Deep Sea Bombie

I unwillingly felt the worth of my 18+ years of piano study when someone asked to pay me $150 to play background music for merely an hour at this medical society’s fund raising event. The sense of easy money felt even stronger — but also a little humiliating — when I actually started playing: the noises of conversations and drums playing at the other side (WTF!) were so overpowering that it would have made no difference if I had a cat randomly stepping across the keyboard.

When an extremely old gentleman in a wheelchair was pushed next to my piano by an equally, extremely old lady, vanity led to wishful thinking: Did he ask to be moved closer just to hear the piano? Could he be that single lonely soul in the sea of artless people who still knows to appreciate and enjoy classical music? Just as I was starting to feel self-conscious, suspecting him to be an educated music lover critical of my every shortcoming, the truth of the situation also became apparent: as the old man settled in his newly claimed spot and relaxed himself with a glass of red wine, all the haughty doctors scattered around the room came over one after another to greet him, their normally lofty facial expression replaced with the uttermost respect. The old man was content and happy. Obviously he was very important in this medical society, probably the most important. He did not come over to listen after all — he simply picked a more centered spot in the room so that he can better receive kowtows from his peers of obviously lesser statues.

Well, at least I made $150 by being invisible… and inaudible, too!

But even my joy of some extra spending money was very short lived… Immediately afterward, I got caught two turns away from my house for failure to stop at a stop sign. The a-hole whose salary my tax money is directly paying for gave me two tickets, the second one for not presenting up-to-date insurance card. Penalties add up to just about…$150.

This led me to think about being a Capricorn…sounds capricious but let me explain. Ever since I was little, all the horoscope excerpts I came across said that Capricorns are hardworking and very materialistic. I never thought the materialistic part fits me. But the worse is yet to come. The “divine revelations” continue to say that Capricorns can never gain anything by pure luck. Instead, they must work for it. In other words, a Capricorn can strive to become the best in any field, but don’t ever dream of winning the lottery, that’s not for Capricorns. We are a luckless horde. Even my $150 was confiscated by fate. Guess it was not hard work enough.

I haven’t been here for ages because……cough……..I’m 淘宝ing!!!!!

你们都来BS我吧BS我吧BS我吧BS我吧BS我吧BS我吧….

….但是BS够了就快去给你们的老婆朋友三姑六姨大妈小妹哥们gay友历届前女友包括伪装前女友其实现在还有一腿女友等等等等做广告！

我的淘宝店在这里。

photo from Sanctu’s Flickr

08/24
Times didn’t need to resort to silver count as the ranking criteria after all…

08/20
Kerry Walsh is such a bouncy, lean beauty with cute braided ponytail that I usually keep my eyes on her. But Misty May was so good soooooooo good in the gold metal match against China. She is definitely the anchor of the duo.

08/18
Who says US is strong in Athletics? Jamaica, stop taking our medals.

08/17
It’s really shitty that the US media focused all its attention on Phelps and in turn trivialized the achievements of certain other swimmers, especially Lezak. When one of the news anchors said that Lezak swam 1 second faster than he ever did — hinting it an unattainable feat for him without the godly inspiration of Phelps, I was absolutely livid.

08/13
Nastia Luikin: gymnastic nymph
Shawn Johnson: the Energizer bunny
Alicia Sacramone: deadly and very unstable time bomb
Together: calamitous team final
Hope Nastia and Shawn can obtain the glory they deserve in the individual finals.

08/12
Gymnastics My favorites are Justin Spring on high bar and Nastia Liukin on beam. Russian genes shine on! The Chinese team is good, really good, the best!…but something about their stern demeanor that is just not lovable. They rely completely on superior technique, there is no charisma…except for 江钰源(Jiang YuYuan), I adore her.

