Monday, October 26, 2009

Celebrity crushes

Like every heterosexual male, I probably have a crush on many a celebrity. However my type of fascination has diverted from having sex with them to possibly being their boyfriend. In that respects my criteria for liking a celebrity changes. They have to be close to my age, so people like Emma Watson are out. They also have to have similar intelligence to me and I would like deep conversations, so glamour models tend to be out unless I can proved wrong. With this said my criteria have lead to these ladies being my celebrity crushes

Julia Stiles She's not your typical Hollywood actress as she has tried her hand in all kinds of genres, from comedy to drama to action, and also dabbled in theatre. She's beautiful and has that great deep slightly husky voice I love. What really got it for is she temporarily took a break from acting to do a degree in English from Yale.

Holly Walsh What I really want in a woman is a good sense of humour. Nobody understand my sense of humour - the dry sarcasm and seething irony. I've seen and heard Holly Walsh in "8 Out of 10 Cats", "Edinburgh and Beyond", "Mock the Week", "The Now Show" and "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" and think she gorgeous. I would like her with longer hair but I can't have everything (or anything for this matter).

Tomoko Kojima You are probably wonder "Who?". Tomoko Kojima is a cheerleader for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and has been for the past six years. What I like about her, apart from being gorgeous and fit, is that she went to a foreign country to fulfill her dream of being a cheerleader. I could have picked any other cheerleader like Amber Lancaster or Renee Herrlocker but Tomoko is Japanese (I love Japanese girls) and can speak English, which has ruled out all other Japanese models/idols.

Priscilla Ng Probably a bit too close to home, Priscilla Ng is a reporter for my local TV channel TVB Pearl. Not only is she beautiful but I think she gets a bad end of a deal at TVB. I think she is there for a little eye candy, which has been epidemic in Hong Kong news channels. She also has to present the weather and the late news as well. I know I have no chance with her, even if she was single but I think she does an excellent job.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Superstition

I'm suppose to be getting my new car next week but there is a delay. Namely my parents are not happy with the license plate I've got. The people at Volkswagen have randomly assigned a license plate number - NZ 6421. For most readers they will see nothing wrong with that. However if you reverse the numbers, you'll get the sequence "124" which in Cantonese sounds like "easy to die". Because my parents are superstitious, they are getting me a personalized license plate. I don't know if that is even worse or better - believing Chinese numerology or spending HK$3000 for a personalized license plate.

I'm not one for superstitions. I don't mind walking underneath ladders. I don't touch wood when saying something bad might happen. I do say "bless you" more out of politeness other than being scared of somebody's soul escaping their body. In this day and age where logic has now reigned, I'm surprised superstitions still have a place in modern times.

Look I don't mind have rituals you perform when doing something but if you believe these acts change your fate, perhaps you should stop reading astrology in the newspapers.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Assignment of blame

Recently the Hospital Authority (the Hong Kong equivalent of the NHS) decided to make major medical incidents public, such as the mixing up of patients' identities and the incorrect distribution of medication. I would expect the general public are horrified such mistakes still continue and will demand to know who is responsible. Not a week goes by without me hearing on the evening news of another "medical incident". People might think the number of incidents has gone up whilst hearing the news but to be honest the number of incidents reported in the news has increase only and the actual number of medical events has remained static. Nevertheless there is always the promise of a full enquiry to find who is responsible.

Yet some times even if somebody is to blame, then what? I hate to state this and this is only my personal opinion and not the opinion of doctors or the Hospital Authority - mistakes will happen. The public health system is run by humans and we humans are fallible to the odd error. We can put in more stringent measures and add more layers of bureaucracy to ensure such mistakes never happen in the future. However the efficiency of the system will dramatically decrease as doctors and nurses will spend more time filling in paperwork rather than doing their job.

In this age of increasing information at our fingertips and with high efficiency of bureaucracy, everybody thinks it will be easy to find out who is to blame. When we are angry or have lost something dear to us, we all want somebody accountable for their actions. Yet sometimes there is nobody to blame. Sometimes it is down to fate and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. We do live in a world where chaos reigns and we are governed not just by the laws of physics and human behaviour but also to random chance.

In other words, things happen because they happen.

That is why I want to stick up for politicians like Gordon Brown. People blame Gordon Brown for the state Great Britain is in but it is not his fault the economy collapse - blame the bankers, especially the ones in USA. Also there was a lot of anger when Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This is the first time people have been angry when somebody good has won a prize. If you want to blame somebody, shout at the Norwegian Nobel Committee for making such an unusual decision.

Years ago, I used to get angry at everything and everyone about the state I was in. Now I just learn to accept the fate I have been given with and try to alter it myself.