Was sagst du? 樣樣都德

In a matter of within 24 hours, Egypt’s Mubarak lost his grip on power and resigned from his presidency, with the military assuming power in interim. While the protesting project erupted into a euphoria and many leaders around the world welcomed the change of regime, the future is not necessarily as rosy as many would hope for. The most powerful force driving this turn of events is certainly not the US whose attitude seemed to be swaying day by day. It may not be the protesting mass either, if not with military support, and in fact the political power has fallen into military hands for the moment. There is no way for outsiders to fathom the political dealings behind the scenes, but the fact that the military has taken over seems to suggest that the military has been exerting great power. How may one otherwise explain why the power wasn’t handed over to the newly created vice-presidency? It is common practice in many countries that the vice-president (or someone else in the government a...

It’s not wise to judge a book by its cover, and to judge how wealthy a person is from their appearance is even more hit and miss. There are plenty of them floating around us any time, and the Frankfurt Airport and Munich are a couple of places where they are more easily spotted. At the Frankfurt Airport it took me 20 minutes to receive my 13 euro tourist tax refund. The culprit was a very slow-moving queue of people who would submit multiple receipts with forms that were filled incorrectly or incompletely, including a Russian man who submitted almost 20 receipts. Then there was a Chinese woman who asked me for help with translation. I told her that the staff could pay her refund only in US dollars but not euros, and charge-back to her credit card was not allowed since the amount was a stunning 3000 euros! Based on the general 20 % sales tax rate across Europe and tax refund would usually give back only 70 % of the tax, I estimated that the woman would have purchased at least 20000 euro...

It was only a brief one and a half months before I flew out of Australia again shortly after the turn of the new year and went back to my old lab in Munich for a couple of weeks of work. Before I knew it, now I am back in Melbourne. 返歸澳洲才一個半月，新年伊始，我又再次從地球一角的澳洲飛往另一角的德國，回到我在慕尼黑的實驗室公幹兩週，現在終於返回墨爾本了。 I saw the four seasons come and gone in two months instead of the normal full year, albeit in a rather unusual sequence. The brilliant golden brown of autumn changed abruptly to the lush green of spring. Then after a few sizzling summer days, I had to acclimatise to the coolish winter days of Hong Kong and the icy snowy days of Munich. Fortunately it wasn’t too unbearable in Munich and I coped rather well even with the last couple of days there when it was also the coldest. 一年四季，完全濃縮在短短兩個月， 金黃的深秋 一下子變成綠油油的春天，經歷過幾個大暑天後轉瞬是香港清涼的冬天和慕尼黑冰天雪地，可幸還不是太冷，臨離開慕尼黑最冷的兩天也總算頂得住。 Pretty snow scenery near my institute in Munich (left) and the town of Geislingen an der Steige (right) en route from Munich to Frank...