I hope...

This is written by my favorite Chinese blogger/writer drunkpiano:
(http://www.bullog.cn/blogs/drunkpiano/archives/23057.aspx)
"我希望2007年能够停止漂泊――如果不得不接着漂泊，希望能遇上有趣的旅人。希望自己能够更快乐――如果不得不焦虑，希望这焦虑能转化为生产力。希望能更聚精会神地做事――如果不得不分心，希望迷路的途中有意外惊喜。最重要的是，我希望自己在所有的希望落空之后，仍然能够保持希望。"

I translated her words into English and want to share with you, since this is also what I am hoping for.

"I hope I would no longer wander around in 2007---if I have to, I hope I could meet interesting people on my journey.
I hope to be happier---if stresses are inevitable, I hope they could be turned to productivity.
I hope to be more concentrated at work---if I get lost anyway, I hope there would be pleasant surprises along the path.
The most important---I hope if none of my hopes comes true, I would still be able to have hopes."

the pursuit of happyness

Will Smith did a really good job in this movie. I was totally impressed. I almost burst into tears at certain points of the movie. And felt I was so blessed for being able to afford a place to live and everyday's food.

I expected this movie to inspire me to work harder. During the movie, I did have the urge. However, after I got back home, all the inspiration contributed to making the best cookies ever. And I probably had 7 cookies tonight.

Maybe I was procrastinating. But I am happy that at least I had the passion of producing something.

See, having low expectation for myself is my way of pursuing happiness. :P

Dwight's loyalty

Merry Christmas, everyone!

*************************************
Dwight ("the Office"):

"Would I ever leave this company? Look, I'm all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of what I'm getting paid for here is my loyalty.

But if there were somewhere else that valued that loyalty more highly, I am going wherever they value loyalty the most."

Dwight is so special. He might just exceed Jim to be my No. 1 favorite in "the office", though Jim is super cute.

can't stop talking about my parents

I called my mom this evening. It is a true blessing that I am able to talk with my parents like friends. And my mom is totally awesome.

She told me that she will be taking both drawing class and English class next year (while my dad was yelling "Merry Christmas" to me somewhere away from the phone). She has two blogs, but she said she didn't have time to take care of them (yeah, I bet, with two classes and so many homeworks!)

My mom is doing pretty good with drawing now. Her friends encouraged her to put a little extra efforts so that they could help sell her drawings. So I told her that I don't mind her become rich and famous at all.

I was more a listener than a talker, but I enjoyed the conversation. It refreshed my mind and filled my heart with love and comfort again.

I guess I am crazy

Right now I am reading one of my favorite textbooks in fluid dynamics.

In case you have the wrong idea of how much I love reading it since I used the word "favorite", I would like to give you a brief list of things I read ranked by my preference:
1. friends' blogs in Chinese or English
2. entertainment news in Chinese
3. novel in Chinese
4. message/discussion board in Chinese
5. entertainment news in English
6. non-textbooks in English
7. papers or textbooks in English

Now back to where I started. So I am reading this book. The more I read it, the more strongly I feel that no one really understand fluid dynamics.

I had the same feelings when I read the papers in my research field. Ok, there are some "good papers" or smart people out there. However, they are either very good at math, which is a huge plus if you study fluid dynamics, or they simply found some interesting phenomena early enough to get famous.

Most of the time I only see people pointing at some curve and saying "so this goes up as this increase, which probably means these two have a deep relationship with each other". Well, I understand this kind of conclusion might be really helpful when people want to build something, such as the project Brian is working on.

But, what is the physics? What do we add to the real science? Probably nothing.

My problem is that if I can't understand something from the root, I won't be confident to say that I know it. For example, if anyone asks me something about my research, I want to be able to explain to him or her through the most basic ideas of physics such as Newton's 2nd law or the conservation of mass.

Although I have the dim hope that I could be different, the reality is that in the near future, I will graduate with some superficial interperation to my data wrapped in fancy words, like many other graduate students.

And that's why I never liked the idea of pursuing academia career. I don't have the courage to either be honest with myself knowing I am wasting time and money, or hold up a lifetime lie pretending I am making any contribution to science.

Apocalypto --- a new beginning

I was disappointed by this movie. The storyline is kind of weak. Basically, the first half was "gladiator" but not nearly as good, the second half was the combination of "the fugitive" and "home alone".

Although you would be shocked by the cruel and bloody scenes, there would not be much left in your mind after you step out of the theatre. I was definitely expecting something more connected with the whole Maya culture than just some guy escaping from death and running for his life and his family.

The only fun for me is that finally there is a movie which I was watching with my eyes wide open while Jia was covering her face most of the time. Yay!

Also, this movie reminded me of one conversation with Brian in Memphis about who would die first if we were thrown into a jungle or island. We both agreed that the Indian guy would be number one victim because he could barely handle hardware. Then Brian said I would be the next. It was sad and true, but Brian promised that he would find food for me, which was quite comforting.

Jia and I were talking about the same hypothesis during the movie, then the conclusion we reached was that I would be starved to death and she would probably suicide before that.

holiday season

Even thinking of leaving this place makes me sad. Maybe because it is holiday season, so I feel depressed about everything. People all seem so happy, and I don't know how to be just like them.

Last weekend I went to Busch's. The guy at the door told me to "keep up the smile", as if any stranger can see right through me.

