Lunar New Year Food 2

There are more special foods eaten around Lunar New Year.  Some of which I am not so sure are actually made to be eaten.  Such as:

Red pomegranate sesame balls (石榴花煎堆). Are they really meant to be eaten?  Ot just seen for good fortune?  

Air-dried oily ducks (臘鴨, 油鴨) are actually quite common in winter.  But it still feels rather strange to kill a duck and then hang it up to dry in the air.  There is so much fat in the duck that it permeates the whole duck, from the meat to the skin, inside and outside. 

“Gold and Silver Liver” (金銀膶, Pork liver stuffed with pork lard) is not very common these days.  When it is steamed, the lard turns translucent and crisp.  It smells great and tastes even better. 

Deep fried sweet dumplings filled with bean paste (豆沙角).  They are quite difficult to find these days.  The skin is oily but pleasantly chewy.  Brings back very fond childhood memories.  

Which is your favourite?

Covid Mathematics

In the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic 2 years ago, a large number of people were infected, very quickly.  Out of those infected, many were suffering from serious symptoms, and many died.  Based on the numbers available, 2-3 % of the infected died.    Data were scarce because the virus was new.  But it was obviously at least more than an order of magnitude worst than the normal influenza that we were familiar with. It was truly scary.  

Now, two years later, many of whose infected do not seem to exhibit any symptoms.  Nobody would know (including the patient themselves) that they are infected until they are tested.  Many simply recover from it and keep on living as if nothing had happened.  Some do suffer from mild to serious symptoms, and some die.  But the percentage of hospitalisations and deaths are much lower than earlier.  Again, based on published data, the death rates (among the infected) in the past 28 days seem to hover around 0.1 to 0.2 percent in many countries.  The data seems to be broadly comparable to relevant data for seasonal influenza, given the great variability of the data among countries and methods of data collection.  

If this is indeed true, perhaps the covid-19 virus should be dealt with in a different way, compared to what went on before?  Perhaps we should concentrate more on the numbers of hospitalisations and deaths?  And not so much on the numbers of infections - as appears in government reports, newspapers, etc., and as a basis of decisions on social distancing and other measures of control?  Certainly preventing hospitalisations is easier but require different strategies?  What are the numbers of cases of serious symptoms, hospitalisations and deaths anyway?  Why aren’t these and implications discussed?

The pandemic may look very different if another mathematical model is used.  

On the other hand, the vaccines seem to be working.  Perhaps not so much in preventing people from getting infected.  But in preventing serious symptoms and deaths.  Perhaps the more creative strategies can be developed in consideration of that reality? 

If this is true, perhaps we should concentrate more on getting people vaccinated? Particularly for those most vulnerable - those who are old and suffering from other ailments already?  For example, the same advertisements urging the elderly to be vaccinated have been shown on TV seemingly forever.  Are they still effective?  Can more creative advertisement and strategies be developed?  Aren’t there some ways to make it easier for the elderly to be vaccinated?  Subtler ways to convince them, or their family, of the benefits of vaccination?  What about the children?  Why aren’t there more genuine discussions on these matters?

Lunar New Year Food

Lunar (Chinese) New Year is just around the corner.  A casual stroll through the market in Shum Shui Po serves up plenty of evidence for that.  

There are lots of food, from raw to ready-to-eat, delicious to acquired taste, the common to the weird, that are particularly associated with the Lunar New Year. 

There are air-dried strips of pork bellies 臘肉, sausages filled with pork 臘腸, duck liver 潤腸, goose liver, …   All excellent.

Dried oysters.  Expensive. 

Seeds from watermelons, pumpkins, sunflowers, …

“Hair vegetable 髮菜”, long-thread moss - actually a kind of bacteria, I was informed. 

Cashews, pistachios, walnuts, almonds, …  Dried scallops, dried mushrooms, … 

New Year cakes 年糕, sesame ball 煎堆， …

And then my favourite: deep-fried sweet dumplings （角仔）.  Lunar New Year is not complete without 角仔（油角）.   

Food is such an essential part of Chinese culture.  There is a warm, fuzzy feeling whenever these things appear in the market, in anticipation of Lunar New Year.  My grandmother, uncles, aunts, many childhood friends and scenes come back to mind.  

