Occasionally Interesting, often not

Finally tracked down some statistics on homicides in the SF Bay area as a whole. As previously stated, Hong Kong, a city of 8m, has roughly the same population as the Bay area, and a homicide total of about 50 murders per year. In 2007, the 11 cities in the aqrea with populations over 100k, had approx 350 people murdered. In comparison to NYC, which had approx 500 murders in 2007 (out of 19.7m population) So in terms of population, the murder rate in the Bay Area (1/23k) is higher than in NYC (1/40k) by almost twice! And of course, much more dangerous (7x) than HK (1/160k) Yikes.

I was at the 4th/Harrison Whole Foods yesterday. At the checkout line, I was following a guy with a cart of San Pelligrino water (3 or 4 cases: $77!). The checkout person asked him "Do you want some help with that?", probably expecting, given that this dude is maybe 40, 6'3, looks quite in shape, for him to say "no", but instead, he says "yes", and we get the spectacle of a 5'2" woman pushing the cart for what seems to be a perfectly healthy guy. Perhaps he had some hidden incapacity, but if he had the strength to put the cases in his cart in the 1st place, he needs help pushing the cart into the elevator and unloading it into his car? Lazy, dude!

My recent trip to Beijing passed through HK. While there, I read the South China Morning Post. On one day, they posted the crime statistics for the 1st half of the year. For a city of 8 million, they had a grand total of 23 murders. For comparison, San Francisco, with 1/10th the population, the toll was 57 for the period ending June 30. The Bay Area as a whole is perhaps 8 million. I have no idea what the homicide statistics are for the whole area. I mean, there are much safer towns, but then there's Oakland, San Leandro. I hope that it's not 100 times!

My father was invited to the graduation ceremony of the BUPT and QMUL Joint Program, to receive an honorary fellowship from QMUL. My mother, who up until now has been the only one to accompany my father on these sorts of trips, thought it would be nice to have a holiday from my father, and suggested that I chaparone him. We flew to HKG to pick up a visa for my father, and then onto Beijing. It was very hot, and very hazy. We were picked up by a driver and whisked to the hotel, on the northern outskirts of the city (beyond the 6th ring road). The hotel is relatively near the BUPT campus, and was the site of the graduation ceremony. That night, we had our first banquet, and there were many more fine meals through the course of the stay. These meals were the highlight of my trip -- exquisite taste, excellent preparation and presentation, and top quality ingredients. The meals were primarily at the hotel itself, which obviously has a great kitchen, with one outing to a neighborhood restaur...