Unagi

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I came across an old Friends episode on YouTube earlier. It says there’s a concept in Karate called Unagi, which refers to having a constant awareness of danger and being prepared to fight. The episode itself was hilarious. But of course as in typical Friends fashion what Ross says is totally untrue. Instead it reminds me of something else.

https://youtu.be/jbRVoTL5djs

I don’t know Karate, but I shoot photos. In photography it is important for the photographer to be constantly prepared for the decisive moment. How? Shooting with the best camera possible is a good starting point. But as the old saying goes, the best camera is the one that’s with you. In the case of an iPhone, try shooting in RAW. The problem with iPhone’s stock camera app is that it applies noise reduction too heavily and the picture loses too much detail. Lightroom’s iOS app solved the whole problem in this case. It shoots sharp RAW files, then it allows you to edit a photo easily. As a matter of fact one of my recent Instagram uploads was shot on iPhone, and it became my instant favourite.

I shoot RAW all the time, even on the iPhone. — May 2018

But in photography the photographer’s side isn’t the whole story. The subject also needs to be constantly prepared. There’s no better example than the one and only @MartinHo. You see, we’re all used to seeing Martin’s camera face ready the moment he noticed a camera is pointing at him. It brings some inconvenience to other fellow subjects in the same photo at times, who may not be ready as fast as Martin got, but his proficiency at posing is notable.

Speaking about Unagi, it sort of became a mission for me to search for the perfect Unagi restaurant when I go to Japan. I think I found one in my trip to Okayama in February. While the Unaju there was very impressive, the most surprising dish was Shirayaki Unagi. Without the typical Kabayaki sauce the taste of the Unagi itself became more prominent. It’s not an overstatement to say the dish brought a new taste to me. I think my new mission is to find an equally impressive Unagi restaurant in Tokyo that does Shirayaki Unagi so that I can have that every time I go on my annual Tokyo trip.

Best quotes in 2017

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Two years ago I published a post called “Best quotes in 2015”. Let’s update that shit here in order to increase our word count as 2017 is coming to an end. And since I didn’t have such a post for 2016, why not putting shit said last year as well?

西方大愛左膠最愛嘅 unisex toilet，早已在香港的茶餐廳實現 — Aug 2017

想喺公立醫院住一人病房，住ICU咪得 — May 2017. Well I don’t know what are the policies at public hospitals, but I guess you can’t complain too much when you’re in one.

On second thought I’m not calling my son Pierre. I should call him James instead, so when he acts childishly, I can say “C’mon James, 可唔可以成熟少少？” — Feb 2017, when I saw bad-behaving kids at a restaurant.

Me: Perhaps you can show Isabel cartoons which promote friendship.
My sister: Is there any cartoon that doesn’t promote friendship?
— Nov 2017, me suggesting to my sister on how to boost my 3-year-old niece’s social skills.

Had Beethoven not written anything when he composed, you wouldn’t have masterpieces to perform. — Mar 2016, when commenting on @HarryMak not jotting notes as we studied MFDS.

Expert opinion is also evidence-based, even though it’s just in the lowest level of the evidence-based hierarchy. — Mar 2016, also as I prepared for MFDS.

What’s in my bag?

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In the tech blogs I frequently visit one question keep resurfacing: what’s in your bag? I believe this question is a derivative of “what’s in your iPod” when the iPod was still at large (or the other way round). What’s in one’s iPod to a certain extent tells who one is, and what’s in one’s bag definitely tells more. So, what’s in my bag?

iPhone X
Well iPhone X isn’t technically in my bag; it’s in my pocket, for good reasons. A smartphone is the single most important device we carry with us. It holds the entire
Internet in our pockets. It’s worthwhile to spend on the best phone money can buy. So even a $10000 phone is a worthy purchase.

Before I laid my hands on iPhone X I had so many doubts about it. But once I started using it those doubts faded away. The notch was OK as long as you don’t use your phone in landscape mode; iPhone X’s even thicker than iPhone 5 but that’s ok. The OLED screen isn’t like those oversaturated Android screens at all. Overall it’s a really beautiful phone.

MacBook 12”
I’m kinda done with the iPad. Yes, Steve Jobs used to say the post PC era has come. But with Steve no longer leading the revolution, the iPad still feels less capable than their PC counterparts. The latest iPad Pro may beat the MacBook in benchmark tests, but the Mac still excels in real world multitasking performance. And I can testify MacBook runs Lighrtoom just fine; it even edits 4K video in FCP with not-too-shabby performance. I’m about to install Bootcamp and try running GTA V.

That doesn’t mean I’m content with the performance of the MacBook, which runs on an Intel i5 (rebranded from m5 but still being a m5) processor. I still keep my retina MacBook Pro (late 2013) which still runs exceptionally ably.

