Cioccolato su San Valentino

For the second time since 1996, I bought Fanne a pack of chocolate as a Valentine's Day gift. I seldom arrange anything on this day when I was in Taiwan but I did deliver flowers with a cuddle bear through online gift service every year when studying in Scotland. As it was the first St Valentine's Day after we became man and wife, I just wanted to prepare something different for this special occasion.

According to the Patron Saints Index from the Catholic Community Forum, the Valentines honoured on the 14th of February are Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni, the former being a priest, possibly a bishop, who suffered martyrdom in Rome about 269, and the latter a bishop who was murdered in secret on the way between Rome and Terni about 175. Some scholars believe that the two are the same person.

There are a couple of attested theories about the origin of Valentine's Day celebrations, tracing it to a Graeco-Roman festivals Lupercalia (a rite connected to fertility and prosperity) in mid February, to the belief that birds court one another on this day, or to the commemoration of the anniversary of Valentine's decease or entombment. The last suggests that Valentine was executed for secretly solemnising marriages for young couples in defiance of the decree issued by Roman Emperor Claudius II, who believed that single men made better soldiers than those with familial burdens.

Nevertheless, it doesn't matter to me in whichever way St Valentine may have become connected to romantic love. The festival just offers Chinese people a second opportunity apart from Qixi (七夕) to express care and adoration for their significant others.

I was so delighted to see Fanne's face beaming with happiness when she discovered a case of Italian Slitti Gran Cacao 73% on her dressing table.

Marry a wife to enjoy new year

(Menu for the 'reunion dinner' 2005)

Having celebrated Chinese New Year abroad for five consecutive years, I am now back in my homeland spending this traditional holiday with my parents and wife.

I left Taiwan in autumn 2002 to present those 30s and 40s Shanghai popular songs to the academic world, and from 2003 onwards I didn't have 'reunion dinner' (團圓飯 tuanyuan fan) with my parents until this year.

• In 2003, the year of the goat, I was in a flat with my then fiancée and two Chinese flatmates at Murray Place, Stirling.
  
• In 2004, the year of the monkey, during my fieldwork in Mainland China, I was invited by one of the Stirling flatmates to his home town, Taiyuan (太原).
  
• In 2005, the year of the rooster, I hosted a reunion dinner with the landlady's family and a few local friends at Clarendon Place, Stirling.
  
• In 2006 and 2007, years of the dog and of the pig respectively, I arranged new year's eve dinners for the landlady, colleagues and several locals at Victoria Place, Stirling.

At each dinner in the last three years, in order to keep all the guests informed of what they would consume as well as to brighten up the table, I prepared home-made menu cards with, apart from food details, Chinese artwork featuring the zodiac animal of the year.


(Front and back of the menu)

I still keep all these cards. Images given in this entry are from the menu for 2005, the year of the rooster.

A Chinese saying goes, 'Whether loaded or penniless, marry a wife to enjoy new year (有錢沒錢, 討個老婆好過年 youqian meiqian, tao ge laopo hao guo nian).' I'm still un-full-time-employed, and hence in one sense penniless, but I do have a wife, a dutiful and loving wife (although she failed to follow the minister and made a mistake by saying 'beautiful and lovely wife' when pledging her troth in our wedding).

I'm so glad I don't have to design a menu and put it into practice on my own in the year of the rat, but I do wish in the near future I can be the host again for those who supported me in all aspects of life in Stirling.

Climbing up Mt Tao

As time goes by, we've already moved into February. I really should have uploaded this picture. I reached the summit of Mt Tao (Taoshan 桃山, literally 'Mt Peach', nothing to do with Taoism) in January, but somehow, I just couldn't bother to transfer the picture from the camera to my laptop until today.

Two weeks ago I joined NTU Botany Class '98 (I graduated in 1997, so they were my 'junior department mates') to have a weekend hiking break in the Wuling Farm (Wuling nongchang 武陵農場). As Mt Tao, numbered 44 among the so-called 'Hundred Peaks of Taiwan' (Taiwan baiyue 台灣百岳), is in close proximity to the farm, nine of us planned to climb the peak while the other nine members of the group rambled in the vicinity of the trailhead.

(Follow the link and scroll down a bit for a brief introduction about mountain ranges in Taiwan.)

In the end only two reached the summit and I was one of them.

