Message: Three Months Before PhD Confirmation & My CAES Talk

First page of my presentation slide
Image from Locky's English Playground

In less than three months time, I will be submitting a PhD confirmation report as well as presenting my initial findings to the board. This is something all PhD candidates must overcome in order to proceed with the research project. It is an important stage and I would like to do it well, and so last week, I picked up my 19,000-word thesis draft again having left it untouched for months.

Looking back at the previous stuff I wrote, I was largely unorganised and incoherent. It seems to me that I will have to speed up with the writing process or I will risk having a paper full of potential for landfill. What saddens me is that, I haven't even spent much time on writing my blog half as much but I am already feeling a lack of time.

Researching in creative language use in English seems far more interesting than most of the things I encounter these days, but none of that can be published here before I get them published in journals, if I ever manage to get them to.

No one was presenting before me, so I took a selfie! Overly-smudged face by Samsung's default camera mode
Image from Locky's English Playground

My talk at the CAES conference at HKU last week wasn't as good as I have expected. I actually could have answered my questions better that day during the Q & A session, and the fact that I forgot to play a short video clip of the TV drama eventually led to some wrongly asked questions from the audience, as they thought House M.D. uses specialised discourse and therefore a specialised corpus should be used instead of COCA. These are questions I should have expected for audience who knows little about the TV drama. That night, I immediately made changes to my slides when I got home. It is hopeful that when I present this study again next week at the Asialex 2015 at PolyU I can make a better impression on the audience.




Resources:
Message: My First 7000-Word Paper & Upcoming Talks @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/2015/05/message-my-first-7000-word-paper.html

Auto & Event: Charged Hong Kong - May 2015 Gathering

Image from Locky's English Playground

The EV owners meet-up on 29th May at Jockey Club's Happy Valley Clubhouse was our third major event since Model S arrived in Hong Kong and the Tesla Rally last year. It was also my first time to attend as Tesla Motors Group Representative of Charged Hong Kong. Many thanks to all committee members of Charged Hong Kong for this nomination.

Members having fun even before the dinner started
Image from Locky's English Playground

The weather was not exactly helpful that evening. Drizzles added extra work to the staff as they had to shift tables to maximise coverage. Mosquitoes started their dinner early as I counted more than 10 bites on both my forearms and my neck despite having repellent OFF! applied, while our dinner started late as the food was not ready until almost 7:30pm.

Food is ready
Image from Locky's English Playground

However, despite all those glitches, all members still had a great time mingling. Laughs and jokes were radiating out from my table in particular and attracted many other to come and join the fun. We had such good fun that everyone found it difficult to leave!

Charged Hong Kong chairman Mark Webb-Johnson giving a short speech
Image from Locky's English Playground

The barbecue lamb racks and sirloin steaks were among the tenderest and tastiest I have ever had! Definitely the focus of the meal! The rest of the food was alright.

Model S parked together for photos
Image from Locky's English Playground

At 9:45pm, 15 minutes from the end time of the event, my wife and I bid the rest goodbye and headed back to our car. I wanted to take some photos of the EVs with my DSLR before leaving and just as I was getting ready, everybody else came down to the car park at the same time. Before I could make sense of the happening, fellow owners were already moving their cars to park next to one another.

White among several shades of grey
Image from Locky's English Playground

Thanks to their effort, I was able to take some awesome photos.

Bill demonstrating his gadget mobile to others
Image from Locky's English Playground

I suppose it was because our gadget king Bill was about to leave and so everyone else who wanted to check out his Teslamobile took their chance for one quick glimpse of his modification work.

Panorama of the car park
Image from Locky's English Playground

After that night, I was already looking forward to our next gathering! I will have gifts to donate for the lucky draw next time round!

For more awesome photos, check out my Google Plus photo album here!



