Home Vegan: the first 100 days

It has been 100 days since I began my home vegan diet as discussed in my July blog Time for Drastic Measures 釜底抽薪.  Here is a quick update of my experience so far.  By the way, Home Vegan simply means one eats only non-animal products at home - no natural or processed foods derived from animals including meat, seafood, eggs, or dairy products. 

My motivation was simple –to reduce long term health risks such as heart diseases, stroke (perhaps certain types of cancer too?) without changing my social life.  While it will take some time to get indirect measurements of any sustained improvement (such as cholesterol level, blood pressure, etc.), some immediate trivial benefits are evident. 

First off, I have lost about 5 pounds of weight without any change to my other daily routines.  This should not come as a surprise to anyone.  Simple arithmetic would suggest a significant reduction in calorie intakes is possible when one swaps out animal-based food with natural high fiber vegan food in one’s diet.  The fact is that pound for pound, most vegetables and fruits bring you only a fraction of what the leanest meat would.  And the common rule of thumbs tells us a cumulative reduction of approximately 3,000 calories may bring your weight down by one pound. 

The good news is that switching to a home vegan diet wasn’t as difficult or dramatic as I had feared initially: we simply stopped buying any food that contains animal products and here we went.  Perhaps we are lucky that we have been used to a diet with a lot of vegetables, fruits and high fiber foods (such as brown rice) to begin with.  Further, there are a lot more variety of vegetables in Chinese markets and grocery stores than in average American supermarkets.  It includes a large selection of soybean based food with different textures and flavors.  By the way, if you had previously prepared and eat vegetables in the more limiting western styles, a simple and fail-safe way to prepare these unfamiliar vegetables (especially the green leafy ones) is to sauté them with a little cooking oil, salt (and garlic); something even a kitchen dummy like me can do. 

Side benefits that I did not expect or have thought of:

• Saving time in grocery and supermarket shopping: I now skip the majority of the sections/departments in the market.
• Saving time in cooking: how many different ways and advanced preparations can you do with fresh vegetables?
• Saving money with grocery shopping: while you may spend more per unit for some healthy and fresh food, changes in quantity and ratios will offset it and more.
• Much less often in having food caught in between your teeth
• Helping with environments: it is well-known that excessive animal agriculture has had negative impact on our planet from water, deforestation, to greenhouse emission.

One big surprise is that I seem to eat less without feeling hungry soon after I started the diet.  There are many theories about why that is the case.  My doctor’s simplified explanation is that one’s body adapts quickly to the new condition and naturally expects less.  The bad news is that I seem to have hit the plateau in about 2 months after losing 5 pounds, not unlike the experience of those who do fitness routines to lose weight.  While determined to continue with my home vegan diet, I guess I need to pull out the exercise DVD my friend sent me and start doing them too!

Last but not the least, do make sure your friends know the distinction between a HOME vegan and a vegan if you choose to be one.  Some of them may get a little concerned if they should go out to eat with you.  On the other hand, it may be a positive if some of them no longer want to come to your house for party?!   Happy Home Vegans!

The Hottest Classical Pianists

24 years old Chinese pianist Yuja Wang 王羽佳 had her Carnegie Hall solo recital debut on the evening of Oct 20^th.    Simple counting of how many concerts a year Carnegie Hall normally holds should convince you that the event must be filled with high expectation by Yuja herself and the audience alike.  After all there weren’t that many pianists in history who had the opportunity to have recital debut at this 120 years old most prestigious concert hall of the world in New York City.  

While there is no doubt that Yuja is a musical prodigy, the road to Carnegie was never easy.  One version of the popular story about Carnegie Hall says it all:  A tourist on Fifty-seventh Street in Manhattan stopped Jascha Heifetz (a famous violinist) and asked "Could you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?" "Yes," said Heifetz. "Practice!"  

Practice she did, since age 6.  She spent five years at the Central Conservatory at Beijing till age 14 and six years at the Curtis Institute of Music at Philadelphia from age 15 after spending a year in Calgary, Canada studying English and music. 

Before reaching Carnegie Hall, Yuja has been performing numerous solos and concertos on stage worldwide for last 5 years, initially often at smaller and 2^nd tier venues.  Like some other stars before her, opportunities knocked when she was asked to sub for superstars like Martha Argerich, Murray Perahia, and Radu Lupu and she delivered spectacular performances.  DG (Deutsche Grammophon), one of the most respected classical record label, signed her up in 2009.   Performing about one hundred 100 concerts a year, she now spent her life mostly in between airports/planes, hotels and concert halls.  As stars are all lining up, it was pretty clear that she was on her way to the stardom. 