08/11
Swimming Men’s 400m Freestyle Relay Sport victory, nice; sport victory by beaten down underdogs, omgthatsfriggingawesome! Thank you French team for trashing us BEFORE the race. Reeeeeeeeeeal smart.
A minute variation in the final rhythm of hands reaching for the wall made all the differences in the world for Jason Lezak and Katie Hoff — same circumstances, two entirely opposite outcomes.

08/10
Phelps broke WR and won gold. Bush cheered and waved like a happy kid. It’s hard to dislike him at the Games. He is affably different from many of the other nation leaders who remain rigid and lofty all the time.
Basketball China vs. US Yao Ming was trying too hard. His expressions and gestures were so over the top they began to look fake, as if his top objective was to show his patriotism in front of home crowd instead of playing ball. I’m starting to dislike him.
Cycling Women’s Road Race Must be awesome riding along the great wall, crossing under one ancient gate after another. Whenever I see them riding uphill with distorted faces, I was reminded of my unbearable 10+ mile ride in Lubec that made me scream “why can’t all roads be downhill!!!”, at which someone politely analyzed in details why that was physically impossible.
When the cyclists emerged from one of the gates, a huge sign hang atop the arch of the gate: “Careful: downslope ahead, slippery when wet.” And it just happened to be raining. After my initial worry, seeing that obviously none of them cared to stop for their safety, I comforted myself that these warnings don’t apply to the top Olympic athletes — for sure, they would NEVER fall off a bike…

08/08
Opening ceremony performances 很好很强大, 很和谐社会. Definitely wowed the foreigners and rabid Chinese patriots alike…entirely different significances but same intensity.
NBC narrators announced during the parade of the nations, “Liberia, a nation formed by freed American slaves…” Totally shocked and cracked me up! I mean, it was such an inconsiderate statement hiding under the straightfaced pretence of historical fact. It made me feel sorry towards those Liberian athletes.
Another trivia from the zealous narrators that I didn’t mind knowing: “Since China re-entered the Olympics in 1984, it has earned 2xx metals in total; in this same time period, India, a nation equally populous, has earned……….3”
BTW, where did the 福娃s go? After all these years arduously propagating the Beijing Olympics, don’t they at least deserve a cameo in the ceremony? They may be ugly, they may be silly, but that didn’t stop you from presenting them to the world a few years back. So why stop now? 过河拆桥耶?

成日里处处想着节约能源。
一张纸只用一处必遭天谴，从人到桌到窗台到地板，纸由白至黑亮空间反覆用尽始罢休。
新换的wireless router长得很流线很现代信号很强大。一夜未开灯进房router上几簇蓝光正兴奋乱跳，光线强到房间一角已无须开灯。遂骂浪费电，从此早上上班前常神经兮兮拔掉router电源，搞得晚上开机忘了早上勾当就叫“怎么又没网了！”
刷牙时必关水，洗碗抹洗洁精时必关水，淘米时要倒掉的水直接去下水道不忍全浇了院子里的树树草草。

但！是！这个世界怕的不是积极是消极。说一人一份力，不幸进步是一步一步积累失败却是排山倒海的：
那天在公司厕所里，一穿肮脏黑运动鞋(尺码估计6.5)未照面可杀女人，镜前磨蹭几分钟后，竟然把水龙头大开在水空流的情况下，磨磨蹭蹭地开始上厕所。上完再拖拖拉拉地去那个龙头下洗手。难道她觉得上完厕所再碰水龙头有辱后者所以恭敬地早做准备？！那漫长的煎熬的几分钟哪！几百个人在各种情况下节约来的流量，就这样么了。遂深刻体会到什么叫一颗耗子屎坏一锅汤。
人为的世界末日那是迟早的事。

Dad once recalled a Seiji Ozawa rehearsal he attended in Beijing. It was many years ago when he was still a young, aspiring conservatory graduate at the incipience of his conducting career. Similar to him, the entire Western classical music community of China was at a stage of awakening, slowly recuperating from the devastating blows of the Cultural Revolution that targeted everything Western. Young adult Chinese musicians at the time were far inferior in skills and musicianship than their counterparts in other countries. Their deficiency was so great and undeniable, that they did not have the need for jealousy or self-pride when faced with first class musicians. When Seiji Ozawa brought a world famous philharmonic to China, they showed nothing but the uttermost sincere desire to learn and appreciate.