Resources:
May 2015 Meet-Up @JockeyClub +Charged Hong Kong
http://www.charged.hk/may-29-event

Auto & News: Hong Kong Tesla Model S First Delivery Event!!!@ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/2014/07/auto-news-hong-kong-tesla-model-s-first.html

Auto & Event: Tesla Rally Hong Kong 2014 & Shark Conservation @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/2015/01/auto-event-tesla-rally-hong-kong-2014.html

Tesla Motors Special Interest Group +Charged Hong Kong
http://www.charged.hk/teslamotorsgroup-announcement

Charged Hong Kong - May 2015 Gathering @ Google Plus
https://goo.gl/photos/TxgRW6yUfx6BLCyn8

Food & Dining: Best Fried Korean Chicken and Pizzas by Pizza Maru Express!!!!

Chickeny goodness!
Image from Locky's English Playground

Ever since the broadcasting of famous Korean drama "You Who Came From The Stars", Hong-Kongers have not only become big fans of rich and handsome Korean-looking aliens, but also of Korean fried chickens. If you still have no idea that Korean fried chickens should be served with beer, you have got a huge problem.

It happened that my wife and I wanted to give a new shop (new to us at least) a go one day and ended up going back again and again!

Pizza Maru Express at Hysan Place
Image from Locky's English Playground

Located on the 11/F of Hysan Place in Causeway Bay, Pizzamaru Express is the one shop you must go to every time you visit. There are a few misleading points implied by its name: 1) nothing is 'Express' here, every order takes at least 15 to 25 mins,  2) they offer a range of lovely food other than pizzas, and 3) their fried chicken is their best and most popular dish in fact.

Oh man! All that juice and sauce!!!
Image from Locky's English Playground

At $89 a set and about half about chicken you get, it is the kind of luxurious food you most likely won't have every day, more like a treat for yourself after a week of hard work. But is it worth it? Just look at the juice in the photo above and the texture from the chicken breast below!

Even the chicken breast is tender!!!
Image from Locky's English Playground

There are 4 choices of taste: sweet and spicy garlic (chef's recommendation), sweet and spicy, spicy, and original. And you might have guessed it correctly, it is basically a combination of 2 types of sauce that gave the 4 choices.

We tried the sweet and spicy garlic for the first time and then it is every time, simply because it offers the most complexed yet the most well-blended taste ever! The crunchiness of the exterior makes incredibly similarity with corn flakes in your cereal, only that it isn't! It is just one giant addictive commercial secret! Would love to run into their kitchen for that secret, but I know I won'that be able to get pass the two pretty staff at the cashier. One thing to remember, ALWAYS ask for EXTRA sauce!!!

Fresh out of the oven
Image from Locky's English Playground

What is not so secretive is the flattening of pizza dough which is demonstrated publicly next to the cashier, but that's all you get to see as the crust will then be passed back to the kitchen staff through the hole in the wall.

20 mins of waiting and out came the gorgeous-looking cheesy pizza. The pickle that went with it did not matter, what mattered was the amount of space in my stomach and the last piece that was left on the plate after just 10 mins.

Cheesy goodness!!!
Image from Locky's English Playground

I did manage to share piece with my wife though, if this tells the quality of it.

Disclaimer: I did not receive sponsor of any kinds, money or food or whatsoever, as usual.

Resources:
TV & Technology: You Who Came From The Stars (aka YWCFTS) feat. LINE & Didier Dubot @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/2014/02/tv-technology-you-who-came-from-stars.html

Cooking: Simple Breakfast / Bunch With Tomatoes

Tomato craze
Image from Locky's English Playground

Finally! I have completed my assignment, for now. So it is time to make my family a good lunch! There has been a bit of a tomato craze in town for awhile now, so with just $5 for four tomatoes, what's better than creating a whole yummy breakfast to begin the day with?

Tomatoes and paste
Image from Locky's English Playground

What I did was to chop up some fresh tomatoes, the blend it with a can of tomato paste with a little water.

Purée
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After that, pour the purée into a pot and gentle heat it.

Herbs for the taste
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Add herbs such as rosemary and thyme, or simply just some Italian herbs in bottles to the heated purée with some sugar and pepper.

Truffle& mushroom scrambled eggs
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While waiting, make yourself a nice scrambled egg of your choice.

Cool purée
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Switch off the flame and wait for the purée to cool down a little.