I have got two Christmas cards this year. One from Rachel, a friend I met through Brian. Another one was from the Taiwanese girl who once worked for me. There is this warmth and comfort in my heart whenever I think of them.

Permanent Head Damage (PHD)

As usual, I stopped by Rui's office and did a little chatting. 5 minutes later...

Rui: "Did I ask you what you had for lunch?"

Me: "Yeah, but I don't remember if I answered your question."

That's why we are best friends!

relationships

I have to admit that I don't know how to work on problems in relationships. It is sad, because relationships are all that matters to me.

All my life I have been trying to avoid generating any conflict. If it was not avoidable by any means, I don't really know to handle it. One option to me was walking away from this relationship. By saying relationship, I mean all kinds of person-to-person interaction.

This has happened a couple of times. When I was young, I stopped talking to my brother for a year because of some trivial incident. Even now I am ignoring some people because I either felt very hurt or annoyed by them at some point.

As I become more mature, I know it's not the best way, especially when it involves people I do care about, because it hurts both me and them. I wish I have had a better relationship with my brother, shared things with him and been there for him when he needed, but I can't rewind time.

Now that I know that, the only way to resolve the conflicts, I think, is being honest with the person and the situation. This is how I say I don't feel right about it, but I do care a lot about you and our relationship. Let's get over it.

Somehow, it doesn't work that well all the time. So I learn my lesson, I don't walk away, but I don't say anything either.

Sometimes the conflict will fade away with time. In a better case, I will forget about it because I hardly remember anything in my life. However, there could be cases where everything is covered on the surface, then if similar conflicts happen, real damage can be made.

Relationships were never easy for me, although they say love and trust can overcome all the problems. I will be learning about it all my life, that's for sure.

Deja Vu

Definition from Wikipedia: The term "déjà vu" (French for "already seen", also called paramnesia) describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously.

So yesterday Jia and I watched the movie "Deja Vu". It was quite entertaining, and disturbing by using some time-space folding theory which I couldn't really follow.

Anyhow, I guess a lot of people had deja vu. No matter how scientificly they tried to explain it in Wikipedia, the whole experience still seems quite mystic to me.

One of the explanations is that what's happening now coincidentially matches some elements in your past dreams, so you would have this "already seen" feeling. I can't say this is the case, but I did have dreams that coincided unbelievably with the reality.

a little bit country

I always knew that I had something for country music, but not until the last Memphis trip did I really get hooked to it.

On our daily trips to and back from the LCC, the radio was on country all the time. I got to know the songs like "if you are going through hell", "me and my gang", "leave the pieces", and "Amarillo sky" (on which Brian wrote a very nice entry).

Actually, as I am writing this, each song reminds me of a little story. For example, I would think of Laetitia when I listen to "leave the pieces", because in the car we joked about how she broke our hearts by going back to France when the song was playing, and Brian pointed out it was quite suitable for us. Later we actually made a CD for her as the gift which was filled with all the sad, heart-breaking love songs.

And I remember the time when I first heard "life ain't always beautiful" from the radio. We were about to take the exit to our hotel. This song hit right onto my heart and almost made me in tears. It is still one of my favorite songs.

After coming back to AA, Brian bought a couple of CDs, so I started to know the names behind those songs, Jason Aldean, Gary Allen, Miranda Lambert, the Wreckers, Carrie underwood, and a lot lot more.

The first reason I liked about country music was the special country voices and the way they sing the songs. As I indulged more and more, I was able to appreciate the lyrics. It's like you had a crush on someone because of his looking and then really fell in love with his soul.

I don't know how to describe the beauty of those lyrics. I can only put it this way: I like how life is portrayed and appreciated through country songs.

Sometimes they make me smile or laugh (such as Toby Keith's "I wanna talk about me"). Sometimes they make my heart ache for a minute (such as Colin Raye's "love me"). Sometimes they help me stay humble and encouraged (such as Lee Ann Womack's "I hope you dance").

Or sometimes while singing along, I simply feel "yeah, this is life, this is love and this is good".

my new obsession

So my fever of making cookies has long gone. I still miss those cinnamon sugar cookies, but now all my passion is pouring into peanut-butter rice crispy treat.

Certainly, it was inspired by Demoree's rice crispy treat, again. As soon as I discovered that making this delicious sweetness was so easy, I got into the business right away. I initiated the idea of adding peanut butter into the ingredient, and it was very successful (go ask Rui, Brian or Demoree about it).

I have been thinking about selling my product in the campus. I even asked Brian if anyone would pay one dollar for my treat, but he refused to answer it. Maybe he didn't like the idea he could't get it for free anymore.

Anyhow, let me do some cost-benefit calcultion. As the cost for a batch of my peanut-butter rice crispy treat is around $4 (excluding my time and work) and I cut it into 12 pieces, I will be able to make $8 per batch if I sell it for $1 per piece. I can make one batch in 30 minutes, so my labor would be at most $16/hour. Wait...as a GSRA, my hourly pay is around $22 before tax.

Alright, forget about it. I better go back to my research instead of dreaming of getting richer by selling my treat. It is probably more worthy of my time.

In a second thought, graduate students are not really paid based on how many hours we spent on our research. Hmmm...it's a true dilemma. I guess I need non-linear equations to solve this puzzle.