Shure SE535
It’s simply a pair of earphones with great sound quality. Shure released a separate bluetooth cable to attach the earbugs on and it works. I didn’t buy it because it doesn’t sound as good as a plug-in cable. But I’m definitely considering buying a lightning cable because it gives better sound than Apple’s lightning-to-3.5mm connector.

Accessories contained in a pouch
Carrying devices with you means carrying loads of adapters and chargers too. Such accessories should be contained in a pouch to 1) keep things tidy, 2) make it easier to switch bags, 3) prevent metal objects from making scratches on other devices.

Stain remover pen
This pen magically removes (or at least fades) stains on shirts. Don’t buy the Tide one though, it stinks.

Shoehorn
This adorable shoehorn from Muji is made of stainless steel. Really handy for those who hate to untie and tie shoelaces.

PPE (Personal Protective Equipment)
If a car mechanic would carry a wrench with him, a dentist would definitely bring PPE with him. The most basic PPE a dentist should have are latex gloves, masks and alcohol gel. Gloves are useful for instance when you try to remove bird poo on your car and when eating crabs. Masks are necessary when you see contagious people on those inevitable train rides. Alcohol gel is for cleaning hands after laying my hands on products in Apple Store.

I also carry a flat plastic barrier in case I need to give emergency mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Olympus EM5 with 14/17/45mm lenses
When I have to bring a camera I bring my only camera, the Olympus EM5. If the event is single purpose I tend to bring only prime lenses for portability. The M43 system excels in having loads of good prime lenses of small sizes.

Billingham Hadley Pro
For the bag itself, I now usually carry a Billingham. It’s a camera bag, meaning it’s reasonably water-proof. The important point to note is that you should pick the FibreNyte material instead of canvas, so that the black colour stays black instead of fading into dark green like canvas does.

Into the future

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iPhone X went on sale earlier this month. I feel ashamed of myself that I wasn’t able to get it on the first day this time. Anyway iPhone X promises the future of smartphones. In fact “the future” has long been Apple’s selling point for its products. Whether such promise is fulfilled is a story for another time. But today I’m looking into the past.

You see, I’m tired of my old iPad Air 2. Earlier this year I praised it, but I’m afraid those viewpoints became obsolete as my computing needs changed. When I was a student, I required ultimate portability from a machine that can read PDFs. My old iPad 2, New iPad and later iPad Air 2 served that purpose so well. But at that time I already noticed something was missing: the word processing power and website rendition on the iPad still lagged behind that of a formal Mac. I just let go because reading ebooks was top priority.

But today my mobile computing needs changed. I need a machine to render websites accurately; I need precision in note-taking; I occasionally need serious photo editing on a portable machine. A top-configured MacBook Pro is only a portable machine at home, but it’s not a portable machine per se. A MacBook is.

Yes, it’s incapable in so many ways. There’s only one port; it doesn’t have a huge screen; it’s fanless so the CPU is doomed from the beginning. But on the other hand it has so much more advantages over the iPad: a bigger screen, a real keyboard, the ability to run Lightroom (Lightroom for iPad is a joke), a real file system, etc.. That’s the reason I decided to buy a 2017 MacBook four whole months after its release date. I badly need a real portable laptop now.

What about my old MBP then? I’m keeping it. It still has a terrific screen, and I bet its performance is still better than the MacBook’s (remember I need to edit 4K videos these days). By choosing a MacBook over an iPad Pro, I announce defeat in the transition into the future of computing. But who says I have given up entirely? Who says the Mac cannot be the future of computing?

Mocking everyday objects

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Upper left: A pen made by Chow Tai Fook which is a complete knock-off of Swarovski’s crystal pen. Modern Dental Lab should well make their own pen out of cobalt-chrome chips.

Upper right: A custom-made ring bragged by Facebook sponsored page. Is that made from wrapping a tin foil around a key holder?

Lower right: A cafe’s Instagram upload liked by @Thomas. The scale is a bit unprofessional (because it’s the same as mine, which makes it unprofessional)

Lower left: A new plastic case for my iPhone 6s. While most of it looks good, it has a major design flaw: why does it have to have the antenna lines that Apple tried so hard to do conceal in the subsequent iPhone 7?

New medium

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As I’ve said before, I (and the whole internet) now prefer to express myself in pictures. I’ve been shooting photos for a long time. But recently I discovered shooting videos is equally fun. I got so serious that I started editing videos in FCP. The videos I post are only a trial, so no quality is guaranteed. But I hope in time I’ll shoot some nice footage and edit them into meaningful videos.

