In the movie Princess Bride, Westley took an ever-increase dose of poison over a long period of time to build up his resistance, part of his herculean effort to rescue the princess.

A recent Darwinian award winner tried the same with cyanide and died.
Scientists seem to agree with Westley on the matter of peanut butter; they proved that kids can indeed build up their immunity by eating very small amount of peanuts to start.

When I was a kid, adults frequently said “不乾不淨,吃了沒病” (a little insanitarity makes you healthier). I never quite understood it. Then I found American kids are allergic to everything. Could it be, gosh, that they grew up too cleanly?

Either that, or they really should let natural selection work harder.

	Dracula Bram Stoker in 1897 Penguin Classic; 1REV edition (Feb 25 2003) ISBN: 0-14-143984-X
	Dracula Francis Ford Coppola, in 1992 Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins

Vampire stories attract and haunt me. I did not see the movie in theater and promptly rented it when released. The memory of the movie was vivid.

When daughter got the book, I asked to enter it to my reading queue. This one surfaced to the top recently. It has been a slow read. But I was prepared after Lord of the Rings. They are old English to me; both very good read.

After the book, I had the urge to watch the movie again. I found my memory was not vivid at all. What? Keanu Reeves was in the movie! In general, the actings were poor, but Winona was lovely.

The depature from the book is interesting. Mina became a weaker character and had an ancient love connection with Dracula. The movie has a more dramatic ending that reinforced the tag line: Love Never Dies. I cannot really recommend the movie.

Modern vampire books have since developed an order for the undead world: how vampires proliferate, their relationship with human, werewolves, sun lights, etc. The Interview with the Vampire, Underworld, and Blade series all followed that order. I am very intrigue that the original book does not really have it.

The book survived more than 100 years. It captivated me for days and reminded me the joy of fictions. The movie has faded into the obliviousness in 17 short years, except for the visual of the aged Dracula that stays vividly imprinted.

Maybe they should remake the movie. I will propose a cast to Hollywood.

Not.

One can linger here and get lost staring at that Gates of Hell. It turned out Rodin prototyped parts of Gates of Hell independently. The original Gates were in plaster, then casted into bronze.

If you are in the neighborhood of Stanford University, Palo Alto, stop by.

ShanHui invited us to visit Susan, a friend from my OM coaching days, for old time’s sake. We embarked their minivan and began the journey. As we drove closer, the tense filled the car. They wanted to tell us everything but not ruin any. I, on the other hand, was eager to see Nickie. She was an early teenager when I coached her. A decade later, she came back from a 4-month trip to Beijing, fluent in Chinese.

The car turned and we were all of a sudden away from sub-urban normalcy. Neighbors are now miles apart; boarding is meant for horses; asphalt became gravel; green, instead of concrete grey, dominates the land; animals: horses — cows, and deer — outnumber human beings. Prolific Oven’s chocolate cake seemed so urban.

The house at the destination is near the center of a 6-acre land. Susan and Nickie came out and we exchanged hugs; the little girl is now a skinny young lady, her blond hair has turned almost black, still wavy. She smiles like Princess Diane and puts her hands in the back pockets. We chatted as if we were just together at John Muir School campus, not 12 years, but mere hours ago.

Susan showed off her farm. Grapes were crunched here, fermented there, pressed in that machine, and secondarily fermented in that cold room. We walked on soft and trapping dirt, with shoes unfit for the surface. Fred showed us his grafting experiment, irrigation setup, bird prevention device, guide-wire design, and roses for mold detection. This is argricultural.

In the kitchen, Nickie served authentic LongJing tea she bought at Westlake, HangZhou. Our cakes were excellent with the hot tea. We talked about China, the world, kids, and future. I learned that, for the 1st time, Susan was from the South, deep South.

I always knew, intellectually, that farming is hard. This trip is a direct and personal proof. An acre of grapevine requires manual labor beyond this city slicker is capable of providing. It also requires professional knowledge and hand-on practicing, akin to a medical education followed by the internship. Even with all those, there are factors impossible to prepare for: drought, weather, pests, etc. Farming requires investment of money, labor, and heart. The returns are largely unpredictable.

Back at home, I watched rain falling on my backyard lawn; the gardener comes Wednesday to mow. Monty, my lap-dog, cannot chase, dig, or hunt anything. He is as useless in the farm as myself. I think I will visit Susan often, better than having a vineyard myself.

For 150 years, Qing Dynasty’s emperors poured money, hearts, and talents into YuanMing Yuan (圓明園). By 1860, it became the most extravagant garden that ever existed. China, for all practical purposes, was the wealthiest and dominant country in the world during those centuries. It never occurred to Qing Dynasty that those babarians from the west have invented powerful weapons, learned to fight, and dared to invade. China lost the war, to their surprise, badly.