The last time I climbed up a mountain in Taiwan and reached the summit was on a day out with Botany Class '97 to Jiufen (九份 literally 'nine portions') in 1993. That was Mt Keelung (Jilongshan 基隆山), actually just a hill (588 m or 1.929 ft).

As I've never been regarded as manly, athletic since my childhood nor am I really a sporty, outdoor type, I had no idea if others in the group were impressed by my achievement, but I was quite sure my wife Fanne wasn't at all. She knows it all the time that I'm mentally tough enough to endure hardship and pain, and thus sometimes so self-assertive that once I set a goal, I must attain the goal.

There is apparently a huge difference in elevation between Mt Tao and Mt Keelung. However, I don't think I have become any physically fitter or sturdier over the years so that I am in place for mountain challenges. I owed my gratitude to those team members who carried cooking kits, water and food. Without their support, I wouldn't have been able to reach the summit.

PCR song

(MV from Bio-Rad)

The PCR Song

There was a time when to amplify DNA,
You had to grow tons and tons of tiny cells.
Then along came a guy named Dr. Kary Mullis,
Said you can amplify in vitro just as well.

Just mix your template with a buffer and some primers,
Nucleotides and polymerases, too.
Denaturing, annealing, and extending.
Well it’s amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do.

PCR, when you need to detect mutations.
PCR, when you need to recombine.
PCR, when you need to find out who the daddy is.
PCR, when you need to solve a crime.

---

From May, I came to know this interesting MV, a commercial mimicking the 1985 best-selling 'We are the world'. I then spent some time searching over the Internet for more information about the production and found it so entertaining that I couldn't help but embed it on my blog.

The MV was released by the Bio-Rad Corporation to promote their new PCR machine – 1000-series of thermal cyclers.



Just like May, I am also a deserter from the biology camp, with a degree in botany but now settling down in the field of music. PCR reminds me of the undergraduate days, particular the fourth year when I, together with my wife, then girlfriend, worked with DNAs in Prof San-San Tsay's microbiology lab.

According to a textbook I read when I was a 2^nd-year botany undergrad, PCR, the acronym for polymerase chain reaction, is

a method for amplifying DNA in vitro, involving the use of oligonucleotide primers complementary to nucleotide sequences in a target gene and the copying of the target sequences by the action of DNA polymerase.

To be brief and simple (if you are not familiar with the biological dialect at all), PCR is a molecular biology technique invented by the Nobel laureate Dr. Kary Mullis, through which multiple copies of a specific DNA piece can be reproduced in high amounts.

Although now PCR seems alien to me, I'm so glad that what those scientist sing in the video is still intelligible to me.

Facebook and masala bhangra

(Be patient; the streaming is a bit slow, or alternatively go straight to YouTube)

In this cyber age, a great number of people, if not all, rely so much on the Internet. It seems to be the end of the world to some of them when they cannot access their e-mails, on-line forums, instant messenger services or social networking websites to 'communicate' with others.

I read an article in the Guardian about the networking site, Facebook. The author, Tom Hodgkinson, argues that Facebook isolates people from the real society by trapping them in cyberspace with nonsensical virtual applications. By giving details of 'who is who' behind the scene, he believes that Facebook is actually an heavily funded American neo-conservative libertarian plot to convert its users' personal preferences and relationships with friends into commodites on sale to giant global brands.

As I'm not a Facebook addict and only connect myself to those whom I have already known but do not meet on a regular base due to geographical limitation, I am not concerned with the author's contention. However, I do learn a lot from the Internet, mostly from news sites, on-line magazines and web content in all sorts of format forwarded by friends. Seldom worrying about being gullible or manipulated, I am oftentimes enraptured by news articles or feature reports which cast new ideas into the cell where my mind dwell.

Yesterday Eric forwarded passed one me the link to a special report in Forbes on the 20 trends which are sweeping the globe, drawing particular attention to K-Pop among those 20 items.

I read K-Pop carefully, but was soon caught by Naachercise when browsing through the rest. Naachercise, also known as Bollywood aerobics or masala bhangra, is a mix of Indian folk moves and Western booty-shaking, created by Sarina Jain. I've never been into dance (As I'm super slim and not short, I suppose I look like a spider when dancing), but this is so attractive that I rose from the stool and started shaking my stiff torso and limbs with the video clip.

