(1) Spinning around L’Arche de Triomphe in Paris with George and Bernadette.  It’s wild when we were in a convertible on a perfect summer night.   Tres Chic!

(2) Enjoying A Midsummer’s Night Dream in La Scala Opera House in Milan with Gabriella and Gloria (and their hubbies).  I’d never heard such heavenly angelic voices.

(3) Finishing our NYC office move, and did not break any equipments in the process, and inviting our PhD friends over for Christmas party.  I’m so proud!

Who say that scientists and engineers can’t have fun?!

Looking back at 2009, it took me a few months to stop telling everyone that Madonna has become my next door neighbor – yes! she moved into the Upper East Side.  I also went crazy for a few months making decisions for our office move, and it was tough.

Nothing ground breaking in the technological world that I saw or heard.

But I shall remember 2009 as a staging year – a time to catch a breath and to learn – preparing for something great to happen in the new year.

I was never a great fan of Mona Lisa – having great disappointment with the very small canvas hanging in Louvre.  As a doctorate student in Paris, I could not understand what’s the big deal of that smile.  Even when I was fortunate to attend a lecture by the director of curator of Louvre, in which she explained in great detail the innovative play of light with the fine drawing — I still couldn’t bring myself to like Mona.  Sorry!

So I did not have great expectations coming to The Last Supper. The fresco has most part destroyed with the use of the tempura techniques – use of egg white and organic material – that did not withstand the age of time. However the restoration effort was quite remarkable.  Christ appears beyond sadness and the relief was coming through pretty sharp – the 3-dimensional mountains in the background and with the apostle Philip almost jumping out of the painting.  But I wasn’t quite in awe as when I saw the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

Nonetheless it’s a great feeling to have stood in the same room as Leonardo!

After the visit, I picked up a book “Leonardo’s notebook” and read it during my flight back home.

I was just struck by the way Leonardo described how to become a great painter – First, you have to learn perspective. Second, you have to observe proportion. Third, you have to observe people and things around you and memorize faces to use later.

The guy is just downright disciplined!!! He repeated these steps in a number of different ways and in different context throughout his notes. I was so inspired by his thought process.  He uses mathematics throughout his notes, and recorded astute observations of the human face, types of nose, hands, proportion and physics of light and the scientific description of how things appears in human eyes due to the pupil dilation.

The notes are refreshing reminder of the fun stuff in engineering and sciences.

Listen to the Health Care Bill Read by Professional Voices

By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN

Published: September 14, 2009

About 60 voice actors volunteered to record the proposed health care bill, H.R. 3200, a 1,017-page doorstop. The reading, available free at hearthebill.org, clocks in just shy of 24 hours.

BUT….Using text to voice technologies, I can easily turn the entire bill into human voice.  While it may not be as nice as the voice actors’ voice, but it’s pretty close to a real human speaking.  And I’m quite sure that one can save many hours of voice editing by using machine generated voice.

A few weeks ago, the smart Dr. Sanjay Gupta appeared in CNN, and looking perplexed as he admitted that he found the bill not clear in many areas after he personally plowed through the 1000 over pages.

I guess when we try to understand something complex, our human nature will, by default, “play back” and “read back” any difficult statements. We’ll read over and over again until we get that aha moment or “OK, this must be what it means!”.  This is like reading and signing a legal document.  We want to know exactly what we will get ourselves into.  This requires both subject matter knowledge and patience to think and reason the relations of actions, probablity of events and consequences.

Turning the text to voice, without any decision aid tools, probably will not make this bill any easier to understand. 

Thanks but no thanks, I will not ipod the health care bill for my gym workout, I may mess up my steps.

Most people, if they gathered enough courage to ask me, want to know the following:

(1) What did you feel when the plane hit the tower?

Answer: I felt the floor swaying in slow motion 5 times, and then the light dimmed for a few seconds, and then I heard a strange sound of falling sand – everything happened very fast.  But there’s no loud bang or terrifying scenes like that in the  movie. It was not till I left the building that I saw the scary big hole in the tower.

(2) How long did you take to run away?

Answer: Hmm… you don’t run down the stairs, especially with a crowd. I remembered walking down step-by-step,  there were no pushing or shouting, and occasionally we stopped for a few seconds while a fireman walked up with his heavy suit and equipments.  While I was in the stairway, I learned that there was a plane that hit the tower, someone with a cellphone was telling everyone what he heard from his wife.  But we did not know that it was a terrorist attack.

(3) Did you see the building falling?  You must have heard the South Tower falling?

Answer: No, I did not see the building falling.  I was smart enough to know that I need to get away as soon as I can — in fact I only stayed around for 10 mins once I got out the building and then I decided to start walking back home a hundred blocks away.   If there’s any noise, it was when we were  getting on the bridge to cross from North Tower to the World Financial center, I heard big bangs, and I thought that was the sound of the building debris.  But later, I was very sad to understand that the bangs were from the falling human bodies.

