How To Boil An Egg

I love boiled eggs. While I don't usually have any problems making soft-boiled eggs or hard-boiled eggs any more, I find this new invention of using heat-sensitive technology and invisible ink rather interesting, esp for those people who really can't boil an egg. OK, for friends I can forgive them, but I hate it when I ask for soft-boiled eggs at hotels, and I ended up with hard-boiled eggs - how am I supposed to dip the bread into a hard-boiled egg?

This new gadget will probably come with a higher price tag unfortunately. For the cheap option, here's what I suggest: Put the eggs into a saucepan of cold water, then put the saucepan on medium heat and bring to the boil. Once the water is boiling, then start the timer - 3 minutes for the soft-boiled eggs, and 7 minutes for the hard-boiled eggs.

Easy peasy!

Approaching the Fifth Anniversary

This morning I got a large envelope from my accountant - it's the financial accounts and annual tax return forms... I do hate seeing these every year as they are so complicated and my accountant seems to have a knack of making me feel so inadequate when it comes to finance.

I suddenly realised that it's fast approaching the fifth anniversary of running my own business. I still can't believe that I had the courage in 2001 to quit a job that I liked and set up my own consulting business. One main reason for taking such a drastic step at the time boiled down to one promise I made after I left my first job in 1994 - if I ever took my work-related anger and frustration out on my friends in my personal life, I'd leave the job. Also it's about time to venture out of the big corporate green-house and set myself one of the biggest challenges in my life.

Somehow my staff at the time sensed that I would leave the job before I even sat them down and told them the news - they were so supportive. I still keep in touch with them and I am so glad to see them excel in their professions too.

I must say the last 5 years have been a roller-coaster ride. Being self-employed means that I am detached from office politics, but it brings in other worries such as "will I get enough work in the next few months", "are my clients happy with my work", "am I charging too much / not enough" etc. But certainly the whole experience so far has opened my eyes up a lot, and led me to opportunities that I would never dream of having before. And somehow work just seems to find its way to me. So I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank all of those people who have helped me along the way (you know who you are), whether it's to recommend me to colleagues/friends, or to give me valuable advice on my business, or to lead a sympathetic ear when I go into one of my venting sessions.

Where will I be in 5 years' time? No idea! Just like the answer I would have given 5 years ago.

A Story Of The Red-Crowned Crane

After a lot of searches, I finally got hold of a rare CD "Xin Le Fu" (I suppose the translation would be "New Music Academy"?) - it's a live CD of Dadawa (Zhu Zhe Qin), whose Tibetan-inspired debut album "Sister Drum" back in the early 1990's made an impact across the global music world.

This CD was a real discovery - it's the recording of the concert that took place in Beijing on 1 April 2004, and the voice of Dadawa was just amazing in this concert. One song that stuck in my mind was "A Story of The Red-Crowned Crane". I didn't know this song before I got this CD, but after some research, I found that this was actually Dadawa's debut hit back in 1990 (she was the first runner-up in a singing competition). And to make this song even more special, it was based on a true story, on a girl called Xu Xiujuan. The narrative at the start of the song summarised the story very well:

"There was a girl, who loved the red-crowned cranes since she was very young. After she graduated from university, she went back to the place where she kept the cranes. However, one day when she tried to save an injured red-crowned crane, she fell into the wetland marshes in an accident, and never returned."

I have not found Dadawa's video of this song, but I have managed to hunt down a cover version.

The girl in the true story was called Xu Xiujuan, who was born in October 1964 in the city of Qiqihar in Heilongjiang Province. She was from the Manchu ethnic minority in China. In August 1981, at the age of 17 she followed her father Xu Tielin (an expert in cranes) to the Zhalong Nature Reserve, and she took up a temperory job there.

Her father didn't really want her to work in cranes preservation, as he knew how tough the job would be. However, Xu Xiujuan insisted on working there, and with her dedication and hard work, she managed to remember all the details about every crane in the nature reserve within 3 days of working there.

In May 1986, Xu Xiujuan completed her 2-year study at the Northeast Forestry University Wildlife Department, left home, went to the Jiangsu Yancheng Nature Reserve that covered large areas of the wetlands, grown over with reeds, salt marshes, making this a perfect habitat for the cranes. Xu Xiujuan's knowledge and expertise came in handy here, and it's here that she successfully talent be brought into full play. With her pioneering knowledge and application of the technology, she managed to breed and raise three red-crowned cranes in harsh conditions. With this success, she earned a lot of respect from other experts in the country.

On 15 September 1987, one of the cranes went missing, and despite the best effort from everyone, the crane couldn't be found that day. Xu Xiujuan insisted on looking for the crane that night, and also the next day. Somehow that day she fell into the wetlands and perished - no one knew exactly how the accident happened; whether she fell off the bike while searching for the crane, or she got off the bike and tried to swim to save the crane in the wetland.

Because of her dedication, she is now passionately known as the Goddess of Cranes.

There's a more complete story in simplified Chinese, but I hope this story has moved you as much as it has moved me.

One Year Ago Today......

London is a bit of a sad city today, as it remembers the first anniversary of the suicide bombing on 7 July 2005. This day last year, London first woke up to the good news from the previous day that the city has been selected to host the Olympics in 2012; and then the whole city plunged from the happiest city on this planet to the saddest one, with the four suicide bombers murdering 52 people and injuring many more.

I still don't know what the suicide bombers tried to achieve - if the point is to inflict fear, then I don't think they have succeeded; Londoners are stronger than that. If the objective is to get people onto their side for whatever their cause is, then they failed miserably too. If anything, it has made me love London more.

I have no problem that they express their opinions, but hiding behind religion and killing innocent people, I certainly don't approve (and I don't think Islam would approve that either).