Perhaps because I've recently given a lecturer on Indian classical and film music in a World Music course, I'm really fascinated by those shakes and steps of masala bhangra. It's really fun and I don't care whether I'm bewitched or misled or something in cyperspace on this occasion.

Green or blue?

(image from mozilla0211)

Last year, on an ordinary day, with a firm belief, as induced by the announcement on Blogger, that the original settings could be saved and all the changes reversed if desired, I followed the instructions on the 'manage your blogs' page to try out the new fancy customisable template for this weblog. However, I discovered in the end that there was no return.

I changed the background and most page elements of my weblog from grey or something I couldn't remember to 'green', which, originating from the colours of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), represents the political camp that favours Taiwan independence over Chinese reunification. Perhaps because of my own political view or just due to the colour's most common associations with nature, growth or hope, I chose green unconsciously.

While a change of colouring on a personal blog doesn't mean anything to others, a shift of the majority colour in the parliament is definitely significant to the people.

The results of the parliamentary polls in Taiwan yesterday proves that the legislature is going to be 'blue', which, derived from the party colour of Kuomintang (KMT), stands for the camp that leans towards a Chinese nationalist identity and advocates greater economic linkage with the People's Republic of China.

Taiwan's opposition nationalist KMT has won a landslide victory, securing 81 seats in the 113-seat chamber. Trounced by KMT, DPP gained only 27 and suffered the worst setback since its founding in 1986. Some people believe that there will be a bandwagon effect where KMT will continue to win the presidency in March, whereas others predict a pendulum effect where the 'green' camp will galvanise greater support and catapult their candidate to victory.

Will we see a pendulum or a bandwagon? Whichever the case may be, the colouring of Principal Wei's Weblog stays green.

In Fountain I met KKBox

(Cover photo: A-mei, the first and only Taiwanese singer so far to grace the cover of Newsweek, 8 Jan 2001 issue)

In June 2006 the National Cultural Association launched Fountain, a biannual culture magazine about culture, art and lifestyle in Taiwan targeting English readers, not to be confused with the American religious Fountain.

Perhaps because I was working too desperately on my doctoral thesis when the organisation announced the release of the first issue in 2006, not until yesterday did I realise the existence of such an interesting made-in-Taiwan English periodical.

I came across the fourth issue (Dec 2007) on the theme of Taiwanese popular music in Eslite yesterday and then learnt from the official website of Fountain that three issues on Taiwanese cinema, design and cuisine respectively have been published from mid-2006 onwards.

As a scholar of popular music studies and an individual who has a penchant for integrating homeland affairs into international discussions, I bought the latest issue on Taiwanese pop without hesitation. Skimming through the magazine on my way back home, my eyes were caught by a short item – KKBox, an online music solution.

KKBox is a subscription site offering legal, unlimited music downloads for a monthly fee of 149 NTD (roughly 4.50 USD), which has captured a membership of 300,000 and a roster of 140 contracted record companies, including the four majors, Universal, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner. According to its chief operating officer Chris Lin (Lin Guanqun 林冠群), KKBox would turn a profit in 2007 although it planned to pay those participating record companies licensing fees of between 4 and 5 million USD in total.

When fewer and fewer people would pay for physical CDs ('It sounds cool; can you send me the mp3?' I bet this kind of request is not unfamiliar), some artists move on to an old track, switching back to the vinyl. I suppose vinyl records remind or good old days and mean more value to some musicians and fans. However, in order to serve the mass market, they offer digital downloads as well.

For example, Zoey Van Goey, a Glasgow-based trio made up of my doctoral colleague Matt Brennan and the other two members, Michael John McCarthy and Kim Moore, released their debut single Foxtrot Vandals on 7" vinyl and digital download in October 2007.

In an era when physical CD sales continue to dive and retailers diversify into DVDs, video games or other audio-vidual software, online music sales, together with mobile ringtones or other digital spinoff merchandising, will sooner or later become a major source of revenue. Legal online music stores such as eMusic and iTune Store will for sure serve as an important distribution channel for record companies.

Unfortunately, KKBox does not support Mac users. I can neither preview nor purchase anything from its site. Although I'm with iTune Store, it does not offer Mandarin pop, and therefore, well, I'm still on the illegal side when it comes to domestic music industry.

Between Japanese nymphs and Western stunners

(AKB48's sinlge Yûhi Wo Miteiruka?)

