Living in exile

Seeing how people communicate ideas and suggestions (in the English language) to deal with the academic disruptions that the coronavirus has unleashed is quite refreshing and quite a departure from my experience here in China. Perhaps the language is also an issue because Mandarin Chinese is really just a second language for me, and probably a fourth language in academic and institutional settings. I may surprise some with my command of the language but this is my brain filling in the blanks. Of course, filling in the blanks requires models and ways of thinking.

Earlier I learned two new things in Chinese which arose from me filling in the blanks. Apparently, I always thought that 矛盾 is 茅盾. A friend pointed out that the latter is a writer. The reason why I thought it was the latter was because of Moutai (a Chinese spirit that you drink, of course). I was introduced by another friend to the word 社畜. At first, I thought it was 社会的畜生 and thought it was a bit too much (I would prefer the direct 杂种, or the more flavorful Minnan way of saying it zap-zing. For the latter, use the German hard z and use sparingly in Southern China.). But it was really 会社的畜生, something related probably to the work situation of the Netflix red panda character Aggretsuko.

Yesterday, I streamed a webinar by the European Respiratory Society which featured Zhong Nanshan, one of the key people on the frontlines of the outbreak. Funnily enough, tonight it was covered in the local Chinese news (one of the sources I look at is 澎湃新闻). It is nice to be in front of the mainstream and a small part of me (or, if you wish, the small part of me) wonders if I contributed to it being more known within China.

There was a part about this webinar delivery that I felt was not entirely kosher. I did not exactly ask for permission from the European Respiratory Society to stream this webinar. Furthermore, a news article was written as “promotional material” by the school and it featured some screenshots of chats during the webinar. To the school's credit, the names including the @ handles were blurred out. I felt those screenshots were on the border of kosher and non-kosher. But I did not ask to override it and in fact, I even shared the news article. This will be a reminder for me for the next time.

Midterm exam week is coming and I have yet to hear guidance from the university about how best to proceed. I am glad that I decided against giving midterms. In fact, I went one step further and not give homework anymore. Instead, I use an ongoing assessment instead (this solution does not scale very well). There are deliverables, prep material, practice problems, tidbits of things to do here and there that I have built in for the course. I have deadlines but these deadlines are extremely soft. At the end of the day, students do things at their own pace and online classes are in general built for students wanting to do things at their own pace. This created a big burden on me to track student outcomes but it allowed me to get a real sense of what the class is learning (or at least those that choose to be candid about their progress). I am able to adjust my pace for teaching (it became much slower, more technical in the simpler places). I am also able to see where students have misundertsandings and believe me these misunderstandings pile up asymptotically. We cannot take a willful blind eye on what students really know. So far, I have some students handing in homework voluntarily (even if incomplete for feedback purposes). I hope this trend will continue.

As the semester has not officially started for us, I wonder if we should prepare to make think of the upcoming Fall Semester starting on September as the original Spring Semester? I hope my colleagues at the top will take a stand as to how to proceed. Stanford University is the finest example I have seen with respect to their responsiveness to the coronavirus disruptions. The link given is quite comprehensive and covers almost every aspect from the beginning of the school term to its end. The bandwidth problems that I raised almost a month ago are going to be a pressing issue. The call-in option for audio in Zoom is something that I have yet to try.

I think the university should also start giving everyone a complete day off so that everyone could do other things that suddenly require more attention than before. A big example is food preparation, going to the market, etc without relying too much on deliveries. And I hope that this would transition to everyone having four-day work weeks in China. To me, this is good business. I am also hoping that the isolation procedures wille extend to common ailments. I hope that the university will give its staff, its students, and its workers some latitude when they get sick. I think we should worry less about people shirking. And if people shirk, we should just fucking call them out. If you are a believer of positive energy, then nothing sucks positive energy more than a piece of shit shirker.

Ok enough of the blather. Tomorrow, I am going to start buying stuff from the market again. Not so bad, we have had 17-18 days worth of food brought about by meal planning. So for now, the meal plan for the next 3 weeks (I hope) is to have the following meals: vegetable curry, pickled cauliflower, pickled carrots, fish marinated in vinegar (a local Filipino favorite called daing), beef stewed in tomato sauce (another Filipino favorite called kaldereta), beef with broccoli, Wuhan hot dry noodles, puttanesca (which Nigella Lawson once called whore's spaghetti or was it slutty spaghetti?), pickled ginger, pickled radish, Asian style pot roast, beef brisket with radish, eggplant puree, eggplant with tomatoes and chickpeas (seems to be the Lebanese version of moussaka; and everyone should get pomegranate molasses or even make it from scratch), potatoes La Rioja style, French onion soup, and more potato and eggplant based dishes. I think these may even last us 4 weeks. The only constraint is the refrigerator space.

