How dare you can call the US the land of liberty.

Why US people can't grow the plants on their terrace?

--Have you play "Plants vs Zombies"? You and Mr.Dave (your nice neighborhood) might be charged more than you can earn for all of your life for California's decorative plants tax.

source of picture:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_States

Mr.Federal are trying to attack this house for plants tax.

Why US people need to pay tax for pet adoption?
--cat? dog? what if I want to adopt cute guy in my house? Ops.

Anyone's interesting in Cat Maid? (from: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=365056)

Why US people pay extremely expensive cost for call?
--The price in Thailand (and Hong Kong, I swear) is never go above 20cent per minute for national wireless phone call, but US's can do! Also receiver needs to pay for pick up call...and when it go to message box, automatically charged. So friendly phone providers.

Why US people pay for public parking?
--which I have never ever seen in Thailand. Police never arrests me unless I park in prohibited area.

"NASA space shuttle is reported to pay $1.25M for parking tax" (source of picture: NASA)

Americans are teaching their people to be smart at calculation.
--3 times a day, right after the meal, Calculate the 15% mininum tip that you need to pay. Why don't you just include it in the price of meal???





Believe me, in the future, you might need to pay tax for pregnant, give birth, send child to school, graduate, date, engage, marry, fired, hired, die, breathe, or even have 'individually entertainment on your bed'.

Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com

Speak frankly, I don't have any intention to criticize any certain people or organization specifically. I'm just too depressed from the Federal income tax refund thing that I'm working on.



Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_States

People lives with dream.

Dreaming about something that already passed is not that bad, like the funny days in Hong Kong, but wish for everything like a friendship, or other types of relationship, to remain as it has been might be the most stupid impossible things. Yeah, as my friend's quote during my time in Hong Kong, "It is just a sweet dream that when you wake up, more sweety it is, more suffering you get".

Thailand always celebrate every single ceremonies happened in this world

Friends from another countries always ask me when I'm talking about Valentine's day, whether I, as a Thai people, have celebrated the Saint Valentine commemoration? Since we are not Christian (majority). Anyway, I should strongly confirm that Thailand always celebrate every single ceremonies happened in this world.

Thai people is not that easy-going people, we are super drama king/queen. We could seriously fight for someone (go google for the name "Taksin" for more information) even make a civil war! I could notice something like the relationship issue, which seem to be much more free in western world but super strict in Thailand, and over 80% of Thai song lyric are about love. As the contrary, thing seems to be less serious in Thailand, when we have a civil war (sort of) a year ago, people from one side wear red shirts and another side wear yellow shirts, later we have blue shirts and multi-color shirts group. And, to be proud of, Thailand has relatively low rate of devote.

Red shirts group and Mr.Taksin

Seem like from the movie? No, it is real in THAILAND. When we have a civil war and people give a rose as a present to the soldiers.

However, Thailand is called as "Land of Smile" for long long time. Long long times ago, I could say, Thai people is very easy-going and we won't deal with serious issue as much as what we are now. That is one of the reason that Thailand is very welcome for the foreigners as well as their cultures. We have good relationship with China for hundreds years, even I have Chinese blood in myself. We solidly immerse the western culture into our culture around a hundred year ago related to the first globalization period (western colonization) and Japanese around 50 years ago around the second world war, later on the United State (as the winner for WW2, laugh).

That's way it is very normal to see white guys working in Thailand, or Japanese elders in black is hurry to go to work. I read Japanese comics (manga), watch drama Korean series (yeah! more Drama), and I could speak English pretty well. 

Besides, even we already have the holidays for Father (national, king's birthday's) day, mother day, children day, teacher's day, Labor's day, New Year day (1st of January), Thai's new year holidays (13rd-15th of April), another five days from Buddhism religion, cultivation's day, King Rama1's commemoration day, King Rama5's commemoration day, Suntorn Pu's birthday (ancient writer), etcetera.

The days listed above are the official holiday, mean that the days that the government offices are closed.

But basically, we also celebrate:

Chinese New Year: I love this day, when we have some sacrifice for our ancestors and god. We meet whole of family (30ish of people) and have some gamble for forecast the luck for incoming year.