Many of these foods will disappear as soon as the New Year Festival is over, not to be seen again until a year later.  Each year the foods come back, perhaps more expensive than before.  But life is not the same.  A little is lost each time, never to come again.  

Submission and Justice

What do preachers usually cite as evidence that the Bible says we should submit to (worldly) authority?  Generally it is the first few verses of Chapter 13 in the Letter to the Romans, and the several verses in the middle of Chapter 2 of the First Letter of Peter. That is about it.  Out of more than one thousand chapters in the Bible, from Genesis in the Old Testament to Revelations in the New Testament, parts of 2 chapters.  Now, if the authority’s orders are just, surely there is no legitimate reason not to submit to them.  What if they are unjust?  Should we still submit?  

What what does submit really mean?  Should we follow orders that we know are unjust?  That seems to be overridden by other verses in the Bible, where it says we should submit to God rather than man when they are in conflict.  Does that we should keep silent when the authorities do something that is unjust?  Perhaps we shouldn’t cheer and support unjust orders, even if we dare not oppose them?  

Normally, when we care about something deeply, we keep thinking about it, perhaps talking about it often.  We think about different aspects of it, considering it from different perspectives.  

How often does the Bible talk about justice? Chastising kings, priests, leaders, people in power, for perverting justice, oppressing orphans and widows, exploiting the poor, …?  That we should love justice, submit to God’s rather than men’s orders, help the poor,  give justice to the weak and the fatherless, maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute, correct oppression, plead the widow’s cause, be willing to suffer for righteousness’ sake, …?  Everywhere we look.  Again ad again.  

If the Bible keeps talking about something, surely it must be important?  Sin, repentance and salvation - they are everywhere. And lo and behold, they are supremely, existentially  important.  

Now, teachings about justice is also many times more prevalent than teachings on submission to earthly authority.  Surely it makes sense to be more concerned about justice -  caring about it, seeking it, keeping it, helping to preserve it - rather than submitting to an authority bent on perverting it?  

AI for Service

Service-Learning does not stop despite the pandemic.  Earlier in the Fall Semester, Two courses, from Biomedical Engineering and Computing, jointly ran an integrated robotics-programming-artificial intelligence-computer vision project for a number of primary schools in Hong Kong.  

The kids are taught to train an AI equipped with a camera to recognise objects such as French Fries, hamburgers, …  

Then they design robots that can clean up the simulated guts of a human cluttered with stuff.  

They design and made their own handset to control the robot. 

This we successfully run in Fall 2021, with hundreds of PolyU students as tutors for hundreds of kids from several schools.  It is complicated enough just to explain.  Imagine running it, successfully, without too much headache. 

Now we are running the same project, remotely, in South Africa, Vietnam and Philippines. More or less simultaneously.  The South Africa project is jointly run with the University of Pretoria.  They recruit kids from the townships and put them into the laboratory on their campus, and assigned Pretoria students as tutors.  It is on-going right now.  The kids are learning everyday with our students, remotely.  The kids are taught to train an AI to recognise French Fries, …

The final competition is set for Sunday afternoon, Hong Kong Time, morning in Pretoria, South Africa. 

Of course, we have to ship a lot of stuff to South Africa and Vietnam.  The stuff was stuck at the customs in Vietnam for a month and a half.  Such are some of the challenges and risks in international service-learning.  

The Vietnam project is also on-going. Our team is amazing. We cannot be more proud of them.  

Stranger Kindness

Many things happen on the footbridge between PolyU and the Hung Hom MTR station. In the morning, usually between 8 and 9 am, several people, mostly women, would be distributing free newspapers.  I would pick some up along the way, without stopping, to supplement what I have read online before leaving home.

A few days ago, one of the ladies suddenly said to me, “Your foot seems to be getting better!”  I was so surprised that I could only blurt out a “Yes, it is better.” I figure that she must have seen me walked by and noted how I progressed - from walking gingerly and stiffly in the air cast fortified by a stick, to slowly with stick but no air cast, to finally walking freely.  But I cannot even remember what she looked like.  