Any musician would surely understand the lure of Ozawa’s rehearsal. It presented even a greater attraction than the actual concert. Because one gets to experience first-hand the thoughts and methods of the master. Ozawa’s rehearsal was fully packed with Chinese audience, sitting or standing, eager to absorb every minuscule inspiration the conductor and his orchestra had to offer. Ozawa started the rehearsal not with the orchestra he brought, but the local Central Philharmonic which assembled the best orchestra players in China at the time. They started playing a Beethoven Symphony, the Chinese players bewildered by the fact that they were under the direction of such a legend, hence doing the absolute best they could, as meager as that may be. Somewhere into the piece, Ozawa signaled stop, and kindly asked the brass players to be replaced with the musicians he brought. They started again, and discernible signs of awe rose from the audience as everyone discovered an immediate improvement in the quality of the performance. A little later, Ozawa again replaced certain instruments or individual players with his own, and continued to do so several times during the rehearsal. As the same piece of Beethoven metamorphosed from a dry, mechanical practice into the sonorous, colorful artwork that the Chinese audience were so used to hear only on recordings, everyone was in ecstasy.

Imaginably, the people that benefited most in this experience was not the audience, nor the foreign orchestra members, but the Chinese musicians who were fortunate enough to participate. Receiving corrections and advises from the master in such a direct manner, and being able to play along other world class musicians, opened their eyes and ears, and gave them inspirations that were impossible inside a closed up country hostile to Western culture and free artistic expressions in general. They may have long recognized their shortcomings in music, yet they didn’t know exactly what was missing. Now that concrete ideas and illustrations were presented to them, improvement all of a sudden became truly possible. What else could they have felt except pure joy and the eagerness to go back to practice!

People are really the happiest at this stage. They know there is room for improvement, and they know exactly what to do to try to achieve it. It is the double empowerment of hope and direction. Pure hope and no realistic way to proceed result in frustration and misery, whereas abundant and busy life style yet nothing concrete to hope for lead to emptiness and apathy. With both, life becomes simple and purposeful. This works for individuals, but also many other things such as third world countries in fast developing mode — they’ve seen so many countries done it before them, they know in a large sense what are needed to follow suit, and all that’s needed is to tolerate change and apply, even plainly copy, those facilities and technologies necessary, and they can be quite sure to grow at least to a certain extent since they are starting at a very low level with plenty of room for improvement. In comparison, people or countries already at the top have a much more difficult time advancing. There are no pioneers in the front to imitate, thus breakthroughs can only come from innovations. Without the tangible, only the truly exceptional can hope to move forward. While it separates the genius from the mundane, how much percentage of the world is really capable of the genius? Most would be content enough with some easy, tangible joy.

The everyday office worker, the one of a million salary man: bored, disenchanted, he craves the freedom of his bar-owner friend, but the latter describes himself as simply another salary man paid by the general public. He envies people above him in the corporate ladder, but they tell him the only thing you get more of is disheartening backstabbing and political wars. His blue-collared friend wishes to be him because he was better at school and now has a job in a big corporation. But seeing the former’s joy in work juxtaposed with his own disillusions, he wonders exactly who is better off. Then there is his young office buddy lying in death bed, whose love for the boring corporate life has always amazed people around him. Immobilized for months, he is more passionate than ever to hear every trivial incidence at the office, eager but never again able to get back into that world from which so many others are trying to escape. It’s clear that everyone is dissatisfied with life — what one wants is never what one has at the moment. As the friends sat around a table passing time, they sipped sake and said, life is not very interesting these days, all we can do is try to have some fun.

