It’s kind of pollution-y here. I still need to figure out if I’m headed straight for Microsoft Research or heading to my accommodations first.

The last time I went to China, I was 1 year old. Foreign travel is new to me.

Check back often. I’ll be documenting everything here on my blog.

We moved into the new building today. It’s awesome.

Posted via web from Kevin Chiu’s Posterous

Last year, I bought 16 oz cup of Alpine Strawberry ice cream from a small eatery across the street from Columbia University, and it changed the way I’ve thought of purchasing this type of good ever since.

As I enjoyed the creamy treat, I realized that I was deriving less and less satisfaction from each additional bite. The effect was so extreme, that as I scooped towards the midpoint of my cup, I found myself annoyed that there was even more ice cream to dig through. And, even though I didn’t want to eat it, I continued eating dutifully to avoid the guilt of wasting food.

When I finally emptied and disposed of the white styrofoam container, I realized that what I was purchasing wasn’t the ice cream, it was enjoyment derived from the experience of eating the ice cream.

The nonlinear relationship expressed on the ice cream store menu suddenly made sense. Larger sizes were disproportionately less expensive when compared using an assumption of a set amount of enjoyment per unit volume, which corresponded to the reality that enjoyment extracted from the ice cream as it was consumed fell over time.

The integral of ice cream enjoyment in reality creates a measured enjoyment that is significantly less than the expected enjoyment estimated using the misguided assumption that there is a direct correlation between enjoyment and volume. Additionally, there are further negative enjoyment effects, such as an expanding waistline, to be taken into consideration.

Purchases of things that temporarily improve your life at the cost of future well being should be avoided.

1. Ars Technica – Very high quality stories, but slower to respond to breaking news.
2. Engadget – Gadget blog – arch rival of Gizmodo
3. Gizmodo – Gadget blog – arch rival of Engadget
4. Lifehacker – Random life tips
5. MacRumors – Mac Rumors (of course)
6. Slashdot – An old standby that I temporarily left for Digg.
7. TechCrunch – A rather famous tech blog – more like a newspaper

My new MacBook Pro 13″ arrived today! Woohoo! Unfortunately, the psychologist in me has assigned the joy of opening the new package to be the reward for finishing everything on today’s TODO list.

Update: Opened it. Woohoo!.