That's it. If the entry left you with a set of emotions and with a bit of hunger, then I was successful. Thank you for reading.

We are 16 days after our release from self-isolation. I am happy to report that we might be able to manage not going out for another day given the meal planning we have done. So far, we have done no meal deliveries and (sorry for those eating while reading) no diarrhea! Cleanliness really is next to godliness.

Today is my 4 year wedding anniversary with the University of Amsterdam. After a successful PhD defense inside a church, PhD candidates are “wed” to the university. It is quite a ceremony, as you have the public, the defense committee, you, your paranymphs (the people by your side during your defense) and the master of ceremonies (who is somehow acting like the priest).

Today is also quite an eventful day in terms of admin tasks: vetting webinar materials to be streamed, dealing with some technical difficulties for a webinar streamed to our graduate students, dealing with the system for our applicants along with the planning for the coming school year, dealing with interruptions here and there.

Today is also the 6th whole day for which I have been back to using Windows (or as the anti-establishment people would call it, losedoze). It has been more than a decade or so since I moved completely to Linux and I am now back in Windows. It is somehow remarkably stable. Perhaps because I do not install the usual share of shit programs. I got rid of the antivirus which occupied 1 GB of space!! I also got rid of Minecraft, Candy Crush, and other Chinese programs that were installed by default. The only bad thing about buying Windows with your laptop in China is that their basic edition does not allow you to change the language interfact. Although it would have been a learning experience for me to learn these new words like 操作, 设置, etc, I think I am at the limit of my curiosity with respect to operating systems. I have also been able to somehow set up what I needed in my Linux environment in Windows. Overall, it is not a bad experience (for now). The experience is a far cry from Windows 95, 98 and the god awful ME.

Today is also the day I cooked a fried fish dish with some sort of sweet and sour sauce. This is called escabeche in the Filipino language but I used some of the homemade Japanese pickled cucumber as part of the dish. It was quite good but I really do not buy fish. That fresh fish was in our freezer for a year already.

In today's online class I spent time discussing the parallels between the linear regression as an algebraic tool and the best linear predictor, the motivation for studying linear regression as a statistical tool, the proof of the consistency result for OLS (using only observables, no errors introduced at all), the parameter uncertainty problems arising from two-step estimation, the zero denominator problem (as a precursor to weak instruments), the motivation (through a Monte Carlo simulation) for studying the asymptotic distribution of OLS estimators. I think I am too slow but I have to flesh things out to reach everyone (not sure if it happens for everyone but I think I am able to reach most). On Thursday, I will be deriving the asymptotic distribution much more fully (will be using the delta method), why we have the root-T magic number, and then do consistent estimation of the asymptotic variance. Et voila, all inference results flow directly now. Hope I will finish that on Thursday. Then, I will finally put a nail on the Gauss-Markov result, once we think about the “modern” version of the linear regression model.

That's it for today. Thank you for reading.

Ambient noise has increased considerably. You can hear car horns at 1 am in the morning. What is there to honk?

Guard at our building back to being a loud fuck. People are now meeting up to have tea and smoking. Nothing wrong with these and it is not my place to report them. In the face of zero clearance (my interpretation of the word 清零), it is not surprising that people are getting more and more complacent. I am worried of a stronger backlash and we should prepare for this eventuality. In fact, I am worried about the resurgence of the virus infections in the coming fall and winter seasons. If the parallels between the coronavirus and the Spanish flu indeed hold, then the lessons from the resurgence of the Spanish flu after its initial onslaught should give everyone pause.

I am hoping that people would individually recognize that each person has a moral duty to not inflict harm (no matter how remote or small) on others to the best of their abilities. I think we owe it to the people who were locked down and are still subject to the most inhumane conditions, to honor their sacrifice and do our best to fight for mitigating the fallout from the virus. Calling it a “war” is futile if one only thinks of winning vs losing. Since “wars” are fought just with different actors, books, objectives, and values, the issue is not about winning vs losing anymore.

I was also hoping back when things “were a bit more serious” that people would spend the time thinking about the bigger picture (somehow the Chinese phrase 好好反省 came into my mind, rather than 好好学习). We had a window of opportunity to discuss how to operate under precarious circumstances in a very open manner. I believe we have missed it and everyone is back to their usual ways. This incident is not just a bad one night stand and the past months are not just a long walk of shame.