Scrambled egg on macaroni
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Cook some macaroni or rice to go with the eggs and homemade tomato sauce.

Time to tuck in!
Image from Locky's English Playground

With macaroni in chicken broth, you pour the desired amount of tomato sauce into the soap and DE-Licious!!!! Simple, quick and beautiful homemade breakfast / brunch at low cost!


Resources:
Cooking & Health: How To Cook Perfect Scrambled Eggs with Healthy Oil and Good Wok @ Locky's English Playground
lockyep.blogspot.hk/2012/07/cooking-health-how-to-cook-perfect.html

Message: My First 7000-Word Paper & Upcoming Talks

Image from PolyU

Have not been writing for quite awhile as I am trying to rush for my first ever 7000-word assignment deadline. It has to be 7000 words in length to meet the word limit requirement for a publishable paper. Of course, to be actually publishable, there is still a lot of work and refinement, but at least, being able to write a paper this long is already quite an achievement. Right now I still have 2000 words to go, let's hope I can finish this by Thursday as I have to submit another paper on Friday for my talk at the upcoming Asialex 2015 at PolyU from 25-27 June 2015, exact time and date have yet to be confirmed.

Image from HKU

On that note, before giving a talk at PolyU, I will be giving a talk at the CAES International Conference at HKU from 4:25pm to 4:50pm on the 11th June 2015. Both talks will basically be on the same topic with slightly different focus.



