Michael Crichton strikes again. Again.

Crichton’s signature research (does he has a team doing his next book?) was impeccable and his craft superb. This book submerged you into the adventure: the horror, the bizarre, the cuties, and the heart-breaking. It was like watching a fast-pace action film. Everything was happening, all your senses overloaded, and you felt great closing the book. Then you forgot.

It is a mass-market publication at its finest. That said, I felt this is not Crichton’s finest.

Stop reading. What comes next could ruin the book for you.

Crichton just couldn’t make up his mind on the characters. The antagonists are obvious: the villain is the standard cardboard evil psychopath. The obstacles are Jurassic park style and wonderfully done. But which protagonist must I identify with? I was forced to switch, then I didn’t get the clear hint on which one to go with. Since there is no strong connection to one protagonist, there is no big crescendo climax closure at the end.

The formula dictates that everything goes up a big flame at the end. The antagonist was naturally taken care of, but the protagonists’ escape was anti-climatic. This is a badly executed formulaic ending: unnecessary destruction, no possibilities left for imagination, and neither a tragedy that leave you with a long sigh nor a comedy that give you warm happy feelings.

I did the right thing borrowing this one from the library. That’s what I will do for Crichton’s next one. Like Stephen King, I think Crichton’s best years are over but the craft is still masterful.

Last time I came to Las Vegas, Siegfried and Roy were breeding white tigers, Mirage just opened, and the Jubilee show was the hottest show. There were no Venetian, Wynn, MGM Grand, or Mandalay Bay. Just the newly open Luxor pyramid. I think that was more than 20 years ago.

How much I have changed since.

We were young, hungry, cheap, and wanted to make some money. So a bunch of us will cramp into a car and drive over-night (to save a night’s hotel). We would get so excited seeing the Strip from afar. We would hunt for the lowest minimum bet Blackjack tables that were single- or double-deck. Yes, we would have studied basic strategy and practice Edward Thorp’s techniques beforehand. (What? You have not read Beat the Dealer?)

All of us will crowd into a single hotel room. The only time we go there is to catch a few hours’ shut-eyes so that we can get back to the tables again. Of course we would feast on the buffets. Oh, yeah the buffets. We would have studied each casino’s offering, established a strategy of not wasting precious stomach capacity on less delicious foods, and stuffed ourselves real silly each time.

Vegas trips were the high-lights of my student years. We always come back very, very tired and many pounds happier. We would tell the win/lost stories for months while we planned for the next trip. Hey, if we were lucky, we get to eat, sleep, and have fun for free, or even with few bucks to boast. What can possibly beat that!

Now, the slot machines spit out a voucher, instead of dropping buckets of coins. Anything I play, I first show them my loyalty card to be recorded. I can’t stay awake to take advantage of the lonely card dealers. My weight and cholesterol spike when I even look at the buffet ads. I spend hours in the hotel room all to myself, typing on my computer. Craps and poker are more interesting than blackjacks. I gave up card-counting long time ago.

Sigh.. I out-grew Vegas!

“Just kill me!” That thought came to many’s minds.

If we retire at 65 and will live to 120. That’s 55 more years! Imagine the growing up, working, climbing the ladder, raising a family, etc. during the first 65 years. The second 55 years will be filled with … Er, what?

Can I really lie on the beach sipping Pina Colada for 55 years? Can I afford to? Wait a moment, it took me only 4 years to get a college degree. If I start at 65, I could get a PhD degree before 75. And I would still have 45 years left.

Hmm… All those will be awfully unpleasant if I need to do dialysis every other day, blinded from diabetes, hooked to an oxygen tank, trapped in my own body with Parkinson, or completely lost in some kinds of dementia.

Would it actually be a blessing to drop dead with an aneurysm at the ripe age of, say, 90?

Willingness to seek opportunities to resolve conflict; willingness to search for compromise; recognition of the limits of personal knowledge; awareness that more than one perspective on a problem can exist; and appreciation of the fact that things may get worse before they get better.

What exactly is wisdom? I always thought wisdom means the ability to make sound choices that lead to happiness. Or it is the Oracular insight to choose the best path that leads to the optimal outcome? Maybe it is actually the ability to see things clearly, regardless of all the veils to hide the truth?

Guess I am not that yet.

“But why don’t they value your opinions?” I asked. After a long rhetoric on favoritism, biases, and politicking, he concluded, “I was obviously right and valuable. They don’t listen to me because that they are stupid.” “But there are two other possibilities,” I said. “You could be wrong or not valuable. Secondly, you may have delivered the message ineffectively.” The employee was stunned. “If either of those is the case,” I continued. “The situation will not improve after you have transferred.”

Of course his boss could be stupid, not heeding an employee’s valuable opinions. This manager will not be an effective one and will, sooner or later, lose out to fierce career competition. All the employee has to do is wait. The manager will disappear and things will get better. But if it is the other possibility that the employee was wrong, then the situation will never improve. In fact, not for the rest of his career. The only way out is to better himself, or change to a different line of work.