On a lighter note, I was wondering how far we can make jokes about the virus. I have been seeing puns recently (“疫”起 for “together”, yet not 抗“疫” for “objection” but I do see 抗疫). Somehow these puns are a bit corny. I have been seeing videos of footshakes and dances involving cleaning hands. In my opinion, we really should push the jokes even further, in the spirit of jokes made by Anthony Jeselnik. To get a taste of his jokes, look up his show, the Jeselnik Offensive, where he mocked someone who got torn apart by a shark with a full music and dance number. One of those brutal jokes he made in a comedy album was:

“My mom, for most of her life, was a Holocaust denier. And it was terrible for the entire family to have to deal with until, finally, a couple years ago, we had an intervention. And we had a rabbi come into the home, had him walk her through the history of the Jewish people, and then he made her watch “Schindler’s List.” And after that, my mom did a complete 180. Now she can’t believe it only happened once.”

Back to the more serious note: Aside from the jokes, I have been seeing discussions about the appropriate name for the virus. Some people feel that “Wuhan coronavirus” is racist. But then what does MERS stand for? What about the Spanish flu (this one had quite a lasting power)? Should it be the Chinese SARS (CSARS, pronounced Caesar's)? “Wuhan coronavirus” should be the name so that everyone will remember the totality of what has happened, including the spectrum of good and evil that humanity has shown, at that place.

We make such a big deal about names. It is both a good and a bad thing. Names gives us control. Naming things essentially differentiates us from animals and other creatures or objects in Nature. Names allow us to reinvent. Names steer the narrative. Names allow us to rationalize the past. I wonder why we couldn't move on to “spirit” instead. Perhaps the battle of names is a regular battle between different pasts all with different outcomes.

Whew, I have been waxing philosophical. Blame my liberal arts training during my youth. Speaking of youth, I have missed liner notes and artwork on music albums. I am not saying that we should all collect vinyl. Thank God there are people out there who use their time to convert 80's country-specific singles to FLACs. You know, there was a time when you will words like side A, side B, remix, 12” mix, radio edit, special version, Shep Petitbone Remix, etc. These are all different ways of listening to the same song. There is this song called Careless Whisper that was released in Japan as a single and the single had both English and Japanese lyrics! It even had the first version of the song, which I heard for the first time ever. Apparently, the singer was not satisfied with this first version because of the saxophone sound. So the singer re-recorded it with a different session musician. Apparently, it took 11 takes to get the saxophone sound up to what the singer wanted. I listened to both versions and could not hear the difference yet. I am giving it some time but I wonder if the difference in sax sound is related to sounds that could not be heard once you cross a particular age.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading.

It has been a week since my last blog entry. I have to return to the rhythm of posting daily.

Online classes: My current setup involves international students across three time zones (US, EU, Asia). I do livestreaming so the schedule can be a bit ungodly for some students. I work with Slack for handling feedback, Q&A, and communication. I did not want to risk using WeChat (feels a bit too on-demand for my taste). I use Zoom for livestreaming. During the outbreak season, Zoom allows unlimited use of its streaming functionality. I am sure we will be paying the hidden costs of this “free” offer in due time. But Zoom does have good features and screen sharing among multiple participants is quit good. I use Xournalpp along with a Wacom CTL-4100WL to do my “board work”. Finally, Zoom allows you to record the livestream.

Impact of online classes: Not sure to be honest. I feel that I spend more time doing teaching and prepping that it feels like I am teaching two courses. Perhaps it is the nonstandard nature of how I think my course should be delivered under the institutional setup. I teach a course that is technical, required for both master and PhD students, and should be useful to mixed-ability groups. In fact, there is nothing inherently wrong about the latter. I would argue that this is more the norm rather than the exception. I wonder how much university administrators realize that teaching is not theater. It is hard to find the right balance and it does stress me out.

Advanced Econometrics 2: (Skip if you wish) I teach this course in a very non-standard way to keep up with the challenges. I spent time emphasizing concepts (expectation has two practical interpretations), building Monte Carlo simulations (I ask students to design a simulation to estimate the probability that rolling 6 fair dice will give a sum greater than 15), and walking through a scientific investigation. So the first research question we investigate is whether we can or cannot predict rates of return for different securities. I spent time outlining what answering this questions would entail (motivation, theory, methods, limitations, more questions). But this eats too much time. I did CAPM as part of the theory (though not really part of a traditional metrics course). For the method, I decided to be extremely technical with respect to the theory behind simple linear regression. This might be a strange choice for some but I thought this is the least notationally annoying and allows me to do everything fleshed out without too many technical asides (such as linear algebra). Furthermore, I started with large-sample theory first rather than finite-sample theory (no matter how much I love finite-sample theory, the latter is really an artifact of the 70s). Instead, I show how limited this finite-sample theory really is in the “modern” interpretation of the linear regression model. I also started with a time series example rather than a cross-sectional example so that students do not fall too much in love with the iid case. And it will allow me to segue to unit roots immediately and conduct nonstandard inference. I hope this whole gambit will pay off.