Here's my abstract for the Asialex 2015,

House M.D. Corpus Analysis: A Linguistic Intervention of Contemporary American English Law, Locky Full-time PhD student Abstract Television drama, despite its enormous popularity across the globe, has rarely received attentions from the linguistics field. The dearth of research into television drama dialogue is further exposed by the thriving contributions from various other fields such as philosophy, psychology, cultural studies and media studies. This paper seeks to promote research interest in this unique mediated text by selecting renowned medical dramedy House M.D. as research subject and comparing its 927,922-word House M.D. pure dialogue corpus (HMDC) to both the 450-million-word Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and its 95-million-word spoken subcorpus (COCA Spoken) using an adaptation of Bednerak’s (2011) ranked frequency list method. Using WordSmith Tools in the calculation of n-gram (n = 1, 2, 3) at the words/clusters level, the findings indicate that HMDC is more interpersonal than COCA and has a closer resemblance to COCA Spoken than to COCA. HMDC also contains 3.4 times more negativity than COCA Spoken and 2.8 times more than COCA. As such, viewers are presented with English far more interpersonal, as well as involving significantly more disagreement than one will encounter in the real world. This study not only shows similarities and differences between House M.D. and contemporary American English, but also provides a preview of the huge potential in television drama-related research. Keywords: TV drama, House M.D., corpus linguistics, ngram, COCA, ranked frequency list References AFP. (2009, June 12). 'House' is world's most popular TV show. Retrieved April 10, 2013, from Google: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gGRhjVWTeAVMws-iEDRJOY3IDH7g Allen, R. C. (2004). Frequently asked questions. A general introduction to the reader. In R. C.  Allen, & A. Hill (Eds.), The Television Studies Reader (pp. 1-26). New York: Routledge. Androutsopoulos, J. (2012). Introduction: Language and society in cinematic discourse. Multilingua , 31, 139-154. Bednarek, M. (2011). The language of fictional television: a case study of the ‘dramedy’Gilmore Girls. English Text Construction , 4 (1), 54-83. Bednarek, M. (2010). The Language of Fictional Television: Drama and Identity. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Biber, D. (2009). A corpus-driven approach to formulaic language in English. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics , 14 (3), 275-311. Bignell, J., & Lacey, S. (2005). Popular television drama : critical perspectives. (J. Bignell, & S. Lacey, Eds.) Manchester: Manchester University Press. Brock, A. (2004). Analyzing scripts in humorous communication. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research , 17 (4), 353-360. Bubel, C. (2006). The linguistic construction of character relations in TV drama: Doing friendship in Sex and the City. Retrieved April 4, 2013, from SciDok-Datenbank: http://scidok.sulb.uni-saarland.de/volltexte/2006/598/pdf/Diss_Bubel_publ.pdf Cascio, T., & Martin, L. L. (Eds.). (2011). House and Psychology: Humanity Is Overrated. Wiley. Chamber, S. A. (2003). Language and Structure in The West Wing. In P. C. Rollins, & J. E.  O'Connor (Eds.), The West Wing: The American Presidency As Television Drama (pp. 83-100). New York: Syracuse University Press Chua, B. H. (2008). Structure of identification and distancing in watching East Asian television drama. In B. H. Chua, & K. Iwabuchi, East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave (pp. 73-90). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Clyman, J. (2009, June 22). Inside the Therapy TV Show You Need to Watch. Retrieved April 20, 2013, from Psychology Today: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reel-therapy/200906/inside-the-therapy-tv-show-you-need-watch Cover, R. (2004). From Butler to Buffy: Notes towards a strategy for identity analysis in contemporary television narrative. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture , 4 (2). Davies, M. (2008). Retrieved November 26, 2014, from The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present: http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ Davies, M. (2014, December 1). CoRD | The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Retrieved March 21, 2011, from VARIENG: CoRD | The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) Davies, M. (2011). N-grams data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Retrieved November 20, 2014, from http://www.ngrams.info Gonzalez, S. (2009, October 30). There’s A Doctor Behind ‘House’: Internist Lisa Sanders. Retrieved September 4, 2014, from YaleNews: http://news.yale.edu/2009/10/30/there-s-doctor-behind-house-internist-lisa-sanders Goodier, B. C., & Arrington, M. I. (2007). Physicians, patients, and medical dialogue in the NYPD Blue prostate cancer story. Journal of Medical Humanities , 28 (1), 45-58. Guinness World Records. (2011). Most-watched man on television. Retrieved October 10, 2014, from Guinness World Records: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-10000/most-watched-man-on-television/ IMDb. (n.d.). "House M.D." (2004). Retrieved November 26, 2014, from IMDB.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412142/ IMDb. (n.d.). House M.D. - Awards - IMDb. Retrieved July 7, 2014, from IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412142/awards?ref_=tt_awd Jacoby, H., & Irwin, W. (Eds.). (2008). House and Philosophy: Everybody Lies. John Wiley & Sons. Jamieson, D. (2011, September). Does TV accurately portray psychology? Retrieved April 20, 2013, from American Psychology Association: http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/09/psychology-shows.aspx Munt, S. R. (2006). A queer undertaking: Anxiety and reparation in the HBO television drama series Six Feet Under. Feminist Media Studies , 263-279. O’Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (2007). From Corpus to Classroom: Language Use and Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP. Oldenburg, A. (2005, April 17). 'House' goes under the medical microscope. Retrieved September 4, 2014, from USATODAY.com: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2005-04-17-house-main_x.htm Pennycook, A. (2007). Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. Routledge. Piazza, R., Bednarek, M., & Rossi, F. (Eds.). (2011). Telecinematic Discourse: Approaches to the Language of Films and Television Series. Philadelphia: John Benjamins B.V. Pomerantz, D. (2012, October 17). Sorry, Charlie: Ashton Kutcher Tops Our List Of The Highest-Paid TV Actors. Retrieved October 10, 2014, from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorothypomerantz/2012/10/17/sorry-charlie-ashton-kutcher-tops-our-list-of-the-highest-paid-tv-actors/ Quaglio, P. (2008). Television dialogue and natural conversation: Linguistic similarities and functional differences. In A. Ädel, & R. Reppen (Eds.), Corpora and Discourse: The challenges of different settings (Vol. vi, pp. 189-210). John Benjamins. Richardson, K. (2010). Television Dramatic Dialogue: A Sociolinguistic Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scott, M. (2014). WordSmith Tools Manual . Retrieved May 20, 2014, from Lexical Analysis Software: http://www.lexically.net/downloads/version6/HTML/index.html Song, G. (2010). Chinese masculinities revisited: Male images in contemporary television drama serials. Modern China , 36 (4), 404-434. Stubbs, M., & Barth, I. (2003). Using recurrent phrases as text-type discriminators: A quantitative method and some findings. Functions of Language , 10 (1), 61-104. The Telegraph. (2011, September 15). Guinness Book of Records: Hugh Laurie is most watched man on television. Retrieved October 10, 2014, from The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/8762970/Guinness-Book-of-Records-Hugh-Laurie-is-most-watched-man-on-television.html Whitbourne, S. K. (2012, March 10). We're Not Psychologists but We Play Them on Television. Retrieved April 20, 2013, from Psychology Today: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201203/we-re-not-psychologists-we-play-them-television Wikia. (n.d.). House Wikia. Retrieved July 3, 2014, from Wikia: http://house.wikia.com/wiki/House_Wiki Wild, D. K. (2005a, October 24). Constructing House: An Interview with House, M.D. writer Lawrence Kaplow. Retrieved September 4, 2014, from Blogcritics: http://blogcritics.org/constructing-house-an-interview-with-house/ Woznicki, K. (2005, September 27). A doctor/writer in the 'House'. Retrieved September 4, 2014, from CNN.com: http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/09/27/profile.writer.foster/index.html

