生活的艺术，心灵的窗口。 海内存知己，天涯若比邻。

The opening ceremony has been broadcasted to the American audience in NBC yesterday night; 19 hours after the live performance.

 

I will never forget this moment, when the glorious China history was presented in such an artistic way. Thank you, for the team who designed this project, I really admire your creativity. Thank you, for all the people who contributed to this performance, I could imagine how much efforts you have been devoted; and thank you, for all the people who are celebriting the Beijing Olympic game, let's enjoy this game in the next a few weeks.

 

I am so proud of being a Chinese, being one of the 1.3 billion people, as well as many other ethnic Chinese distributed all over the world.

 

I predict here that in this game, the gold medal count achieved by the China national team will exceed the American team. And it is possible that the total medal count might be the highest. Let the future prove my prediction.

 

One of the two most famous Chinese concertos, I love the second movement Ode to the Yellow River.

 

 

I have never seen such a message appeared on the Google home page, at this particular moment (July 25 2008). It said that "In Memoriam: Randy Pausch (1960-2008)".

An intelligent and inspirational person finally passed away, after combating with one of the most dangerous cancer - pancreatic cancer - for around two years.

 

The fifth movement is my favorite. The context of the fifth movement is:

After a heavy storm and carnival, the nature returned to sun shine. The sky suddenly become clear again.

 

The person who invented En pointe in Ballet must be a genius! With En pointe, Ballet achieved elevated elegance.

What is En pointe? It is an act for the dancer to stand on her tips of toes when performing ballet.

 

On the other hand, to master en pointe requires extensive training over the years, the excessive stress put on dancer's feet made injury almost inevitably happens. This triggers me to think of the classical fashion era in 18,19 centuries' Europe. At that time, in order to reduce waist cirsumference, the wide spread popularity of corset went to extremity. It put quite a lot of stress in upper body.

 

Therefore, the conclusion is: beauty is costly.

 

 

It seems my memory deterioates over the years, or rather, the explosion of information makes me overwhelmed.

 

Let's take an example. One day I was watching a very familiar movement on the Classical Arts Channel. Surely it is the 3rd movement of a piano concerto, but I just cannot remember who is the composer. This piece has been integrated into my brain for years, I listened it over and over again.

 

Unable to remember outright, I started to guess. The nature of both grandiosity and sentiment demonstrates it belong to Romantic era, but there are so many composers. Then Johannes Brahms came into my mind, could it be possible? Well, the relentless truth gave me a wrong response, this piece is actually Grieg piano concerto!

 

But on the other hand, Brahms and Grieg are somewhat related to each other.

 

平时我们生活中办公中会产生很多垃圾，这些垃圾最后都被Waste Management公司收去了。Their ultimate destination大致有被焚烧，被掩埋(landfill)，或是recycle。欧洲和日本因为地小人多，所以他们尽量不将垃圾掩埋，回收率例如易拉罐头也比较高。而美国大多数waste eventually是被landfill了。Landfill也有好处，能够产生methane产能。Landfill场被装满以后还可以盖个公园或高尔夫球场。例如在Staten Island上美国历史上最大的垃圾掩埋场接受了纽约半世纪的垃圾，现在正在规划一个公园。再如湾区的Foster City原来也是垃圾堆积场，不过大多不是生活垃圾而是建筑或是疏通河流海湾的硬垃圾，现在是个漂亮的生活工业住宅区。

 

有一位教授想调查一下多年以后被landfill的垃圾最后都变成什么样了，他跑到一个70年代的垃圾场提取一些样品。这种工作也够难受的。他发现办公用的纸张很难在自然条件下破坏，事实上这些纸张constitute the largest proportion of all rubbish generated within the US。上面一句想写中文需要动脑子，懒。Anyway, it's interesting that so many paper forms the greatest components of all rubbish. Imagine how many advertisement mails you have received every day in your mail box, and how many papers you have engaged on an every day basis. This conclusion is reasonable.  

 

However, with the advancement of electronics especially exponential growth of hard drive storage capacity, most information contained in the paper can nowadays be stored in the hard drive. Therefore, gradually the paper production industry will shrink, thus reducing the total amount of paper ultimately being turned into rubbish. What's more, put every paper publication and books into the computer, taking notes on the computer, etc. will make it much easy to transport. There are many benefits 这里就不一一列举了.

 

Let's take an example: book publishing. Usually the author and editor rely on Word, Acrobate or other computer based editors to generate publication quality books. Then the manufacturing company print these electronic version into the book made of paper.  I would rather guess the reason why pubishers hesitate to distribute the e-version of most books are due to copyright infringement. It's much easier to distribute the ebook than traditional paper book. But on the environmental perspective, we have a different conclusion.

 

黄昏时到系楼前，红色水泥地上发现一只西瓜虫在那里爬啊爬。用手碰碰它，居然不缩成一个球，再碰碰它，它开始逃了。于是用两个手指把它拎起来，这回好，哈哈，缩成一个圆滚滚的球了！西瓜虫真好玩！像滚球一样把它滚到旁边的泥地里，侬慢慢玩去吧，下次碰到你要乖，主动变一个球，知道吗？

 

 

 

 

最近发现两个音乐很好听:

Johann Pachelbel 的 Canon in D major

George Frideric Handel 的 Water Music Suite

 

看来Baroque music is interesting。有趣的是我在逐渐退步，从romantic到classic再到baroque.

 

父母回上海了。

衣来伸手，饭来张口的日子结束了。

回家冷冷清清，很不爽。应该多回中国看看。

不过又可以去gym了，运动真舒服。