Donation: The university announced roughly a week ago that it will be soliciting donations to help out in the efforts at Wuhan. What is strange about the donation drive is the public posting of the amounts of money donated by every person. To be fair, you can choose not to have your details posted. I wonder what sorts of people will eventually be on the list. To me this is just bad business. What is supposed to be public is the full accounting of the donations. The financial statement along with the complete file of receipts should be a public archive instead. That is why I was wrestling between giving and not giving. I asked whether I can give up the rest of “my” startup fund and the rest of “my” meal subsidies (until my eventual departure). Both are not possible which is really curious, in my opinion. In the end, I decided not to donate and would be finding other ways to donate instead.

Kick up and kiss down: (Nothing naughty, I promise.) I ran across the phrase “kick down and kiss up” in some article I read that is related to Chinese management. I think a good way to donate is to donate understanding instead. I hope we could all kick up and kiss down instead.

Lust in the time of corona: Recently, we found that JD is “encouraging” sales of sex toys, especially dildos. This is good news because women all over China should be having extracurricular fun. They deserve to get a moment to know their bodies, especially during these times when there are “pockets of boredom”. I hope that the women in the frontlines of the outbreak could also get a moment or even a room for themselves. I really hope someone could point me to a donation effort that could make this happen.

I end this rather long entry with a line from the TV series The Closer. This police procedural/drama stars what people now call a strong female lead. Strong female leads have been around for a long time but they are getting more attention these days. Find out more about The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Murder She Wrote to get some sense of the examples from the 70s and 80s. So, the lead investigator quipped:

“If we stop lying to each other, how can we ever get to the truth?”

I did not even realize that today is February 29, 2020. Apparently today is leap day and we should “take the leap” or “record an activity” for this day. I did not have time to take the leap as I did not even realize that today is leap day. So I will just try to take leaps every chance I get this year.

So today I only did a few things. I spent time resting, eating chips, giving feedback again, having a Skype call with a colleague to work on a “novel” dataset, and catching up on some games and readings. It is somehow just like any day. But just so I could take a leap today, I finally inserted a blog name. More on the meaning in another entry.

Yesterday, I cooked a Dutch dish called zuurvlees (essentially soured meat sweetened with sweet-herby bread and apple molasses; we had the latter but replaced the sweet-herby bread with crumbled pieces of rice-cooker banana bread), mashed some potatoes with carrots, seared a couple of beef slices for the bibimbap, and made two versions of pickled radish. That took a big part of my day already. The good news is that it seems I do not have to go out this coming Sunday to buy stuff. There is still enough to last us another week without stepping out too long.

A couple of thoughts I left lying around in my brain are Chinese language related. First is the narrative building nature of the words 出现 and 发源 in the context of the coronavirus. I wonder what could be gained by doing this distinction, especially if the more pressing matter is accountability. In a top-down hierarchy, reshuffling or firing people does not seem to add value.

Second, I saw an article that debunks some claim as a rumor or 谣言. What I usually see is a screenshot of some document, chat session, picture, web page extract and then there is a watermark (in the spirit of a seal of disapproval) saying that the screenshot is a rumor. But the watermark is delightfully (or annoyingly, depending on your situation) ambiguous. The watermark has 谣言 but there is a stop sign embedded on top of it. I am not sure what the watermark means then. Is it “This is not a rumor” or “This is a rumor, so stop it”?

Another is an article where I saw the words 说大实话. I forgot the context already but the combination feels weird and is once again delightfully ambiguous. When I see 说实话, I think of it as “tell the truth”. When I see 说大话, I think of it as “tell an exaggeration, or even a lie”. So when I saw the combination 说大实话, I am at a loss. What sort of double-talk is this?

Finally, on a lighter note, one of my favorite brand for dishwashing liquids (and apparently could be used to clean vegetables called 食品用洗洁精) is 雕牌. I like this brand not because I have evidence of its effectiveness but because its packaging always features some funny, weird, strange, or curious quote on the packaging. The very first time I bought this brand had this quote: 细菌不可怕，失去对世界的好奇才可帕, which roughly translated says “Germs are not scary, but losing curiosity about the world — that's scary.” That quote made me a loyal buyer of their brand. This time their quote is something strange: 先定小目标，一起洗碗一起烧. I am not really sure what this means but literally it says, “First set a small goal, wash dishes together, burn together.” I am not really sure what is going on here.

Finally, I was faced with a question last night which asks, “If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, about life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?” It took me some time to form the answer but my answer was

“The recipe for a dish that I will love so much but will never have a chance to encounter.”

It was quite an eventful week: livestreaming online lectures, giving feedback to written work, ruthlessly editing a master's thesis in the nick of time, sifting through graduate applicants, conducting online interviews, coordinating some stuff in the background, and many other things. The week was exhausting but not as exhausting as those who are making sacrifices (whether willing or not) at the frontlines of the pandemic.

Sometimes I wonder whether feeling guilty about being relatively exhausted is appropriate. I wonder how much is this parallel to being ashamed of being bourgeois. Instead of complaining, I have been trying to do something in order to make the complaining and exhaustion minimal, not only for myself but for others. Not sure if I am successful.

Today's entry is about our university library. Our university library (though staff and systems not fully bilingual yet; with some faults here and there) has some interesting resources available to faculty, staff, and students. Last semester, I used the so-called 馆际互借 or interlibrary loan to find some rare econometrics/statistics books. I am happy to have stumbled upon this feature though I had to navigate it completely in the Chinese language. In a span of two months, the staff was able to complete my access to The Collected Works of John Tukey which spans 8 volumes and approximately 6000 pages in total. I recommend you use this feature of the library. Of course, don' t forget to 消毒 or disinfect the materials.

Speaking of 消毒, what worries me about eating out or buying take-out is the theatrical nature of 消毒 in some restaurants. They have refrigerator-like units called 消毒柜, but many times I have looked around and found they were unplugged! My advice is to learn to cook at home. If you do not know how, one-pot or one pot rice cooker meals are the best way to go.

Now back to the library. During the higher levels of uncertainty of the pandemic, the library requested faculty members to make book and reading suggestions so that students will have something to do while they are not formally back in school. They still have not included my suggestion (included the book cover which is quite colorful and short summary). I should not be offended but I am. I would have lent them my actual copy but I am on the lowest end of the food chain. My suggestion was Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip. My description is that it is a very short novel about the repair of communities. If you ever get the chance, do read this relatively short novel (instead of 1984 or even Animal Farm, though the latter is short). Compared to the approved suggestions, I believe this is shorter and will be a good way to practice the English language.

Recently, the library has also managed to acquire rights to deploy English textbook and reference materials to students. These materials are deployed via a portal called iTextbook.cn or 爱教材 (literally, love educational materials; I think the pun was intended) as a joint effort from the Chinese book authorities with CRC Press, Cambridge University Press, Wiley, and others. I mention CRC Press because they typically have good statistics books, Cambridge University Press because they have good math, statistics, and economics books, and Wiley because they are relatively a wild card (though it has good classic statistics books). Unfortunately, not a lot of classics are available on the portal. But some of the new books are worth a closer look.

If you feel stuck with your research, teaching, or your studies, I think it helps to read something relatively orthogonal or unrelated to what you are working on. So, I tried to scour the whole database (for which our university has trial access to) for curious readings. Here is my list (I tried to exclude statistics, econometrics books but there are exceptions for reasons I will talk about later). The portal does NOT have a feature that allows use to filter out the books that the university does not have access to. Furthermore, the classification fo the subject matter ranges from the ridiculous to the bizarre (Mathematical Statistics for Applied Econometrics is in art??). I will classify based on my “ librarian” senses (in my other life, I would have made a great librarian):

Curiosities include: Student Handbook for Discrete Mathematics with Ducks (this should pique anyone's curiosity, yet our trial does not cover the actual book!!!!!) Mathematics for the Liberal Arts International Cuisine (Might be worth checking out the Chinese food section if it holds up) Cooking as a Chemical Reaction The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit (why not?) Reading Latin: Grammar and Exercises (yes, is there a problem?) So You Want to be a Journalist? Unplugged Midwifery by Ten Teachers (you never know when the skill would be needed) Understanding Chemistry through Cars (I don't like cars but chemistry was very dear to me) Looking Back in Crime (rewatch your usual police procedurals) An Introduction to Crime and Crime Causation Fundamentals of Fingerprint Analysis (curious...) Port Management and Operations (yes! timely because of potential disruptions to logistics)

The intersection of biology, environment, statistics, management, and philosophy: Bioethics Statistical Design and Analysis of Clinical Trials Wildlife Habitat Management Epidemiology: Study Design and Analysis Essential Epidemiology: An Introduction for Students and Health Professionals Drinking Water Quality GIS for Disaster Management Occupational Health and Safety Management

The ubiquity of quantitative and computational methods: Making History Count : A Primer in Quantitative Methods for Historiams (would be good to know what historians are doing) Making Music with Computers : Creative Programming in Python (this should pique anyone's interest) Computational Thinking for the Modern Problem Solver Business Analytics: An Introduction Data Visualization : Principles and Practice Practical Bayesian Inference : A Primer for Physical Scientists (Might be good to have a context) Financial Mathematics : A Comprehensive Treatment Statistics for Finance (an understated title, table of contents look tough) Modern Survey Sampling Introduction to Coding Theory

The more natural sciences: The Insects: Structure and Function Biology: The Unity and Diversity of Life Essentials of Oceanography A First Course in General Relativity (claims that minimal math is required) Physical Geography : Great Systems and Global Environments Horizons: Exploring the Universe General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry

Today is the first day of our freedom from self-quarantine. Or should I say self-isolation? The word “freedom” is more uplifting than it sounds. It does not feel as exciting as it should. In fact, the first thing I wanted to do is to throw away all of our accumulated kitchen waste (two weeks worth, signed, sealed, delivered). I did not want to just put our kitchen waste outside the door like our piece of shit neighbor. This neighbor of ours sometimes leaves waste with juices flowing out of the bag and they do not care. It is amazing how people can be awful.

Today's task was to get rid of the waste and then to buy food and other stuff that will be good for a week or two. The reason is so we do not have to go out more than once in a week or maybe two weeks. I also want to minimize the reliance on JD. Too many boxes and packages, and I am not sure if there is an option to just get all packages at once rather than separately.

So I went out for about 1.5 hours. I did not take public transportation at all. It was good to walk the streets again. Some changes here and there. Most places were closed. There were checkpoints in every major entrance to every neighborhood. Temperature guns everywhere. You see some people not cooperating with the checkpoints. Walking the streets felt good because there was not a lot of people and I do not have to check my back every time. I am able to walk leisurely without having to worry about a bike or a motorcycle (especially those with big carts attached; was bumped twice before). I am surprised that motorcycles are not using the main roads given that there are not a lot of cars.

I also noticed the same habits from people (especially old fucks). I saw a family of old folks gathered drinking tea without their masks (again not that there is anything wrong with it). I also saw a couple of old folks spitting (not forbidden by the three word propaganda). I also saw the most egregious waste of space (an old guy has one of those coveted N95 masks but his nose was exposed!!!!!). I also saw smokers continuing business as usual (I really hoped the propaganda will forbid this, but people may get angry). I know that there have been declines in cases in China, assuming official data are reliable. But these moments showing lack of concern for the fellow person just grinds my gears. I wonder if they are lost causes. Will punishing them even work?

What I saw during my 1.5 hour walk and shop activity just increases the incentive to just be a hermit. The whole shopping business was quite tiring. I was logging around about 10 kg worth of goods while walking. I felt I had reached my quota for exercising for the month! When I got home, I was so tired and I also wanted to have a very cold bath. The shopping has interesting moments. One look from the lady who sells me beef parts and she already knew what to sell to me. I guess I am a big buyer who does not complain unlike those who buy morsels but complain to death.

When I got home, I started cooking and prepping the dishes. I initially planned to cook and prep six dishes. But in the end, I cooked two complete dishes (gyudon and a boiled beef soup with potatoes and carrots) and started the prep for three (beef slices for bibimbap, beef marinade for a Dutch dish called zuurvlees, and Filipino-style beef jerky). I think there should be more than enough variation to last us for a week or two. I am going to make a Lebanese eggplant dish tomorrow so that we could have vegetables too.

These activities took almost 6 hours in total. A lot of work really. I really do not want to use these delivery apps whenever possible. The rest of the time was spent doing admin stuff, reading a thesis I am supervising (quite a late submission), and giving feedback to submitted solutions for a self-test for my course.

I have not blogged in the past days because there is a lot on my mind and I need to organize my thoughts a bit before I dump it all here. Some things on my mind: rumors as deliberate interventions to get feedback, the opportunity to observe outcomes related to the coronavirus in South Korea and Japan and how these outcomes can be construed as a sanity check on China's numbers, changes in definition and how to adjust for them in data analysis, the role of doubling down in decision making under uncertainty, the possible seasonality of the effects of the virus, how false sense of security can impede communication and planning. These are all messing around in my mind and that is on top of the online delivery of my course.

Zoom was a very good platform for livestreaming. Somehow it feels much better to have dead air online than in the classroom. I did a lot of interactive discussions and I am glad to uncover mistakes in understanding. I hope the students benefited from that. I also asked people who submitted solutions to explain some curious answers. Some were unable to actually explain what they wrote and I called them out on that. Next time, I will be asking them to screen-share. I wonder if the university could send out Wacom tablets to everyone to facilitate discussion.

There was a moment during the day when the topic of grants came up. Somehow it feels that we should give up our grant money (some of which are used for frivolous topics in light of the current situation) to buy time and to donate it towards the research (that would hopefully be peer-reviewed) on the coronavirus, to pay people at the frontlines, to provide living necessities for our female doctors and patients, and to reinforce logistical support. I think this may be a better use of the power of donations.

Finally, I have yet to start a discussion on the “trust system” here in China. A reader made a comment about cultural differences in attitudes toward responsibility in the US and China. Bureaucracies regardless of origin rely on a one-size-fits-all approach. Exceptions are the poison of bureaucracies. I hope that bureaucratic enforcement could be more surgical. If a professor is a piece of shit (and frankly they are abundant and should be exposed for who they are), then a well-functioning bureaucracy should target this professor and micro-manage the shit out of this person. A dysfunctional bureaucracy makes it everyone's problem. This dysfunction erodes the strong sense of responsibility that some people may feel.

No last quotes yet but I hope to start again soon.

I was unable to blog about Days 9 and 10 of the self-quarantine. So I am going to do a broad overview.

Day 9: I did a lot of prep (especially the setup of the livestream) for the online class on Tuesday evening. 10 kg of potatoes (called 山东小土豆) and a big piece of ginger finally arrived! I cooked a chicken teriyaki dish using a recipe from a second-hand Penguin book on Japanese cooking. I was surprised to see cayenne pepper in the recipe. Binge watching the sitcom involving addicts called Mom. Can be deep at times but mostly a dramedy. Look out for Octavia Spencer in some of the early episodes.

Day 10: Finally cooked about 3 lbs of potatoes. Made garlic roasted potatoes which is now a side dish to all the “western” dishes I have made. Our oven died immediately after finishing the dish. I planned to make beer bread but, RIP, it died doing what it did best. It was about 1.5 years old. Now in search for a new oven. Did more preps for the first online livestream at 10 pm. Strange timeslot? Yes, because I needed to respect time zone differences. The first livestream went well and administrators from the graduate school joined as well. (Where ever did trust go?) Had an interactive back and forth with a student who asked for details about Monte Carlo. Before the livestream, I also tried recording a trial 30 min video where I go through some horrible algebra. I sounded like a late night radio DJ with my slow jam or perhaps Bob Ross is my guru (happy little summations).

Day 11: Cancelled the onions I ordered. Gave a lot of feedback on each of the research project topics my students are pursuing. No fixed deadline for their topic submission because I am extremely laissez faire. This feedback giving took my whole day. I also ordered a Wacom tablet for my TA so that he can deploy TA sessions online as well. Steph cooked flatbreads and I cooked spam and some Japanese-style scrambled eggs. We had savory and sweet (with fig jam) flatbreads in the spirit of the 煎饼. Finally cooked the Filipino-style beef steak recipe but included some boiled potatoes and almost dry fried the whole thing. Started watching The Outrider (not yet finished but quite good; almost at the same level as the first season of True Detective).

Potatoes galore: Next, I will be doing garlic mashed potatoes, potato pancakes, potato salad (not the one with mayo: this is a travesty!), classic pommes frites, the fusion dish I found at the university restaurant called 干编土豆 (potatoes cut as fries but dry fried with Sichuan peppercorns and chilies), potato slivers in vinegar 土豆丝. That should allow us to substitute away from rice for the moment.

A few more days and we will be done with the self-quarantine. Not really excited to go out except to throw the trash. I am not sure what the building has done to actually deal with the garbage situation. So we are accumulating and sealing the trash as we approach the end of the quarantine.

Life here in China has somehow returned to normal in some sense. People are returning to their work. Despite the changes brought about by the pandemic, I wonder if it will fundamentally change the people. People fall back to the usual patterns. It is both a good and bad thing. What worries me is that the bad patterns are here to stay or even become more magnified.

Let me end with something from BoJack Horseman once again:

“Sacrifice is good. It has to be, because I sacrificed a ton, and I was freaking awesome.”

I sleep comfortably but erratically during the self-quarantine days. It probably is a confluence of many factors: our recent return, the body's adjustment to the new normal, the high-variance weather which could be sunny, rainy, or dreary. The coolness of the weather and the lighting somehow is a signal to the body to hibernate. One could argue that the 14-day self-quarantine is really externally imposed hibernation.

I am not sure whether people subject to this self-quarantine should actually work. I think we should just let this people have the vacation they really deserve. It is not the holidays when you meet family members you really could not give a shit about (along with all the baggage, both physical and mental). It is also not a vacation with friends. I think it is a welcome reprieve from the bullshit everywhere. Of course, we are not really immune to the bullshit from everywhere now that we have the internet (but at least we can silence it). I was hoping that people could be enlightened enough to think of this self-quarantine period as a way to catch up with the parts of life left behind (a lot of movies curiously are built around this theme). From an “economic” point of view, I like to metaphorically think of the staggered self-quarantine process as Calvo “pricing” in action. And I will leave it at that.

After 3-4 days, the marinade for the böfflamott was complete and I cooked this Bavarian dish for the first time. Funnily enough, I have never tasted it before. I encountered this dish a while back in Germany, tried to order it, but was not available during that day. I have not been able to catch it since. I really do not know what to expect but I followed a Bavarian cookbook for this. So at this stage, I was supposed to simmer the marinade with the beef cubes, then make the sauce/roux, and then push sauce through a sieve. After that the beef cubes are combined with the filtered sauce. I expected it to be sour (which is the common theme of most our cooked meals these days) but was missing the sweetness and mellowness of the onion, carrot, and celery root. But not so bad overall. Though non-standard, I plan to have this dish with some leftover pasta and perhaps some of the potatoes which will arrive in about two days. Finally, 10 kg of potatoes! Time to make those fries and potato pancakes. Or as Malory Archer would put it to her Irish super asking for a better Christmas gift (Malory gave a potato), “So, once again you’re left with the classic Irishman’s dilemma: Do I eat the potato now, or do I let it ferment so I can drink it later?”

Yesterday was quite eventful. On top of the böfflamott dish, I read the classic paper by Nelson and Plosser (1982) so that I can teach it for the course I am giving in the next few days. It was an informative paper and not very complicated and has some statistical references that I am glad to have stumbled upon. I also spent time scouring for alternatives to Chinese video streaming/video creation/video lecture deployment apps. My argument is that once things become operational, the whole system will fucking lag and online classes will even become more of an annoyance and an unwelcome distraction. So I spent time scouring apps that work within China and read privacy policies. These policies are difficult to read and I had to balance privacy concerns with expediency. I was able to finally find one that works relatively well with GDPR protections to a certain extent. I tried the session with my TA and it was working smoothly. By Tuesday, we will be deploying it with more people across different time zones. We will see how it would go.

Yet another eventful aspect of yesterday is the sudden increase in activity in WeChat groups due to the kinks in the online delivery of courses. I am somewhat drawn to the increase in activity. It is like watching a trainwreck or clusterfuck and at the end you are unsure if you have gained anything.

That's it for now. I leave you with some very good lines from the recently concluded BoJack Horseman (which everyone should watch, if ever you are in a quarantine). One of the characters, Princess Carolyn, is the embodiment of mentorship and leadership that is not idealized. She is flawed, broken, but has strong belief in others and is actually there. She gives a timely piece of dialogue in the finale:

“People have short memories. It’s the best and worst thing about people.”

Halfway there.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner: Congee with pickles (the 牛肉多 sauce is quite good) and some leftovers. Boring but still tasty.

Meal prep: Made the Filipino-style beef steak marinade. This is an example the Filipino cuisine is not minimalist at all.

Catching up: Talked with the folks and there was a lot of talk about disease and illness.

Observations from the balcony: I have seen about three people not wearing masks. A couple were playing badminton (!) and another was stretching and doing some exercise of sorts.

General absurdity and madness: Online classes are going to start in a couple of days and the higher ups at the university sent out the training sessions for how to deliver online classes, like, just now? (Put up your millennial voice here.) A link to a livestream for 10 am was just sent about 945 am. Absurd. Faculty and staff are scrambling adjusting to the new norm.

Binge watching: Revisited first 11 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Watch the show for some of the choice lines, to see the relatively bad writing given to women and some minorities, and to see the creativity of the props and special effects. The transporter effect has evolved since the 60s. The new series Star Trek: Picard has quite an amazing transporter effect. Seeing the contrast led me to think about creativity at different points in time.

Filipinos on mainstream TV: There are two shows which feature Filipino actors. One is Superstore and the other is Star Trek: Picard. Superstore even had two lines of straight Filipino language. A white guy event tried it out. It seems “tarantado” and “gago” are PG enough. I would say “tarantado” is like “you, rascal” plus “you little fuck”. With the appropriate tone, it can be both negative or playful. “Gago” is somehow similar to “tarantado”. These are both benign versions of our very famous “your mother's a whore” curse.

End of the line: Picard's line from Star Trek: The Next Generation – “Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions.”