Resources:
Asialex 2015
http://asialex2015.engl.polyu.edu.hk/

CAES International Conference
http://caes.hku.hk/facesofenglish/

CAES International Conference Programme Schedule
http://caes.hku.hk/facesofenglish/files/2015/01/provisional_programme_schedule.pdf

Auto: Panda Hotel Superchargers Are Ready For Action!!

View of 4/F Superchargers from my car
Image from Locky's English Playground

So I have heard today that the superchargers at Panda Hotel car park are ready for use, which is the best news after the opening of Science Park superchargers about a day ago! It would be the first on the west side of New Territories and would definitely benefit those who live in Tsuen Wan, Tsing Yi, Tuen Mun or even further up north. For me, since I often have to attend family banquets nearby, special parking spaces definitely would do me good too! Generally speaking, if it is a banquet I am attending, parking is usually free for the whole night, but if I am just interested in getting some electrons for my car, then 2 free-hour parking for EVs is more than enough for me! Thanks Hopewell!

Tesla sign on the wall, view from my car
Image from Locky's English Playground

On the 10th April, I had to drive my mum and friend to Tsuen Wan to sign some documents, and because I am just a driver, I got to spend some me time checking out the superchargers there.

Maybe the real reason why it is still not ready
Image from Locky's English Playground

It was actually very much ready, maybe except for the paint on the floor as I could still smell its 'freshness' that day.

Someone's gonna meet here
Image from Locky's English Playground

2 stalls on 4/F
Image from Locky's English Playground

Overall, the spaces are much wider than non-charging parking ones, but still a bit tight for two Model Ss to park next to one another. This is how wide Model S really is!

Panoramic view of 7/F
Image from Locky's English Playground

On the 7/F though, the story is completely different! First, there is a sign saying that this level is meant to be for VIPs,

Panoramic view of car park on 7/F
Image from Locky's English Playground

then because of this reason, there were virtually nothing on this floor, so I said this floor is capable of installing at least 20 superchargers if Panda Hotel really wants to.

769 and 770! Here they are!!!
Image from Locky's English Playground

To my surprise, there are only two stalls available with 3 parking spaces, strange enough. That will actually mean the space by the wall is virtually just a normal parking space as the supercharger cable will not be long enough to extend to the charging port of a Model S if it is parked at space 771.

Everything is well-connected
Image from Locky's English Playground

Everything was well-connected so all that was needed to be done was the removal of plastic bags and those yellow chains.

I probably will not bother using those two on 4/F
Image from Locky's English Playground

I do hope this is just the beginning of many more superchargers at Panda Hotel. If the level of usage is as high as that at Hopewell Centre in Wan Chai, then there is a good chance Panda Hotel will add more, if their electricity wiring permits.

Resources:

Travelling & Living: Picnic Day At Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks!!! @ Locky's English Playground

http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/2015/04/travelling-living-picnic-day-at-hong.html