Henry’s Note

Fury of recent events plus, 2 films I watched recently made a great impression on me: “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion”. While there are lots of problems in this world, these are the two major global events that I think are clear what can and must be done.

An Inconvenient Truth - Global Warming
We all know that the earth goes through periods of warming and cooling, but the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has never in scientifically viewable history been so high as now.  Trend of the global temperature has been steadily increasing.  The global ice caps are melting at an accelerated rate - faster than scientist who studied them predicted.  We are seeing increase disasters world wide in flooding, wild fire, etc.  What more evidence do we need?  Must we wait until some disaster so large and even more undeniable before we act?  I say we act NOW!  Pledge to drive less (better yet, bicycle more!), recycle more, be more conscious about how we use energy, and elect representatives who would act in the benefit of the environment.

Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
6 years after this movie was made, Tibet is back in focus once again with new reports of Chinese suppression of the Tibetan people and their peaceful demonstration (to be fair, it turned violent).  I have had the privilege to visit Tibet back in the late 1990’s.  Evidence of the violent Chinese occupation was present, despite Chinese government’s attempt to “restore” some temples for tourism purpose.  Potala Palace was eerily quiet, virtually emptied of occupants, and heavily watched with closed circuit cameras.  We were constantly warned by our guides to be careful of what we say. It was an inspiring trip to experience their spiritual practice first hand, but was also sad to see so much had been destroyed.

So why should we care about Tibet?
1) It is the center of Asia, where the Chinese has militarized and are using to gain control of the region.  This creates instability in an already volatile region.  A Tibetan governed Tibet is much better for peace in the region because they are a culture of peace.

2) As one of the interviewee suggested, the world focus so much about bringing peace to violent areas, and yet, we failed to help a region where they are trying to achieve freedom through peaceful methods.  Why don’t we help people using trying to achieve better lives through peaceful means, thus promoting other conflict regions to do the same?  Must violence be necessary to bring about action?

3) If the figures were accurate, Tibet is a site of massive displacement and genocide of people / race.  Can we afford to let this happen AGAIN?

I applaud members of the Congress for taking action to once again show their support for Dalai Lama’s cause for autonomous Tibet.   Hopefully they will also be able to engage the Chinese government to move forward on this conflict.

News Flash!! I am running for a 2008-2010 LACBC Board of Director position. What is LACBC? It’s the only membership based grass-roots organization in the LA County that works to make LA County a better cycling environment. I participated as a Board of Director back in 1999, now 9 years later I am reconnecting with the organization.

Please vote for me!! If you are not a member, JOIN NOW!

Top Priorities and Expectations for LACBC This Year:

• Increase membership to 1000+ (currently at 600+)
• Raise additional funding for LACBC (It’s currently in financial crisis mode, how can it operate effectively?)
• Continue to engage and monitor cities to be more bicycle friendly
• Expand bicycle safety education
• Formalize LACBC on-line presence

My Statement (limited to 100 words): The organization and its staff has accomplished very much since I served on the board 7-9 years ago. However, there are still many challenges ahead, including our top two priorities 1) Increase to 1000+ members (670 last counted in November) which gives us strength in numbers and momentum in community; 2) Raise more funds because no great organization can operate without adequate funding. As an avid bicyclist with experience in fundraising, degree in business management, expertise in web technology, and connection to the bicycle industry, I believe I am well qualified to steer and assist the growth of this organization. I will be honored to have your vote to serve on your behalf.

Voting Logistics:

There are currently 9 seats open with 10 persons running. You have to be a current LACBC member (join up now) to vote and you must vote before Noon on March 25. If you are a current member and have not received your ballot, email dorothy@la-bike.org.

It’s strange how life changing events can bring people together… Last Saturday I attended a high school friend’s memorial service. It was a sad event to think how such a bright and gifted person could have taken her own life. However sad the event was, she managed to bring together people whom I have not seen for 15 years!

In the picture below from Left to Right: Stewart, Chung, Danny, Juliana, Sunmee & fiancee, Mr. Lorez, Mrs. Little, Jada, and me.

Margaret, where-ever you are, I hope you rest in peace and thanks for bringing us together.

Sigh, (both) new year come and went… yet I have not posted anything I intended to do… I seem to have been procrastinating all this time because I had a writer’s block on my December trip. Oh well. Anyway, here are some life event updates:

I am so proud of my parents! They completed a tandem bicycle tour of Taiwan over the Chinese New Year! I wish I have enough vacation to join them, but alas, I must save some for later in the year.