The above may be tough to read.  I understand people are not just curious, but they are gathering data to think if they can survive if they ever encounter similar attacks.  And I don’t believe that any advanced information technologies or intelligence technologies could have helped in understanding the human experience.

I remember 9/11 morning a beautiful morning as I walked out of the subway heading towards the North Tower.

We were attacked and we survived. We are stronger.

Having absolutely no idea of what linen really shows as “white”, I decided to research a little and play with the color palette.

I have no idea what I got myself into! There are more than 5000 colors to choose from. The grades of white easily presented more than a hundred options. Now the rules of color sound straight forward: choosing a color requires coordination between cool and warm tones. Colors in the same family of spectrum are “friends” i.e. they have hues that complement each other. While opposite colors “attracts” and they just naturally look good next to each other – for example red will look great with green.

When I asked Steve why he suggested “Linen White”, he explained that this is the most popular color in United States. But this is not a good answer – popularity does not necessarily equate the best – at least for me.

Wishing for a color that is truly personalized, and deciding that we are the “cool” folks, we went for blue. Then as a novice with the color chart, we try to imagine if the color works with the furniture color and other rooms, which proved not to be simple. I spent hours matching and simulating the different colors with a software.

The experience of choosing a color is a decision management problem – there are business rules (i.e. the rules of complementing colors), multi-criteria (many options and the need to satisfy competing objectives), and most importantly, personalization (we prefer cool but not warm white as most people). Hiring a color specialist can help in my renovation project; there is a role for experts with knowledge and understanding of the color spectrum.

Now, I got to run… I’ve to use my iPhone to catch some colors and develop a truly personalized “taste” for my kitchen.

When our “tres chic” Parisian friends brought us to dinner in Paris, they were quick to made it known that the restaurant is in the guide. Trying not to appear “rude and annoying” American, I fought my urge to pull out my Zagat guide.

The shrimp shown in the picture (a part of me is annoying, taking photos everywhere…) is perhaps the most delicious shrimp I’ve ever eaten. The shells just fell off smoothly, and it is moist and goes well with the bubbly broth that comes with it. The French always have a way of making beautiful things more gorgeous. In this case the vegetables are presented in a way that you don’t need to chew too hard to get the green effect. In short, the rest of the course was impeccable.

But the restaurant is almost empty on a Saturday night with a spring gentle breeze.

Anyway, as soon as I got back to the hotel, I started reading the Zagat. Well, to my surprise, Zagat described accurately the ambiance and the quality of food. And the ratings of food, decor, service and cost are right on target. In our case, Zagat’s review mentions that the restaurant seems to have fallen out of favor with the celebrities.

Zagat’s ratings are by the public. It never really got enough credit for its place in pioneering a knowledge platform for collaborative and collective intelligence. But I think of it as a great Web 2.0 model.

So do we still need those high-nosed food critics?

Perhaps chocolates serve some neuropsychological cravings our brains require to function in current economic crisis, Candy is the first suggestion of making it big as a business. According to the slide, the list of promising ventures are:

1. Candy
2. iPhone Apps
3. Health-Care Technology
4. Self Improvement
5. Software as a Service
6. Home Health Care
7. Yoga Products and Services
8. Technical and Trade Schools
9. Fast-Casual Dining
10. Green Construction
11. Niche Consulting
12. Education Technology
13. Temporary Staffing Firms
14. Government Services
15. Accounting Services
16. Repair Services
17. Energy

I do not know how inc.com measures the top 17 industries. By job creation? demands and supply trends? or simply counting the number of small businesses that are successful.

But it’s comforting to see that technology seems to be good winning strategy for starting a business.

Now if candies are doing well in bad times, then I wonder how the gym business are doing these days?

http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/37901/sxwau

What needs to happen to kick-start new housing construction?

It’s 130th Anniversary of Albert Einstein’s Birth!

For all his fame and glory, the man was true to his passion towards science and research — Einstein’s “miracle year”– when he published four papers that would alter the course of modern physics, happened while he was working as a clerk in a patent office.

With our worldly distractions, how many engineers and scientists will choose to pursue creativity and ideas with such selflessness?

Adjectives Get Evicted
By TERI KARUSH ROGERS
Published: March 1, 2009
The new broker advertising vocabulary does not include “luxury,” “prestige” or, heaven forbid, “trophy.” Brand names that used to convey cachet have also fallen out of favor.

A few thoughts and questions come to mind reading this article.
1. Is Value = Recession? That is people search for value only during a recession?
2. Is Trophy = Bull Market?
3. Can I describe an apartment both as Trophy and Value?
4. I think that a trophy apartment is generally also a value apartment because you can resell easier.
5. The word Value does not sound to me depressive, so we are not in depression?

To most people, a fireplace in New York City makes a trophy apartment, but to the couple cited in the article, a fireplace is a “value”. Different words, same apartment.

Amid all the negative news, this “recession” article make me feel good and positive about the future of our economy!