Devoid of melodrama and sentimentalities, Ozu’s world is so calm, even funerals were depicted matter-of-factly. Yet he not only effortlessly depicted the life of Tokyo white-collar workers in the mid last century, but also made the perpetual struggles of the human condition constant to any generation felt poignantly through his artful way of story telling.

First ever college reunion awaits at the beginning of October. Glad we are still considered young alumni who receive discount at numerous events; sad my SUNet ID got deactivated after four years or so — no longer able to log into axess for some instant self-degradation by that piece of (electronic) paper called the transcript (nope, must pay to get it now).

Unfortunately, it’s doubtful I will be able to make it with no vacation days left. But I’m sure I’ll be reminiscent quite a bit these days, starting with this video made about our senior project, the iClub. Built upon technologies developed by the Stanford Interactive Workspace Project, the video was featured at Ubicomp Conference 2002. Go Josh go!…where did the cute moose come from?

Several times after seeing a Target commercial on TV, Stan would sigh admiringly, “They have the coolest commercials.” I must admit they are pretty fancy, especially considering the category of stores Target belongs to. After all, Target’s main consumer pool should be pretty low-tiered on the social stratus. But its commercials are so chicly glittering that they overpower some of the major department stores in this area. The newest installment of this string of fancy commercials is especially memorable, because it did a very nice adaptation of Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye”.

Yet how come watching these commercials always creeps me out, and reminds me of nothing but the “Stepford Wives”?

Castle (all images from MIMI FERzT Gallery)

The Three Graces

Winter Fishing, Tropical Dreams

Strolling along Soho streets, I discovered my new favorite thing: a series of pink bear miniatures by the Russian contemporary artist, Alexander Zakharov. These shots don’t do justice to the actual pieces, because the most outstanding details are blurred, such as the amazingly vivid looking pink fur on each bear. They are on display at the MIMI FERzT Gallery until mid June. The artist’s official website is here.

Looking at the imaginative and playful lives of these cute, daring bears, I can’t help smiling, feeling an innocent joy and almost a longing to be one of them in a perfectly happy world.

国内红楼选秀办得乌烟瘴气。可对选秀的厌恶怎么也盖不过对红楼梦的兴趣，无可避免的大大关注了一番。赛事提供给了大众源源不断的叫骂课题，因硬伤的确太多，这骂的可以说是理所当然，众望所归。可惜电视台就像国内很多别的事情一样，似乎不那么需要尊重民意。观众忙着抗议不公平不合理，他们照样心安理得的自由左右选手和结果。前者闹的情绪亢奋，伤财劳神；后者钱包塞满了继续逼你忍受这精神折磨。除非民众能想出一个让主办方面不得不自醒改善否则就倒闭的反抗招术来，这花在看选拔上的时间就完全是浪费生命。

自叹无谓之余，多少在轰炸试的红楼梦信息中发现了一些有意义的东西：

-87版电视剧初次上映的旧报纸

如今经典的宝玉黛玉花下共读《会真记》剧照当时竟也是初露头角，而刚逝的权威“林妹妹”陈晓旭在照中还是一青涩少女，任由读者们以完全陌生的眼光随意评论。另外，报道下方还可以看见西游记剧组的新闻，原来这些大作都是在同一时间拍的。至少在看电视方面，当年的人们真是充实得幸福哪！

- 土默热的红楼解说
我自愧后知后觉，现在才发现有那么个人，那么种说法。刚拜读了几段，却读地心惊胆颤。他所提出的“金陵十二钗”和蕉园诗社女子相应的性格作风，几乎如出一轴的雅号诗名实在太有说服力了。要找一个女子和红楼梦人物有相近之处，那比比皆是。但是如果有特定的一群女子，人物关系类似，诗词习性类似，连雅号都出得一个个可以和红楼对上号，那就不能再归于巧合了。而洪昇和这些女子的人生经历，明末时期的思想观念，似乎就像作者所说，可以轻易解开不少红学多年的死结，叫人看得兴奋不已。不论今后能有什么突破，这都是本值得一读的作品。