Recently, life gave me multiple lessons on impermanence in the world. As you may have read earlier, a good friend of mine passed away last November in a car accident. Then in January, I heard the news that my grandpa (my mom’s dad) passed away in his sleep… the kind of passing that everyone wishes they can have. He was truely blessed. Although both events made me extremely pensive and reflective, I was surprised by my lack of strong emotions. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had recent strong personal connection with either of them… but I would like to believe that my relatively calm mind can help them ease their transition into whatever awaits them (according to Tibetan Buddhist believe).

Their passing was my reminder to re-examine life. I started to re-read Tibetan Book of Living and Dying; watched a film called “10 Questions for the Dalai Lama“; happened upon a 60-Minute Pursuit of Happiness; and little of the book First Things First. All points to alternate approach to life defined by the American Dream. It’s too much for me to describe here, but it’s basically: slow down, appreciate life, and concentrate what’s really important - not material gains.  I encourage everyone to check out at least the movie…. it was very moving to see and hear Dalai Lama speak.  On the lighter side, he reminds me of Yoda.

Attended the first wedding for a year destined to be filled with weddings to attend.  My friend Andrew Wang and Dr. Leslie Tao tied the knot in a spiritual wedding on the beautiful campus of California Institute of Technology (CalTech - Pasadena, CA), at The Athenaeum.

It was a beautiful outdoor wedding, blessed with clear sky during a week of intense rain storms.  The food was great, and we managed to dance a few songs

A few more pictures available on my facebook album.

I just saw this video on a friend’s blog and I just have to link to it… It’s a teen’s video of why she rides her bike to school. She apparently won first place at her school’s PTA Reflections program with this video. Great job! Check it out:

The Bike Geek: Ambassador to the next generation

Also, more details at Bike Commuters

Happy Holidays!

I know it’s been a while since I last posted… I have been… well no excuse; was just lazy. Anyway since my last post, I am now in a new job about 2 miles from where I live in Westwood. It’s actually with people I used to work with, but the company has been acquired since I last worked there. However, I am not back in my previous position so there is still quite a bit of learning curve. One thing is for sure: I love my new commute… less than 15 minutes by bike!

It has been a busy year for me, with lot of changes - for better or worse. Here is my year in review:

• Moved 2 times (lived in 3 places)
• Changed job once
• Got stuck in Tucson by a snow storm!
• Switched my blogging platform to WordPress from Blogger
• Traveled to (besides Tucson of course):
  • San Francisco - March
    
  • Las Vegas - April
    
  • Kauai, Hawaii - May
  • Taiwan - September
  • Santa Barbara Wine country - weekend in October with parents and my aunt
  • New Jersey /New York - 3 day trip for work earlier this month (I visited what was the World Trade Center while I was there).
  • Southern Utah - a driving trip for next week
• Finished El Tour de Tucson, the crazy 109 mile distance - November
• Gave up TV, yep, I have no TV. But, I still manage to waste my free time on the internet (not doing anything productive).
• Subscribed to Netflix - yes, that could be one time drain (I watch it on my computer, in case you are wondering).
• Lost a friend to car accident… it’s sad, but it reminds me of the Buddhist concepts that nothing is permanent and life is but a breath away.
• Joined up with my old cycling training group: Shifting Gears.
• Got back semi-involved with Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC).
• Got back to mountain biking.
• Learned to program in PHP and deployed a store-locator software.
• (updated 12/23/07) Friends with babies, congrats to them!
  
  • One of my good friend got her PhD and had a baby girl
    
  • Another good friend had her 2nd baby boy
  • One cousin is pregnant
• Learned that my 2 good friends are getting married (to each other) next year, and I get to be on the wedding party.
• Read through Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches series.

What I wanted, but didn’t accomplished this year:

• Do a triathlon
• Get back in shape… well, kinda; I did loose some weight
• Be less messy - I utterly failed this one
• Send out holiday greetings. This is it. Hey, it’s more environmentally friendly (yeah, that’s it, and I am sticking with it).
• Volunteer to help people… this didn’t happen at all, but I did volunteer for LACBC a few times.
• I am sure there are more, but I seem to have conveniently forgotten about them.

