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I was quite amused when I was reading the book A Little History of the World, written by E. H. Gombrich in 1935, as it did not left China aside. Many history books written by western writers only told stories of Europe and the States. It seems that Mediterranean, Atlantic and Caribbean could fulfil the meaning of "World". When I was young I learned at school that our country has a long long history. I'm proud of that. However, I seldom saw our history in a English written history book. A Little History of the World is different. It includes two whole chapters (out of forty) talking about China, plus more discussions spread in the rest of the book. It talked about K'ung Fu-tzu, Lao-tzu, the ways to create Chinese scripts (very impressive!), Great Wall, Silk Road, war with Huns, with Mongolians, paper, gunpowder, compass, poems, and exams of course! It touched so many areas that other books missed out.  I'm always interested in how westerns see our history. Last year I saw a reader's comment for Romance of the Three Kingdoms on Amazon.com, he said that the beginning of the book reflects the differences Easterns and Westerns see the history: circular and linear. I believe it is a fair and concise conclusion.

 

Back to E. H. Gombrich's book, I wanna quote some of his words down here:

 

Ch.11 the Great Teacher of a Great People

Chinese writing is special. You can read and understand it even if you don't know a single word of the spoken language.

...the thoughts and principles...were able to spread quickly and influence many people.

...the empire was so vast that in all its corners the Chinese spoke quite different languages, it would probably have fallen apart altogether had they not had one thing in common. This was their script.

...(K'ung Fu-tzu's thought) does not make people good, but it helps them stay good...thanks to his teaching, that enormous empire, with all its provinces, was saved from falling apart.

 

Ch.14 An Enemy of History

His (Ying Zheng's) province was called Ch'in...and it is likely that the whole country now known as China was named after him.

China is, in fact, the only country in the world to be ruled for hundreds of years, not by the nobility, nor by soldiers, nor even by the priesthood, but by scholars (then he started to talk about the exams. This is talking about Han Dynasty).

 

Ch.22 A Structure to Become Lord of Christendom

...(poems are) concise and brief verses which, in the simplest way, express so much that you need only read one once and it is in your head for ever (talking about Tang Dynasty).

 

Ch.37 Across the Sea

(war about opium, you know it's 1840 AD) This was China's reward for teaching Europeans the art of making paper, the use of the compass, and-regrettably-how to make gunpowder.

 

 

I started to watch movies after I came to Australia. I still can remember when I was in High School in China, everyone starts to talk Steven Chow's movies and I was like an idot sitting there, wordless. However, I don't feel I am lower then anyone else just because I don't know anything about movies, and I still strongly believe so today. I watched some of his movies (Jackie Chen's movies as well) in the year 2002, when I was doing my HSC. Finally I figured out what my friends were talking about years ago (sometimes I'm a little behind). I watched these stuffs on my computer, but of course, I went to cinemas too. 2003 is the year I spent the most time in cinemas, coz that's the year all my close friends are living apart from each other: I lived in Eastwood, Allen was still in Kingsgrove, and Steven Liu was in Hurstville. We missed each other so much so we always found some tiny little excuses to get together in city then went to watch movie. Interestingly, that is the year cinemas did not tell many "new stories". Many movies had a number behind the title: Terminators 3, Tomb Raider 2, X-men 2. We watched them all. Then I felt I got tired watching too much violence and I changed my taste to some more friendly movies, like Garfield, Shrek 2, National Treasures, Around World in 80 Days. By the time I met my girlfriend, I started to watch comedies and romance movies: Just Like Heaven, the Lake House, the Notebook. The movies I will never watch in cinemas falls in the Horror category, but I do watch some at home on my computer. I have to say I'm not good at this. I watched Silent Hill a couple weeks ago and got scared. I hide myself under blanket. Allen saw me and laughed all night about it. It is quite a surprise for me I did not went into any cinema in 2006, but I decide I'm going in tomorrow.

I’m not a genius in cars, I’m not even close, but sooner or later, I will face to buy a car. I feel it is quite difficult to find a model satisfies me, especially with a limited budget, but more importantly, I am an idiot in controlling my spending.

The biggest problem is, I don’t have a firm budget before I start to think this question. I was planning to take a used car for the first time. This seems simple, just a couple thousand dollars will do. But the thing is I’m so elegant, I don’t want a 10-yrs-old car. I personally don’t feel safe when I’m driving it. So let’s look further. If I raise the price to 13k-$15k, I could see some very nice choices: Post-2000 model, and <10,000 kms. This seems a good deal. Then the devil comes. I have to say this is the trick of “pricing”. By spending a couple thousand dollars more than that price level, I could buy a brand new car, something like Toyota Yaris, and I ask myself “Why don’t take the new one?” Then I felt that a higher model is priced another couple thousand dollars higher than Yaris, so I increased my spending again. The same thing went on and on and it never ends until I suddenly realized that I cannot afford the price even I sell myself to them. Being cleared, the first thing is, have a spending limit, have a budget, and hold it.