Today I encountered her again and she asked about my foot.  I had a chance to stop and explain that a bone was broken, that it is indeed getting better and I can walk, but cannot yet run because it is not fully healed yet.”  She advised me to take it easy.  I thanked you for her concern.  

I am truly grateful, that a stranger would notice my predicament, note my progress, and take the trouble to offer a kind word of encouragement.  The world certainly be better with more people like her. 

Rebel from Heaven

When I went with my wife to watch a Cantonese Opera at the XiQu Center, I was looking forward to 3 hours of familiar music from days of my youth.  I was not disappointed. 

Little did I know that I would also be moved to tears.  Really.  The opera tells the story of a little fairy who sneaked out from heaven to experience the excitement of this earthly world.  She promptly met a young man, fell in love with him, contrived to marry him and got pregnant.  

When the Heavenly Emperor discovered it, he got quite angry and ordered the fairy to return to heaven.  Naturally, she didn’t want to leave her husband and was initially defiant.  At that point, the Emperor struck the young man down.  To save the life of her husband, the fairy was forced to submit and return to heaven.  What was wrong with what the young couple did?  To find love and happiness in this messy world, to escape from the sterile blandness of “heaven”?  And that is a sin punishable by death?  

Of course it is just a story, a legend.  It is not real.  Yet the story has been around for hundreds of years, and beloved by so many.   It must have struck a chord with many.  It certainly struck a chord with me.  

Surely, in the young couple I see the image of so many young people who dare to challenge the status quo, to question the authority of the establishment, to want the freedom to choose, to love.  

Am I being old? To be touched by such a simplistic, implausible, old story?  Or is there really something that is truly honourable in there?

M+, again

Three and a half months ago, in late September, I broke my foot here outside M+.  For 6 weeks, my right foot had to be in an air cast whenever I walk.  For 3 months, I used a stick to help me walk.  Yesterday, I walked here again, and completed 10 kilometres.  The broken bone felt OK.  My ankles were sore, probably because they were rusty.  And the bottom of my feet felt sensitive.  But all the discomfort went away overnight.  I cannot run yet.  But I felt liberated already.  

There was almost another mishap soon after passing by M+.  I was walking briskly along the water front, through a thick crowd.  Suddenly I felt something around my ankles.  My feet got tangled up with a kite string.  A kid, probably 4 years old, about 10 feet away, yelled “that is ours!”.   I extricated myself, eventually, almost cutting myself on the rough string.  The string was obviously not a normal piece of string, but reinforced with something.  I shuddered to think what might happen if the kite was in the air and the string was at the level of my neck, across the path on which I was walking briskly.  

The father checked on the kid, to make sure he was not hurt, and helped him collect the string.  He did not apologise to me, even though he must have witnessed what happened.  I do not blame the kid.  After all, he was only 4-5 years old.  But the father is an adult, and he should know better than to allow his kid to fly a kite, with a reinforced string, in such a crowded area.  

I got away from the area quickly.  Reached home safely eventually.

 

Submission is not Collusion

Some Christians leaders like to preach submission to the authority, even to dictators and oppressors.  The Bible indeed says we should submit to authority - for the reason that authorities are there to punish the wicked and reward the good.  Surely we should respect their authority when their orders are just.  What happens when their orders are unjust?  Should we cheer the powerful when they exploit the poor, silence and beat up those who disagree with them, and put the people they do not like in prison?  

Even pro-establishment Christian leaders have to admit that God is the ultimate authority.  When a government’s orders go against God’s, we should follow God but not the earthly authorities.  Christians - in fact, any self-respecting human beings - should not collude with the rich and powerful - even those who hold the guns, when what they are doing is unjust. We definitely should not collude with those who subvert justice, oppress in the name of their laws, to do what is evil in God’s eyes.  

Submission is not the same as collusion.  We submit to just authority.  We should not follow orders that are unjust.  We should definitely not collude with the dictator to oppress the weak, even if we can get rich and powerful by doing that. That is despicable.   Christians, in particular, are supposed to know the truth, to look beyond this world to the everlasting.  Yet so very often, our actions show that we seem to be seeking only worldly safety, comfort, status and riches.  We say one thing but do the other.