Sooner or later, we will all face the same situation where we are not appreciated enough. It is not a good feeling. The first thought that will come to you is to leave the place. “If you guys don’t appreciate me, then I will go somewhere else that I will be.” The question is, “What if they don’t appreciate you there either?”

If you get no respect, work to earn them. There is something about you that is making people not respect you. Find out what it is and change that. Before you do, you have little chance getting it elsewhere.

On one of my trips, my fellow passenger was a hedge fund manager from Idaho (never got his name). His wife stuffed this book into his bag and he highly recommended it. I reserved the eBook from Seattle Public Library and was glad that it came through before my recent business trip to Texas. The flight back was not long enough. I couldn’t put it down.

(How is that Seattle Public Library has a better interface for eBooks than Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara County Library?)

The Jefferson Key is the latest of the Cotton Malone series (book 7) by Steve Berry, a best-selling author. I learned more about US presidential assassinations from this fiction than history books. Clearly, there were four presidents gunned down in US history. According to this book, a single organization, the Commonwealth, a band of privateers or legalized pirates, was behind all four. Berry’s research reminded me of Michael Crichton’s Pirate Latitudes.

I did not know that this was the 7th of a series and it did not matter. The book is a fast-paced page turner with a good plot and excellent research. Strangely, the minor characters were more vivid and in-depth than the major ones.

I wouldn’t say this is a literary classic that depicts human flaws, deep, or thought provoking. Steve Berry knows his craft like Stephen King, Michael Crichton, David Baldacci, or Mary Higgins Clark. I read all of them, and wouldn’t mind toting one of their works during a vacation, quiet weekend, or business trip.

And you should to.

今天心血來潮,發現有半數的讀者是以中文上網.而我多數的”作品”是英文. 嘿!

Your insurance agent.

A low insurance premium means, statistically, fewer claims, in frequency, monetary amount, or both. Whatever troubles you will experience with the car: break-downs, accidents, theft, etc. eventually become insurance claims and become a single number for you: the premium. In a very straight-forward way, the best car, in terms of quality, is the one with the lowest premium to price ratio. Pick the cars that interest you, ask your agent for their rates, divide the rate with the car prices, and, voila, that’s your car to buy. The only things left are color and trim options. Tools such as Edmunds are really helpful.

ABC News reported that American cars have improved in both quality and price. They have been learning from the Japanese and Germans on quality for several decades. Since the bail-out, they have reduced labor costs, some $4,000 per car. This must’ve sucked for Detroit auto-workers. That $4,000 dollars meant loss of jobs, closure of factories, and reduction of benefits.

Thomas Friedman taught us to always think globally. You can survive only if you are the best in the world for what you do. Halfway across the world, there are thousands or millions of people that do not care about preserving your way of life. And none of your neighbors, friends, or even family are paying $4,000 extra, regardless of who made the car.

I am glad that American cars are now better. I am happy that they are now globally competitive. Don’t take my word for it. Ask your insurance agent.

这寺是明英宗宠幸太监王振的家庙。据明史记载，“振跋扈不可制，作大第皇城东，建智化寺，穷极土木”。王振的个家庙就如此，可想见其他。英宗于正统14年率50万大军御驾亲征入侵的瓦刺。大败被俘，王振死于乱军之中。史称“土木之变”。明朝太监干政，始予王振，也自此由盛轉衰。看智化寺的精美，像恭王府一样，想到和珅也是个“倾国倾朝”的宦官。

寺内的几个赑屃（bi4 xi3)居然几百年还完好，细节生动，碑文也还能读，不容易。三进的大殿是二层楼也不常见。好像山门中经常有音乐表演，我没赶上。

Unbeknown to many, the Chinese traditional calendar is actually solar/lunar. For example, the Chinese New Year is the 2nd new moon after the winter solstice, a classic solar/lunar construction. Chinese calendar is also purely astronomical, unlike western Gregorian calendar that is partially a political by-product, in the form of a short February and odd number of days for each month. Chinese divide a solar year into 24 even periods. Qing Ming is 14 days after the spring equinox. By this time, the growing season has just started. People clean up their slates and get ready for the busy summer. Chinese decided that this is a good day to visit their ancestors’ burial site.

It is an outing, a light exercise, and a show of respect to the ancestors. Several years ago, I had such adventure with my siblings to my great grand mother’s tomb. We brought manual gardening tools, incenses, some pastries, and paper “monies.” It was a rigorous hike. We cleared out the weeds and tidied up the surrounding. The we offered the foods, lit the incenses, and burned those special monies that will become her spending currency wherever she is. We read the tombstone, admired her longevity, and traced her offspring whose names were inscribed. The party chatted to the smokes and incenses. We hiked back in good spirit and enjoyed a nice meal after.

Almost every Chinese know the famous poem on Qing Ming about a restaurant called Xing Hua Cun (杏花村). It’s the time to have a little homesick. Several drinks will be the perfect poetic mood if there is also a light drizzle.