In the news...

I'm soooo relieved having finally done with projects under pressing deadlines and now can be prepared for the upcoming holidays both mentally and physically. While working in front of the computer a lot, I've been following the news quite a bit mostly during breaks in between work sessions (and more often the breaks lasted longer than the work sessions...)

First of all, finding out Mr. Tung to be receiving an honorary degree from my Alma Mater was really disturbing and even enraging. People say give him a break as he is old or the protesters should not have ruined the ceremony. You give me a break! He was not young when he stepped in as the first Chief Executive of the SAR to begin with and look at what he has done to HK. Does the so-called "contribution to the smooth transition" offset the cost of lives he is responsible for (the magic number 85,000, SARS, messing with the legal system, to name a few)? I actually applaud the students and graduates who voiced their opinion on that day. As for "ruining" the ceremony, who's the culprit? The party who honored a criminal, or the students who just disagree and ask for justice? If I were one of the parents, I would be more upset of his presence than to the protesters. His patronizing tone totally bugged me as h/well. Now I feel for the graduates at the Y when Cheney came. The issue was the students had no say of who the honoree would be and that could potentially spoil the fun of graduation. Lately I feel like academic credentials and titles often times do not mean anything anyways. Not that they are bad per se, but often times the system which grants them is not without flaws. My first hand experience is quite a few colleagues at work boast their such and such PhD degrees from so and so Ivy League schools but the way they run things are just horrifying. I can't help questioning how come I almost died getting a Master's while these maniacs get their PhD's with no common sense.

I'm glad than Anson Chan won the election in HK and she seems to be one of the rare "colonial leftovers" that is actually sane and makes sense with the clear conscience of what is right and wrong. Thanks to YouTube that it only takes a few clicks to take one back to 1989 and see the passion of HKers and mainlanders. People have changed a lot and they seem to have lost values and morals. Along with that I find political elections in general to be more interesting than I used to. I used to stay from anything political but I guess now as one grows up, or gets older to be exact, things seem to matter and relate to life more. 2008 will definitely be a much anticipated year with interesting outcome.

Enough of "serious" stuff. Has anyone seen this? People should know that I'm a die-hard Gene Kelly guy and who would have thought Usher would do something like this?It's almost exactly like the original except in the ending he's supposed to be giving his umbrella to the cop (See? I know the movie well!) but I like his stylized rendition of such a classic.