Valentine's Day: teenagers always looking forward to this day! When boyfriend and girlfriend go out and exchange the gift, or a guy give a red rose to a girl to present his love. I usually make chocolate (last year, brownie, this year is sweet chocolate) and give it to my close friends and ex. Thanks for my friends from the same major who also brought rose and gave it to "single" lady in our major so I've got two roses this year.

I was born in November, no wondering nine month before November is Valentine's Day. (laugh)

White Day: I think it is Japanese culture (ホワイトデー, Howaito dē) when a boy or girl who receive gifts in Valentine's Day should give his/her back with the gift which is three times more expensive than that, or sometimes it is a month for a person to consider what they should respond for the relationship request. It is rarely to be found in Thailand, but I could see it sometimes.

XMAS: we won't celebrate Ester's day (even I've receive a huge Ester egg made from chocolate once year), but we seriously celebrate Christmas, in term of having a decoration around the department store or the office and house. We won't eat turkey, but some new generation parents give a cute gift for their children.

Do you know Lunar's day? It is in Chinese culture that is the day we celebrate the princess of the moon (and her rabbit). In China, there might be lantern's festival, every place is decorated with lanterns, but in Thailand, we just have a mooncake.

We also celebrate Loi-kratong day around November, this is Thai culture that we do the sacrifice to the godness of river by making the kratong and float it in the river and fire lantern to the sky.

Lantern's festival in Chieng Mai, Thailand

And we give importance for each person's birthday as well. I always buy cake for my family's members' birthday and my dad tell me to call my uncles or grandparents for their birthday. I prefer to make a gift by my own but sometimes it is just a handmade card. 

So now you know why it seem like to be that I celebrate every single ceremonies in this little world.

Ps. Hey! California guys, I'm waiting for my gift for White day!. :D

[HTE diary class5] A scientist is just the another farmer.

Thailand is the agricultural country, most of our business based on harvesting products, rice, fruits, sugar. Long long time ago Thailand is called golden land, that's because most popular occupation of Thai people is rice farmer, and when the infinite-wide land is covered with golden mature rice.

Rice Terrace in Chieng Mai, Thailand (http://noynancy.wordpress.com/)

But consider the margin of rice business market, it is not comparable with another business like vehicle components export. That is because of the price of rice is very low.

Let me tell you one bed-time story, in the countryside, a farmer cultivates his rice on the soil land, take care of it for three months, then every villagers would come together to help harvesting. A fat guy from metropolitan buys ten cart of rice with a piece of gold.

After shipping to the capital city, a fat guy sells a cart of rice to customers with ten piece of gold. This is the way "middleman" become rich buy selling the products, rice, from a farmer.

I don't say that a farmer is stupid or that middleman is cleaver, this is how the world is, and it has been since long long times ago. Even now our government try their best to get rid of this "middleman" and try to shortening the value chain so all the money that consumer pays wound end up at the farmer who works hard to cultivate rice. 

So, as the title is, how dare I call the scientists as the another version of farmer.

I declare myself as Engineering-oriented people, and when I took High-Tech class, I'm listening to the lecturers as engineer (and scientist); the lecturers are business men who are success to commercialize the high technology-based product. I like this course, since they are giving their idea on how they set up the business, find the investment, do the marketing and another brilliant business strategies which I have never ever heard of. 

And I heard how those business men is thinking about engineers/scientists who responsible to these technologies......

The curious is not something like "how the business man deals with his hired engineer" but it is "how they think" so it is not the thing that could be consider as right or wrong, kind ethic issue. 

My feeling is weird now.



The annual financial report from many huge companies report the budget in each year, only around 1% of the total outcome is for Research and Development section, and I'm quite sure that the engineers who work there earn a lot less than that.


As you know from my previous blog how long scientist or engineer need to wait until his/her research could be commercialize, and it is not three months wait like a farmer, but sometime more than three years, or more than that.


Speak to this issue, I'm not going to blame the entrepreneur, people have their own way to live, but what I want to emphasize here is, how we could make the farmer to sell his food by himself, without the middle man.