Before squeezing ourselves on to the densely thronged pavement two blocks away from Taipei 101, we watched the annual year-end Red & White Song Battle (kôhaku uta gassen 紅白歌合戦).

Although having long known that I have unusual, or perhaps peculiar, taste for women, my wife Fanne still grumbled with a frown of befuddlement and shook her head back and forth like a perpetual motion device when seeing me dazzled by those Japanese female idol groups such as Morning Musume (môningu musum モーニング娘) and AKB48 performing at the song battle.

She can't figure out why I would adore, at the one extreme, Japanese nymphs, as well as a young Taiwanese singer and actress Rainie Yang (Yang Chenglin 楊丞琳), and at the other, Western stunners – Ingrid Bergman, Nicole Kidman and Uma Thurman (What a coincidence, all of them have a 'man'!).

Nevertheless, this is Wei. I don't see anything strange in having a crush both on Nicole and on Rainie, just as I don't think there is any incompatibility between reading Jane Austin's works and watching Asian idol dramas.

Another fireworks display

(Any changes between a married PhD and an unmarried student?)

Standing two blocks away from Taipei 101, I saw 2007 become the past when the fireworks display ushered in 2008 with a bang atop the world's tallest building. Again I shared this moment with the same woman as last year.

SONY won two consecutive bids for the sponsorship of the 2006 and the 2007 fireworks countdown and therefore had 2006 BRAVIA by Sony and 2007 SONY BRAVIA displayed at the tower in respective events. This year the governmental Tourism Bureau is the sponsor so the tag line is 2008 ♥ TAIWAN, showing no commercial brand name.

Rumour has it that this would become the last annual pyrotechnic show at Taipei 101 because the building is expected to reach full occupancy by the end of 2008 and thus space for holding fireworks displays will no longer be available. In addition, the occupiers may not grant permission to instal the sponsor's illuminations on the exterior of their offices. Hence, my first new year's countdown with fireworks at Taipei 101 after I tied the knot may become the last.

Whether the fireworks takes place again next year, this year's show could prove to be the last time Taipei 101 brings in the new year as the tallest building in the world, because this building will lose the title to another skyscraper, the Dubai Tower, in late 2008 (I thought it was Shanghai World Financial Centre that would supersede Taipei 101, but according to CTBUH, it wouldn't).

I hope wherever I am at year end, I'll still be able to count down to 2009 with my wife, even though we have to count one more day in February 2008.

Watch the video clip and see if the spectacular display of 12,000 rounds of fireworks at a cost of 646,000 USD has outshone last year's show.

25 Dec: once a public holiday in Taiwan

(Image of the Christmas tree from HappyNew.Com)

The festive season is upon us and people, including those who are not religious or do not even believe in Christianity, are performing their festive routine again – taking holidays, attending parties, binge eating and shopping or whatsoever.

I understand discussions about this matter have long gone stale, but as most people in Taiwan don't really 'celebrate' Christmas in the way most Westerners would do (most Taiwanese believe in Buddhism and Taoism), nor is this religious festival a public holiday here, it may not be regarded as repetitious and threadbare to ask the question:

What's the point of doing a lot of crazy, merry-making stuff to commemorate the birthday of someone whom you don't believe in or you don't even know?

Actually, Christmas day was once coincidentally an official holiday in the Republic of China, not the communist China but the Republic established by Dr Sun Yat-sen (Follow these hyperlinks if you are interested in the relationship between Taiwan and ROC). The Constitution of the Republic of China was promulgated on 1 January 1947 and went into effect on 25 December of the same year. In 1963, the 25th of December was made a public holiday to commemorate this historic event in the democratic development in the country.

As a result, people in Taiwan had long had a day off on the 25th of December and been able to attend whatever event, be it religious or secular, the night before.  I believe there must have been some folks mistaking the Constitution Day for Christmas.  However, this holiday was annulled in 2001 when the two-day weekend was formally implemented in the public sector lest there would be too many holidays or non-working days a year.

Several months ago, I was invited to write something Chinese-but-not-too-Chinese to be used in an advertisement for a biotechnology company in Taiwan. At one point, I was also asked to rearrange and make another 'jingle-bell' version so that they might use it on other occasions in the future. As this Christmasy version hasn't yet been employed in any advertising campaign and I'm still the owner/right holder, let me put it on my weblog and wish all my readers, no matter what your faith may be, a very happy holiday and a prosperous new year.