Nothing is perfect. Sometimes I was thinking about the stuffs I gave up after I went overseas. Comparing what I've got here with what I lost, did I make the right decision by staying here so many years and possibly, even longer in future? Could living in two continents make so many differences hence lead me departed from my parents, firends and "old times" never come back?

 

The very first issue is, I left home at 17, after spending more than 5 yrs in this country, could my parents know me or understand me as they did before??? Despite the online chatting or long distance phone calls we had each week, and the "going back home" for one month each year, we don't really have many other contacts at all ---- we don't even write emails to eath other. That could explain why they were so worried when I refused to go back and get married immediately after the exams. They won't sense my changes.

 

I couldn't be with my fiancee, who is still in China. I'm not able to touch her or go out with her whenever I want. All I can do is phone calls or internet chat, which makes me the worst fiance in the world. Things get even worse this year coz I have to stay here for a while. She said to me she doesn't want anything except want me to go back. I felt wordless. We both knew long distance relationship is not easy before we get together, but after 2 years, we were only half way through. When will this be the end?

 

Taking a look my firends in China, I see how far we are from each other. How many of them are using MSN Messenger or Google? Very rare. They have QQs, they have Baidu, they use them not only because they like them, more importantly, coz their friends are using them. I went to Windows Live and they don't have a space there. It's reasonable, they probably do not need a hotmail, why bother using a Live space? Then I went to Sina.com today and I found tons of  their spaces, all linked together. The sad thing is, we were close friends when I was in China yrs ago, but look at them now, it seems I'm the only one departed from them, and seems be forgotten by them.

 

What if I start to connect with them regularly? Will things be changed in good ways? I believe so.

One

 

Globalization shrunk the size of our world. It empowered individuals to conduct business with anyone around the world. I've heard so many stories those companies in States outsource their jobs to third world countries, like Mexico, India, etc.  But there are some questions I still cannot figure out a clue. Take the Indian call centre as an example. Labor costs of course has been dramatically cut down, but what about the phone bills? The reason I couldn't completely understand this kind of outsourcing is I've no idea how the India's telecommunication industry works. One thing is certain: these bills will not overturn the cut down effect from wages, otherwise there won't be so many outsourcings. The question is, how much money they could save from this???

 

Apart from this, Homesourcing and e-Tutorial are exciting things to do, especially for particular groups of people. Thanks to the development of PC and Internet, which changed all of our lives.

 

"Here is the problem: our understanding of the universe is based on two separate theories. One, is Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. That's the way of understanding the biggest thing in the universe. Things like stars and galaxies; But the littleness things in the universe, atoms and subatomic particles, played by a entirely different set of rules, called Quantum Mechanics. These two separate rules are each incredibly accurate in their own demand, but whenever we are trying to combine them, to solve some of the deepest mysteries in the universe, disasters strikes."

 

A new set of ideas, String Theory, may be able to combine the above two. If this could succeed, it will be a more exciting achievement than finding lives on Mars.

 

This is an exiting idea but was made into a boring documentary. 3 hrs length in total, I nodded off five times when watching it. Wait a minute, is it five or six? I can't even remember! Anyway, if they don't repeat the same lines again and again, they could possibly put everything in one episode.

 

However, the theory they are talking about is quite interesting and event exciting, even for someone like me, who is not a keen learner in Physics, and have no idea why String Theory has the potential ability to explain everything. 

 

It seems that it has already attracted lots and lots of scientists donating their life to prove it. There is no guarantee to succeed. It is possible that a bunch of most intellegent and most diligent people sitting together, spend their whole life to prove a theory, and finally they make the conclusion: it cannot be done. But they still wanna do it. I suppose that is called scientist.

终于要开学了！

这些日子里，对工作的激情已经逐渐淡了下了。看到身边的同学们都有书可读，真是说不出的羡慕。

 

感谢学校的Special Approval，允许我在这个学期学四门课。只是，自认为四门课的压力还是蛮大的，因此工作就暂时不做了。虽然突然间没了进项，花钱时的感觉就有了不同，但是看看床头的7本课本......自己似乎从来没在哪个学期里需要读这么多课本，静下心来想一想，眼下主要的目的是读书，所以，工咱就不再打了。

 

工作后难得有些空余时间。开学后，除了功课，看书也好，打游戏也好，上网也好，想做些自己喜欢的事。