No matter what people might say, some things are, well, pretty much the fundamental, irrefutable laws of the universe, I guess, as I've learnt over the past few weeks of random incidents along the way.
For one, if it's good for your heart, no matter what they tell you, it doesn't taste good. I think the Cheerios advertisements are really effective, because I went out and got myself a box of Cheerios for breakfast since they people in the TV advertisement looked so happy eating it, and the big, bright, yellow box looked so appetizing. Unfortunately, it looks much, much better than it tastes, and it's just tasteless, toasted cereal. Amazingly, I think even oatmeal tastes better than Cheerios, but maybe that's because I do my oatmeal with brown sugar.
And, the fine print always comes back and bites you, especially when you don't read the labels properly, like literally. Instead of the usual instant quick-oats, I ended up getting "old-fashioned rolled oats" by mistake--the kind you need to boil for 10 minutes and stand watch over the fire stirring it (or pop in the microwave for 5 minutes and have it spill all over haha)--so between watching a pot for 10 minutes (which, by the way, as another fundamental law, NEVER boils haha; you have to stop watching it) and Cheerios, I think Cheerios is the lesser evil; in any case after a week of eating it, I'm halfway through the one-pound box so it'll be back to oatmeal after. After a terribly long digression, I found out only when I opened the box of oatmeal to find nice-looking, well, rolled oats, instead of the usual flaky instant ones, and only then did I take a closer look at the label, and realize the mistake. Why on earth could they not vary the packaging and label slightly to make it more obvious it's a different kind, like have a different-coloured label or something?! Oh well.
That's why they call it the fine print I guess; but then again the words weren't all that small haha.
In other fundamental laws, you will never, ever take the most direct route to get something done, to get to something, somewhere, or to achieve something; that's just not how it works. In fact, a lot of your time will be spent doing things that you completely shouldn't, only for you to realize later that you shouldn't have haha. Maybe it's because it takes all that going-the-wrong-way, doing-the-wrong-thing, for you to get the sense of urgency that would finally propel you to the right place, after you become utterly shocked at how much time you've wasted, that you'll no longer waste any more time and finally gain focus. After all, focus and motivation has to come from somewhere, right? And when you finally realize how far you've strayed off the intended course, it's amazing how fast you can get back on track and get to the place you wanted to get to from the beginning. But could you ever have made it there in a direct way, from the beginning? I doubt it. Haha.
Or maybe I'm just saying that to feel better about the last couple of weeks of mind-numbing, head-splitting things I've done.
It's just two more weeks of work, three more out West, and four more to home. Too much to do, and too little time--I think that's a fundamental state of the world too--we'll never get enough time to do all the things we want. So there.
The tough get going.
But clearly, I'm not "going" as yet, seeing that I'm not actually doing work right now.
When the only thing that stands between you and impact is sheer hard work, time is not on your side, and you don't feel like working hard anymore, what do you do?
That's a tough one.
I should get going--both literally and figuratively.
I think life, society, and everything else in the United States can be broadly thought about in two categories: near and/or along the freeways, and far off of the freeways.
It was quite a different feeling driving down Clague Road in Westlake, just outside of Cleveland, although it's still the same country I've been living in for the most part of the last four years, it gave me quite a different feel from any other place I've been to before in the country.
But the moment the road gave way to the I-480 interchange, it was a whole different story altogether, and I knew that I was still in the US, and not in some nice, idyllic, quiet, pretty little country.
It's almost as if the country itself has a split personality--one being that of the typical quiet American family (if there even is one), of soccer (or hockey or football or, name your sport) mums and hardworking dads, of nicely manicured lawns and painstakingly decorated and painted homes, of large expanses of space, of single-lane roads (well, in each direction) with a middle lane for left-turns across the traffic, with tall trees and their luscious foliage overhanging the quaint roads and providing much-needed shade and respite from the blistering summer heat as the air fills with the smell of barbeques and the shrieks of children running about the lawns with the various other children in the neighbourhood, pitching and hitting baseballs or throwing footballs or kicking soccer, as the parents enjoy their hotdogs and burgers over ice-cold bottles of beer out in the backyard, exchanging notes on which schools are better, or the latest gossip in the neighbourhood, or the men analyzing the week's off-season moves of their local, much-supported, football team.
It's a tranquil, pretty picture of quiet pride in their little lives as the average (not in the sense of mediocre, but in the sense of the common) family goes about eking out an existence for themselves, and a very comfortable one at that.