In his review entitled Flaunting Virtuosity (and More), Anthony Tommasini, chief music critic of The New York Times, had nothing but praises and positive technical comments about her recital debut.  That is not it; he just could not refrain himself from commenting on the controversy of Yuja’s tight, short orange dress for her last summer’s outdoor performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl (see photo to the right).   His ultimate compliment came at his conclusion of his review: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. What matters is that Ms. Wang has got it as a pianist.  The audiences were equally excited about her performance as well.  She gave four encore performances, lasting almost half an hour at the conclusion of her debut as most audiences refused to leave.

For your convenience and enjoyment, here is the viral Youtube video of her performance of Rimsky Korsakov’s The Flight of the Bumblebee, arranged by Cziffra.   To give you some idea about the incredible speed: she must be playing these seemingly unstoppable chromatic sixteenth notes at about 10 notes a second in one minutes thirty seconds. 

Almost 8 years earlier in Nov, 2003, then 21 years old Chinese superstar pianist Lang Lang 郎朗 had his solo recital debut at the same hall.  The ad by DG (who had signed up Lang Lang) hyped ''The future of classical music has arrived. His name is Lang Lang.''  Lang Lang’s path was similar to Yuja Wang but 5 years or more ahead of her, from the Central Conservatory of Beijing to Curtis Institute of Music (where they both were students of Gary Graffman).  

As one of the most sought after and marketed pianists, Lang Lang’s onstage dynamism has polarized the audiences and music critics.  Some loved it but some disliked it and found his posture exaggerated and tasteless.  I am more the latter camp although I’d like to continue “supporting” his carrier through purchases of his CDs.   

Tommasini wrote in his review A Showman Revs up the Classical Genre about Lang Lang’s solo recital debut back in 2003: “… Mr. Lang's head seems to be so full of his own hype that there can't be much room left for analytic thinking…” and concluded  “I lasted through one encore: Schumann's ''Träumerei.'' It was not easy to hear that wistfully beautiful melody so yanked around. Surely Mr. Lang played many more encores for his adoring fans. But I didn't want to be a party pooper, let alone impede the future of classical music.”  Since then, Tommasini had toned down over time his criticism and noted Lang Lang has been maturing.  The real issue of course is not so much about how one (should) move when playing the instrument.  It is about the coherency of the mind and body of the true master performers whose gesture and expression would naturally reflect their interpretation and feelings of the music.  Lang Lang did often push his superficial expressiveness over the edge and lost the balance between intellectual and presentation.  On a similar note, Yuja’s concert dress should not have been the issue.  Her mannerism at the recital debut was in fact shy, focused, and restrained, if anything. 

Anyway, below is a video of Lang Lang playing Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (arrangement by Vladimir Horowitz) in 2006.  If you watch it, you would appreciate why Tommasini and many others have been so disturbed by his performance despite his fantastic skills and stamina.  The video does not show his facial expression which would have in fact irritated some even more.

By the way, Yuja Wang had chosen to play Franz Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B Minor in the 2^nd half of her Thursday evening recital debut.  It is probably not a coincidence since Oct 22^nd was Liszt’s 200 years birthday.  Liszt, a prominent composer, was also a virtuosic pianist as well.  Although there wasn’t any video recording, his performance style by many accounts involved showmanship at the piano with facial expression and gestures that drew criticism from many.  Apparently, Liszt himself had admitted he had done so just to draw more applause.  There was no question that he had succeeded in drawing a lot of fans across Europe; so much so that the term Lisztomania was coined to describe the frenzy of the fans towards him.   In fact, the best way to imagine how it was like is to simply watch some of today’s wildest rock star performances including smashing guitars.  Yes, Liszt had supposedly destroyed pianos onstage!

In his recent interview, Lang Lang talked about Liszt being his piano hero and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 was his first encounter with classical music as a 2-year-old watching a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon on television.  Knowing that, it should not surprise any of us then that showmanship was a part of Lang Lang’s performance.  By the way, Liszt did not invent everything on his own; he got his inspiration to become a virtuoso from seeing a concert by Niccolò Paganini, one of the greatest virtuosic violinists. 

Happy Birthday, Franz Liszt.

Universal Service

USPS (United State Postal Service) is in (financial) trouble, again! 

Every time, when news broke about the financial woes and possibility of USPS going under, there are plenty of analyses, suggestions, and blames from average citizens, academia, to politicians and pundits, many of whom, for reasons ranging from ignorance to having ulterior motives, look for simple causes and quick fixes to a structural policy problem.

There have been no shortages of data, figures, analysis, and proposals in this continuing saga.  For example, in his June 15, 2011 article, Devin Leonard of Bloomberg Businessweek reported “…43 percent of FedEx’s budget and 61 percent of United Parcel Service’s pay go to employee-related expenses.”  One can point to such a figure and blame the problem on the Postal Union as many had.  One can also point to the data as another example of inefficient and evil big government (yes, USPS is an independent government agency) as many had. Some had also suggested privatization as a solution to monetize its “hidden” assets and values including real estate as if the real problem would go away once the book is cooked right to reflect the “true values” of its asset.