What’s the top tip for shooting videos? By holding your phone right you already shoot better than 90% people. #SayNoToVerticalVideos

Commenting the new iPad

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Apple’s new iPad is out. Before going any further we need to understand the structure of the iPad family. First there’s the iPad-iPad (including the original iPad, iPad 2, New iPad [Apple’s nomenclature disaster began after SJ died], iPad Air, iPad Air 2, and now simply iPad), then there’s iPad mini (which is all but abandoned), and finally iPad Pro, which tries to imagine the future of computing but failed. Well, I just wish to say I have no plan to upgrade my iPad at this moment. I think my iPad Air 2 is the best iPad ever.

iPad mini is too small to be useful. Period.

iPad Pro is a failure in that there’s a camera bulge at the back and it can’t lie flat on the table. SJ said there’s no need for a hard keyboard. The soft keyboard should be good enough. But if it wobbles on a table, how can you type (in SJ’s recommended way)? And then they invented the Smart Keyboard. When you have the Smart Keyboard on the iPad, the screen assumes a normal notebook angle. I remember Phil Schiller said the reason there’s no touch screen MacBook is that the ergonomics is just wrong. Well? iPad in a notebook angle suddenly have the right ergonomics?

This new $329 iPad is 1.4mm (one-fifth) thicker than iPad Air 2, and has a crappy sceeen (no optical lamination). Owners of this new iPad or the iPad Air may think the difference is tiny — only because they can’t admit they have a crap screen. I remember @EugeneY used to say (in 2001/2002) “you think Windows XP is unstable because you don’t have it”. Likewise you think you don’t need an Audi because you don’t have an Audi. You don’t have a good screen and a thin iPad so you think there’s no difference.

So to sum up, iPad Air 2 is still the best iPad ever because 1) it doesn’t have a camera bulge, 2) it has a good screen, 3) it is the thinnest iPad to date.

Footnote: Wow, this is probably the happiest blog post I’ve written for ages. I didn’t force myself to add a poetic touch and use good language in this article, hence the above crappy English. But it’s fun.

V Day’s over

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It’s 15 Feb and it means V Day’s over. What’s more, it marks the end of the long long holiday season of Christmas, new year and CNY. One of my mottos (posted in social medias) is “Hate festivals”. In no way does it mean I don’t enjoy spending time with my loved ones. But it’s nice to see people become rational again, rather then spoiling themselves in the festive atmosphere which results in low productivity at best and often inconvenience to others.

Speaking of online mottos, what are my other mottos? I remember there’re a few. The current one is “Coffee, food, photography, and a bit of dentistry”. That one speaks for itself, but if you find it difficult to comprehend, I have talked about it before.

One other motto was “If you are going through hell, keep going.” It turns out I’m in living hell more often than I thought. Some of those hellish scenarios are self-created. For example, I may subject myself to challenges like exams, or I may want to help a kid or an elderly ending up starting a treatment I hate. I’m glad in the past I just rose to the occasion when facing adversities. Sadly, I still cannot convince myself I will overcome every new challenge.

Perhaps it’s time to adopt a new motto?

Luck

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It’s been the fifth time I attended HH’s annual dinner. I have never placed much hope or interest in this yearly event: food was never attractive, performances were boring, and lucky draws were none of my business. The last bit changed tonight. I won my first cash prize in a lucky draw, ever.

It’s not a large amount. Lucky draws in corporate annual dinners never intend to make you rich so you can fuck your job and quit the next morning. No, it’s only a small sum of money, which will get even less given that everyone in my clinic witnessed what I got and I’ll have to donate some of that into their afternoon tea fund. (They even went so far as to take a picture of me on stage so I won’t deny it.) Despite all that, I consider myself a legitimate prizewinner given my hard work at this company for the past five years.

Speaking of luck, there is a different form of luck. Bad luck.

Queen Elizabeth II said it was “bad luck” for the police commander who was in charge of security during Xi Jingping’s state visit to the UK in 2016.

Yes, when you do a job, sometimes it’s inevitable to handle things that turn an otherwise perfect day into a nightmare. Fractured root during extraction for an obnoxious patient; an out-of-control kid whose parents regarded him as an angel and wouldn’t accept referral to a specialist; RCT on 17 for a middle-aged woman who wouldn’t open her mouth; you name it. If it’s lucky for me to win a small prize in a lucky draw, that luck can only partly compensate for but not totally balance the bad luck I’ve experienced throughout the years.

But perhaps there’s a better reason to explain my sudden good fortune. Anzyme.com turns 14 today and I still have money to maintain it. This site itself has perhaps become a much smaller part of my life than it used to be, but Anzyme will continue to exist in some form. You see, my sole proprietor trade name is called “Anzyme Dental”, and so as long as I continue to work as a dentist, Anzyme won’t be forgotten — if I don’t pay my taxes on time, the IRD will surely find out and sue Anzyme Dental.

Cheers. Happy 14th.