Yet, what really goes on behind the scenes to make all of those pictures happen, is the sheer largess that has come to define America, that you simply don't see from the lives of the everyday people. Perhaps; or maybe not, apart from the Hummer in the odd garage haha. It is precisely the entire largess that has come to define the American successes--giant economies, giant manufacturing plants manufacturing giant gas-guzzling vehicles, a giant movie industry, a giant science and technology culture of academic research, a giant military to back all the words up with force that cannot be reckoned with. It's almost as if size, the the enormity of it, has come to define the public face of the American people.
Yet, that has also backfired, as seen from the financial market meltdown, and now, the meltdown of the car manufacturers. It really is quite amazing to drive through the industrial heartland of America, and you really have to do that to even begin to appreciate (because I won't say I have fully appreciated) what the bankruptcy of GM really means for the man in the street. I couldn't help but gawk and stare, as I drove past the Lordstown GM assembly plant, that, at a quick estimate, measured at least 10 to 15 football (doesn't matter the one you kick or throw, their sizes aren't that far off) fields across, and at least 3-4 football fields in width, which makes the plant 30 to 60 football fields large--which is simply amazing.
Just one plant similar to that, and it would generate enormous numbers of jobs, and create an entire economy around itself. But all that is falling away now. But I digressed. The point is, this apparent schizophrenia is really just amazing, and never have I felt closer to seeing and understanding and feeling for myself, what the American life really is, than before.
I used to try to script out my entire talk when I'd just started out doing presentations of my work here, especially since I wasn't so confident and having all that text made me feel more secure. It was especially difficult having to deal with both content and delivery, especially when I wasn't too confident speaking here initially because of all the accent issues.
This was something that was quite difficult, because I used to pride myself on being able to talk off-the-cuff and not need scripts and what-not.
As I got more comfortable with talking in the course of work, I still tried to script out talks, prepare way in advance, and even memorize words, because I was lazy, more than anything else. I wanted to just prepare things and then be done with it, have a fall-back option, have something to rely on, and not have to worry.
But I've stopped scripting out my talks altogether in the last year or so, because it's just not practical. Sometimes it was because there was just no time and I had to wing it, other times it was because I just hated doing it, because it felt so unnatural delivering off a script, and because even trying to write down what you want to say just doesn't work because I'm writing rather than saying it, so it just becomes an exercise of reading out aloud something I'd written rather than actually talking about something, and that sounded terrible too.
But I rather enjoy the alternative--if it is *that* important a talk, I'll just go over it a couple more times, rehearse it, and have the pointers in my head to cue myself to say particular things that are not on the slides; otherwise, things just flow, I'm forced to be on my toes, to think through things quickly, yet precisely, and to be sure about my ideas, about myself, and to deliver with clarity.
No two talks I give have ever been the same--not even when I'm using the same slides. But I think I enjoy that, I enjoy the thrill of being in the moment, I enjoy that little bit of showmanship when I indulge myself, I enjoy being one with my work, and just talking about it plainly.
I think I should learn to treat other areas of life like that too--and not always want a safety net, a security blanket, to keep myself on my toes, and take nothing (and nobody) for granted. I think that really does bring out the best in me.
P.S. The drawback with having to do multiple dry-runs to get the hang of the talk is that doing it at the last minute utterly busts your voice and throat haha. It's time to stop after 4 consecutive run-throughs to save my voice for tomorrow (or rather, for tonight's final dry-runs haha). Another reason why MSN/IM is better than voice-based things like Skype: saves the voice haha.
温柔，到底是什么？ 怎么才能称得上是对一个人温柔呢？
因为害怕伤害对方而逃避现实、把对方蒙在善意的谎言中，就算是温柔吗？不——那是残忍的。
对一个人温柔，是需要坦白，现实的。只有接受了现实，才能鼓起勇气去面对现实，活好当日。
After all, nothing is forever; if something lasted forever, what would the meaning in it be? We really need to be kept on our toes all the time, for life, for the things around us, to have meaning; it's only that which is ephemeral, which can end, which can go away, that we learn to treasure. It's not about worrying whether or when it goes away, it's about trying, working every day, to keep it alive.
I guess that's what keeps countless things going, and that's what keeps the world spinning.
As usual--too much philosophizing. But hey, I'm waiting for my code to compile and run haha. 10 days have come and gone in a flash. Time to press the play button, and to unpause things.
The next time around, there will be no more hitting pause, it'll be for real. For better or worse, haha. Hopefully better :).