It may not be obvious to everyone but there are many parallels between postal service and telecommunication service since they do share some fundamental characteristics.  While postal service is about transporting physical objects such as letters and parcels from one individual’s hand to another at a distance, telecommunication services is about moving a (stream of) signal such as voice, data, video from one individual’s mouth and devices to another’s.  Further, introductory data communications textbooks would tell you that today’s telecommunication networks including Internet are dominated by the packet-switched technology whereby data packets containing coded user signals with addresses just like letters are routed through switches in the network very much like postal distribution centers . 

For quite some time, the ever increasing use of electronic media transported through Internet has put huge dents on the demands for the physical transport provided by USPS.  First class mail which is the top revenue generator of the USPS has already experienced a decrease in volume of nearly 20% from 98 billion pieces in 2006 to 78 billion pieces in 2010.  Boston Consulting Group has projected the volume will decrease further to 50 billion pieces by 2020.  Meanwhile the postage of first class mail has increased 6 times since 2001 from 34 cents to 44 cents today.  The problem cries for new service ideas to generate demands and revenues which unfortunately don’t seem to be getting enough attention as cost cutting and fear of laying offs dominate the headlines.

Postal system is one of the oldest means of communication of people.  When the parent commanded their kid running down the street to deliver a note or verbal message to a neighbor down the street, a mail had been sent.  There is no fundamental difference in function between such an ad-hoc service and early postal system of empires across the world for more than thousands of years.

Recognizing the critically important role of communications of its citizens, governments across the world have set up postal services early.  For U.S., the Postal Clause - to establish post offices and post roads - in Article One of the United States Constitution, is one of the 18 only explicitly enumerated powers of Congress that includes “to declare war” and “to borrow money”.  Indeed postal service was viewed to be essential in aiding the cohesiveness and holding the states together for the union. Founding father Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general in 1775.

The most important advance of modern postal service is the introduction of the concept of Universal Service by Rowland Hill in U.K. in the 1837 reform of the Uniform Penny Post.  It was quickly adopted by other countries including U.S. and has been the standard of the postal service ever since.  The critical tenants of Universal Service as the word universal suggests: availability and affordability to all.  The obvious example is the first class mail service which is delivered at a flat fee of 44 cents regardless who you are and where you live (including the most remote areas of Hawaii and Alaska!).

In the same vein, the all important Communications Act of 1934 by Congress firmly established the telephone service as a regulated service (by the new agency FCC) and had resulted in the recognition of A&T’s monopoly.  And the Title 1 of the Act defined the notion of universal service as applied to wire and wireless communications “… to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges,…”

Fast forward to 1960s, the MCI Communications (Microwave Communications, Inc., now a part of Verizon) began offering long distance communication services to urban business customers and resellers in selected markets using low cost microwave relay networks.  It is price competitive to AT&T’s services and highly profitable due in part to the long distance services of AT&T were required to subsidize the local services to achieve uniform pricing for ALL customers. 

As AT&T (or more commonly referred to as the Ma Bell or Bell System) continued to lose grounds to competing long distance services for highly profitable business customers, pressure mounted to settle the antitrust suits which ended with the 1984 breakup of AT&T.  The 1984 divestiture of Bell System stipulated the Bell System be divided into two parts – a deregulated long distance service plus telecom equipment manufacturing company inclusive of R&D (Bell Labs) held by AT&T and seven independent “Baby Bells” that provide regulated and monopolized local telephone services across United States.  The latter would serve as an unbiased interface between end customers and all long distance service carriers. 

The divestiture marked the beginning of the end of the era, topic of my last blog – An Era Has Passed.  Looking back, it was merely one of the more visible parts of a larger economic-political force – deregulation - that had begun gaining momentum in 1970s and permeated through transportation, energy, communications, and climaxed at the financial deregulation and subsequent global financial crisis of 2007-2009 from which we are still trying to dig ourselves out of the hole.

More similarity between telecom and postal service:  FedEx and UPS have been prominent private courier services with global reach in competing with USPS on the lucrative parcel services, not unlike MCI of the late 60’s in competing with AT&T.   One advantage of these private services they do not need to provide ubiquitous coverage of end customers as they are not subject to the requirement of universal service.  FedEx and UPS in fact have been contracting USPS to deliver their packages to a large number of households, not unlike when a long distance call was connected to end users through local Bell’s or cable service.   

This is just one but nevertheless a critical aspect of the postal service that we have been taking for granted for so long.  What is really under siege is the notion of universal service, something noble that defines our society and nation.  What the crises in USPS (and the twists and turns in telecom industry) asked us again and again was not for another budgetary or accounting gimmick.  They are really asking us “what about the universal service?”  As far as I am concern, abandoning the principle of universal service would amount to a declaration of class war and is a non-starter.  What do we do?

Talk to you soon!