could tell whether a person was genuine or not genuine, simple or complex, innocent or manipulative, open or defensive. And watch out for those people who can't show genuine laughter, because those people, i deduced, think before they laugh. The reason for that, is because they are so full of motives themselves, that wherever they go, or whoever they meet, they naturally put up a shield to protect themselves against motives, which in actual fact are only their own medicines. Very dangerous people.

The word to sum up the quality of the laugh is the chinese word 'tian zhen', which means innocence but with more awareness and naivety but with more understanding. The qualities that derive from 'tian zhen' are genuineness, generosity and compassion. I saw those qualities in action, and i was attracted to all of them. The girl must have sensed my attraction, because i suddenly felt the magnetic force field controlling my eyes. Such that i was unable to lift my camera to add her picture into my dvd-full image collection. Such that before i turn the corner in the corridor i feel a repelling force from around the corner, which makes me turn and run. I made some wrong moves in that experience, but i'm glad i did so that i could be better next time. Now for all occasions in the past, I have never wanted to look for a relationship of any type. Because i believe that the time has not yet come.

[Picture for another day]