Stay tune for what my plans are for 2008! In the mean time, I hope you are enjoying this holiday season.

Last Sunday (in Taiwan), I went to a folding bike club ride (Handoru). This mountainous in-and-out ride was 42 miles (60 km), with the turn-around point at a mining museum (complete with cake, lunch, fun events, and prize drawing… it was the club’s 2 year anniversary). I think there were at least 60+ riders; I was completely shocked at how cycling as a recreation exercise has really started to take root in Taiwan. A few years ago, people only thought of cycling as a form of transportation.

“Almost” to group photo time at the start of the ride.

It’s also amazing to see how popular folding bikes are in Taiwan; people there are not as afraid of trying something new… they don’t have the “small” inferiority complex that seem to plague the American population. For them, these bikes allow them to easily transport the bikes in their (often smaller) vehicles without the bike rack and carry onto the metro and conventional rail (although they have to bag the bike). This is probably the largest non-bike manufactured sponsored folding bike event I ever went to. Folding bikes present were (not in any specific order): Birdy, Pacific, KHS, Brompton (I think), Pete/Moulton, Dahon, and maybe some other brands I can’t recall. I wish I had my camera so I could take some photos…

Oh well, here are some from Handoru’s photo album:

Me on a KHS F20-T3

My dad on a KHS F20-T3, with a front rack

Some of the group riders.

All pictures linked from and are property of Handoru cycling club

Just got back home in LA from Taiwan today (9/18).  My original plan was to go for 1 week to visit my grand mother, who is undergoing chemo, but I extended the trip for another week because I can (switching job at the moment).  Anyway, my flight was delayed for 6+ hours because of Typhoon Wipha, which skimmed northern Taiwan just when my flight was supposed to take-off.  Although it is now reported as a very strong storm, fortunately it wasn’t too bad when it hit Taiwan.  I was a little nervous during our delayed take-off, especially when I can see (on the personal entertainment screen) the plane swerve taking off on the runway.  Otherwise, the trip was pretty smooth flying.

On another note, there is now a “FlyAway” direct bus from Westwood to LAX (and 2 other more popular lines to Union Station and Van Nuys).  This is a convenient and inexpensive service that drops and picks-up passengers at every terminal.  It’s only $4 one way!  Sure beats $8-$20 a day parking near LAX.  Check it out if you ever need to go to LAX (assuming you are in LA).

Have you ever gotten an error with your e-mail client saying that it’s having problem performing RETR (retrieve) command with your POP mail? When you encounter this error, e-mail clients tend to stop retrieving any more messages after that, thus effectively “clogs” your in-box. (I have checked this effect on Yahoo’s POP retrieval, Outlook, Thunderbird, and even MailToWeb - although this one can retrieve from the newest to oldest instead of the other way around).

I have never personally experienced this but I had recently seen it happen to someone I was supporting. This person’s e-mail was hosted on a very large and well-known company, so it was a surprise to me to see it happen. However, this person is known to get plenty of SPAM from all over the world, including those with Asian characters, which maybe a cause to the problem (but I don’t know enough about POP implementations to conclusively say that was the problem).

So how did I solve this problem? I called Jane’s tech support, and they came up with:

1. Use Mail2Web to retrieve from newest to oldest. This allows you retrieve any messages that comes in after the bad e-mail. However, if there were more than one bad e-mails that came in at different time, then you’ll have no way of retrieving those messages in the middle.
2. Delete and restart the account. This is what they eventually did without asking me first, which, needless to say, really made me and Jane angry.

After that big fiasco with tons of wasted time and anguish, I crossed my fingers that it will never happen again… of course it did. So instead of calling the tech support again, I decided to sit down and really think about this. POP is supposed to be a very simple mail retrieval implementation, so could I write a script to do something? It turned out I could easily do this in Python since it already has a poplib module included in its default distribution.  After I successfully removed the problem e-mails, I decide to share this with you.
How to install:

1. Download and install python
2. Download and save this file as (change file extension .txt to .py): HH-del-mail.py
3. Run the script (go here for a windows guide)

How it works:

1. It first ask for your pop server, user name, and password.
2. It will print out total number of messages you have.
3. It goes and try to retrieve 1 line from message 1 to last message.
4. If it has problem retrieving any message, it will mark it for deletion and continue to the next one.
5. At the end, it will ask if you want to commit the deletion, performs your choice and quits.