Solidiers from Britain and France marched into YuanMing Yuan and took whatever they could. When they were done, they set the garden ablaze. It burned for 3 whole days.

Qing Dynasty rebuit it. In 1900, soldiers from 8 countries (Brtain, France, Germany, Russia, USA, Japan, Italy, and Austria) repeated the larceny and the arson. This time, the damage broke the country’s heart and was beyond repair. In 2000, I visited YuanMing Yuan. I stood in the ruins and felt the shame, sadness, and anger from the whole China. This is not a place Chinese go for touristic reasons. They keep it around so that they will never forget this page of the history.

That 1860 loot included a dozen bronze sculptures (圆明园十二生肖兽首), one for each Chinese zodiac animals. Their hairs seem to move with pulses and eyes are alive with souls. When you touch them, you expect warmth of a live animal, instead of cold metal. They were manificantly done by one of the most revered Chinese artist known as 郎世寧 (LANG ShiNing), born in Italy as Giuseppe Castiglione.

These sculptures emerged, several at a time, gradually at international art auction scenes. Wealthy Chinese or government always tried to claim them back. I saw several of them in Beijing’s BaoLi (保利) Museum several years ago, as part of a private collection.

Recently, two more came to Christie auction: a rat and a rabbit. The winning bid was $18 millions. But the winner, Mr. CAI MingCao (蔡铭超), refused to pay. He was patriotic to sabotage the sales.

Whoever has those sculptures. Please just return them. It is not right to keep things that are not yours.

It is a gadget worthy of every nerdy bits of me. I read the manual, practiced, and familiarized myself with all built-in functions and every details. There was no WWW then. I actually researched, not just searched, the programming tips. Since there is no external interface (only an IR port), I hand-entered all programs too. This is why I watch “The Big Bang Theory.”

The battery ran out. I was shocked that I did not even know when that happened. As I replaced the batteries and wiped clean this once loved instrument. I realized the only value left is sentimental. It is logical, as Sheldon will conclude the same, to eBay it.

This is not a normal calculator. It is a Reversed Polish Notation one. Every scientists and engineers knows that mathematical notations are not consistent. Arithmetic operators are placed, mostly, in between the operands (5 = 3 + 2). Functional operators, on the other hand, are in the beginning and their operands usually in parenthesis (y = f(x)). RPN solved this problem and essentially eliminated parenthesis and equal sign in computational notation. How pure and logical! Of course, sometime a less, ahem, focused person can get confused on which operands go with which operator. But we are not concerned with those people. Aren’t we?

HP-42S is near, or at, the pinnacle of RPN calculators. After this model, HP, I think, ceded the market to TI and stopped making pure RPN models. I have sold it on eBay, with sadness, at a good price.

In the mean time, I will write some Scheme programs to get over my depression.

In a minivan that was carrying 5, two were impossibly addicted to iPhone data services. They both provided additional navigational assistance to the driver, who made sure the rental car was equipped with a Magellan “Never Lost.” They also competed, out loud, on trivial facts about whatever we drove through. To end the madness, I asked them to find the restaurant for us: must be Tex-Mex or BBQ, one of us is a vegetarian.

“Chuy’s” What? “It’s in walking distance.” Fine.

On this Tuesday night, we needed to wait 20 minutes for a table. Hmm, I am getting hungry. The rotating Tortilla machine is interesting to watch. Foods were delicious. But I don’t get this rotating Atlas thing.

Well fed and happy, “Any good BBQ nearby?” The iPhone twin sisters got busy, “Rudy’s.”

It is a utilitarianly designed restaurant. Down to earth, no fancy, optimized for delivering foods to a large and loyal clientele. We entered the queue and checked with the stranger in front of us, “So what’s good here?” “Oh, just tell them it’s your first time. Otherwise, say chopped beef.”

They gave me a loud welcome chant (no idea what was chanted) and the girl gave me a sampler: turkey, moist, and cutter’s choice. I order a quarter pound of moist. Then I obligated with some sweet corns too. “How many bread?” She asked. I was a bit confused and had one piece. Then I saw the guy walking away with an entire loaf. Clearly it is all-you-can-eat bread.

It was finger-licking good: smoky, good dry rub, falling off the bone tender, intensively flavorful.

After devouring our meats, we took note of the big mural: longhorns, Texas flag, and the slogan: “real people eat meat.” Then we looked up. There are large plastic bags of clear liquid hanging off the ceiling. What the …?

Yep. Texan sprinklers.