Maybe it is hard to do, to let the scientist do the business things, like finding the investor, create the business organization, or do the marketing. It might not be the ultimate goal of the scientist to commercialize his/her products, or he couldn't do it by himself. Having a partner is not that bad, but to make it fair in this capitalized world is the thing that REQUIRED TO RECONSIDER.


I don't want some business man come up with the sentence like "I make this technology. I did this happen" blah blah blah...even it is the fact that the one who did things happen is not himself, but engineers.

Most romantic gift I could imagine of.

The rose that was dipped into the liquid Nitrogen, make it frozen brittle crystal-like rose, and then throw it to the wall, and make it explode like scarlet in  front of me.

Technology of Love

Last last year, I read an article on National Geographic magazine, February issue (maybe), about science of love. And article begins with this photo (not exact):

Sorry, I don't know who you are, and I don't have any intention to ruin the romances of your wedding.

With an IMPRESSIVE caption: The groom is smiling fully of happiness since he is going to have a chance to reproduce his genetics this night.

This might be the main reason that I thought...maybe the Science and Love shouldn't come together. Or maybe the author just write it so straightforward, without any romantic feeling, so I'm going to represent the Science of love in another way. Here it is.


xxxx

Dear my Valentine,

How's your life going on? I haven't have a chance to talk to you that much, but please know that, in every of my breathing, if the device which be able to detect my thought in my breathe exists, all of my breath is only you.

However, the research about capture the people thought directly from our brain (via Electroencepthalogram, EEG) or through our breathe is still immature. So maybe what I could do is just trying to detect your emotion in our call. This speech recognition technology is already exist as the program to capture the mood of the customers using in Call Center, in order to analyst their feeling and mood in their voice. So maybe I could sense your emotion through your voice as well.

I can feel my heartbeat every time I think of you. You might not hear that, but there is the device namely Electrocardiogram (ECG) which can detect our heart beat signal. The frequency of my heartbeat increase significantly very time I think of you.


Many people says that there is a chemical signal from one person to another person, in order to express their feeling of love and passion, this might be the thing that we call Pheromone, or chemistry of love. One of research group in Thailand is going to develop the sensor to detect this chemical, hope it could sense my chemistry to you.


Another way to examine our love scientifically is to make the questionnaire and do some statistic interpretation. But how many question needed to describe our complicated feeling? I guess more than I can think of.


!@##%%^&*()_)(*&Y^TE



This blog is SO RETARDED! I can't writing this kind of blog anymore. If you want to know more information about mood/emotion sensing technology, please use the keyword that I provided above to search on google or elsewhere.

For the conclusion, I totally fail to merge Science and Technolgoy with Love. So let the Love floating around us like that. I don't want to interpret it anymore. (*cry*)



p.s. I'm not making fun of any person in this world, nah!  Happy Valentine's day!

Inception: special effect clips

Even people say now we can make everything (seem to be) come true by Computer Graphic (CG). However, let's watch these clips first and you would see why Inception should won the best special effect movie of the year.

1. Clip of Explosion sequence in Coffee Shop in Paris

Bird Eyes View

2. The Best Sequences: rotating hall pathway and zero-gravity fighting: See how Science, Engineers, and Entertainment merged together! Surprisingly Rotating Sequence is made from ACTUAL setting. omigosh. Let's watch the clip from movie first.

And this is production.

3. This is summary all the scene in inception as overview. 12 min is not that long comparing to how they made it. However, this clip doesn't show much special effect. One of the most memorized scene, safe house in snow mountain, is described here.

4. First I thought that train is special effect....

5. Morocco Sequence: how many actors in this scene.

6. Bending City: I totally have no idea how they gonna make this scene from reality, so only idea is CG.

7. Okey, let's end this blog with Making of the sound effect:

As Noland states in his interview, CG is good, but nothing is comparable to actual filming, we are really appreciate your hard work. Thank you the most powerful movie clip sharing community as youtube, as well as other people who posted these clip publicly. Finally, thanks Noland who created this amazing movie of the year!

Trailer: