Quickie: Possibilities and Mysteries

Too often, possibilities remain mysteries...because one doesn't make an initiative to "say hello"
I didn't say "hello", but I said "Thanks" and passed this note to the girl as I was leaving the cafe.
I wonder if I will ever hear from her...

Short Prose: D-Day, A Tribute to Canadian Troops

Let's go back to 68 Years Ago today.


War is like a game, but not so much fun to play, especially if you’re a young soldier walking on a thin line between life and death on the front line...


June 6, 1944. Normandy, France.


It’s the early morning of D-Day. Operation Overlord, the turning point of WWII, officially began with rounds of aerial bombardment. Following suit, on the Northern coast of France, allied troops, under the command of Dempsey and Montgomery, initiated a surprise landing on the beaches of Normandy. The 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade received the call of duty. Objective: Juno Beach.


Brutality begins... A storm of machine gun bullets swept through, a wave of soldiers fell. More shells exploded, blasting human flesh into thin air. Half of our men in the first wave were lost in between the rounds of gun fires, lighting the Northern sky.


The second wave of landing initiated. Tanks advanced fearlessly to clear the paths, infantry followed, running and crawling to dodge bullets from afar. The troops moved in further, closer to the base of the seawall where the German batteries rooted atop... More explosions.


As you are familiar with the outcome of the story, Canadian army was the only division to reach the objective and had penetrated deeper into the German territory than any other on D-Day. 


13,000 brave souls lived to tell the tale.
31-Million are living to tell the tale.
This is only one of them.

Age of Algorithm

Summer nights cannot go by without music. So last night, a friend and I attended a feature presentation on the Science of Opera. We got a taste of top-notch research as well as several soul-chilling musical performances.

I’ve noticed this trend in our society, that we’ve entered an age of algorithm. From business, to finance, to internet, to genetics, and now music, quantitative models have overtook our lives with  efficiency and accuracy.

Anyone who had ever worked at McDonald’s can certainly relate to this transformation. Not only has the art of cuisine been boiled down to an algorithm, so did the details of running the business. In the fast-food industry, everything an employee ever need to do has been thoroughly thought through, from the cashiers to the cooks, from the supervisors to managers. Algorithms are used to find the perfect store locations, hire the exact employees, and put out just the right amount of advertisements.

Yet we are far from the limit; science and numbers have just gotten more powerful over the years. The super-computers on Wall street eliminate (and profit from) arbitrage opportunities. The efficiency of Google’s search algorithm brings us information in fractions of a millisecond. The map of human genome tells us the types of diseases we are susceptible to, how intelligent we will be, and what kind of careers best suit us. And last night, I learned that our enjoyment of music is related to the physical characteristics of our brain, and how music gives us pleasure.

As great as our achievements in understanding music, I think we can do even better.

We’ve placed so much emphasis on the “science of art” in recent years, perhaps now is the time that we should shift the paradigm back to appreciating the “art of science”. If only we can go back to the realm of non-exact certainty, if only there lies a unconventional probability that is against all odds.

We call this hope.
I find it truly beautiful.