Untitled - My Rare Rant on Current Affairs

I wanted to write something on macro economy for a long while but never found the time and I think it is a good time to do so mainly because I am in the mood to do so. Marco economy may not be the right term for what I am going to talk about but something in relation to that perhaps. Hey, I am just expressing what I have in mind aka BLAH! ... Anyhow, here we go. Over the past year or so, the world economy has been in turmoil for various reasons, one key concern is of course the EU debt crisis. I am not here to talk about that but rather on the overall development of China which the whole world has been paying attention to for more than we care to admit.

What is a meaningful job?

I am not certain if I posted the following personal entry on this blog before but I am doing so because ... I can. The entry was written almost 2 years ago but nothing seems to have changed in terms of my view towards the topic. We are all working towards some sort of an objective in life and to attain that we often have to take the path less travelled. Some are more fortunate to have the option to do while some require a bit more effort in doing so. The reality is, at this stage of age, it is almost impossible for everyone to start the race from same starting line. Accept this fact and work towards overcoming such disparity if you like to call it as such. There is no point in whining about it because it would not change anything just because you say so. What prompted me to say all these? Someone recently asked me for career advice and my reply was quite straight forward, "there is no such thing as a career nowadays, create your own career and build on it." Perhaps it was a bold statement for the kid about to enter university but I personally think if one cannot understand the changing definition of a career, he/she is in for quite a surprise down the road. The ability to anticipate change is very important and it takes more than piles of textbook to learn about it. I was then asked or more accurately been informed the ideal situation is to find a job that is meaningful. OKAY, there is no such thing as a meaningless job, it may be meaningless to you because you labelled it as such due to your dislike of it but it surely is meaningful to someone else you may or may not know. Guess what, someone may even envy your so-called meaningless job for many reasons. While the word meaningful is very subjective, do think of the following passage the next time you want to use the word to describe the job you picked.

The Danger of Generalization

Recently the "food blogging" community in Hong Kong has been under a degree of pressure or more frankly speaking direct criticism from media as well as the F&B industry in Hong Kong. Alright, criticism maybe a strong word, perhaps, for a lack of a better word, concerns for the rapid growth of the so-called "food blogging" industry in recent months. Criticism is a natural byproduct of increased popularity and unfortunately it is the case in question with regards to "food blogging." First of all, one must understand the difference between "food blogger" and "bloggers who blog about food," because there is a difference and I repeated, there is a difference between the two and it is wrong to put both under the same category as "food bloggers." Such generalization is very dangerous indeed. I am not trying to distinguish myself between the two and I really see no need to do so because it matters not ... really. Let me show you a few examples:

The Art of Bullshit

I wrote this following post quite a while ago on my personal blog (which I no longer update because I plan to consolidate all my thoughts and express them here on this platform). What triggered to dig up this old post was the large amount of bullshit I have been hearing recently. I have no doubt that we all have our fair share of bullshit but when one is being bombarded by them in a short period of time, headaches!

So do you like to bullshit? Why do we bullshit? How do we distinguish a lie from a bullshit? I just finished reading a book titled On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt attempts to answer the above questions in a philological approach. The following introduction and excerpts I found to be rather interesting. What do you think?

One of the most salient feature of our culture is is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in it ... we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves ... 

What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false, since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its nonrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to. 

On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt (Princeton University Press, 2005.)

Online Restaurant Booking? Hong Kong is NOT Ready yet!

Have you tried to book a table online? Yes I have and as a matter of fact I loved the idea so much a few years back that I wanted to bring this idea / concept to Hong Kong. After a 24 hours cooling period, I returned to reality, commercial reality that is, and gave up on the idea. Over the past 6 months, I noticed an increasing number of online booking websites being launched with massive advertising all over the web and social media channels. However, my take on online restaurant reservation remains the same as a few years ago, Hong Kong is not ready for it YET for many reasons, below are 3 major ones in my opinion.