no1no1no1no1 的个人博客

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I got confused by a simple math question just now, about how many years I have gone through. It’s my 21 year old birthday today, but it’s the beginning of the 21th year. So I finally made it clear that I have actually lived 20 years.

When I was young, time went second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour. It sounds like a sophisticate to begin a paragraph by saying ‘when I was young’. But now time flies year by year and I am just numb about that, until I suddenly find I have passed 20 years. How many 20 years is one gonna have?

I don’t plan to recall what I have done in the past 20 years. Memory is just the contrary to time. When I search in my mind and display those fragments about the early years, the scenes slide in a fast forward way and they even become blank every time I try to grab something from the earlier points. But the scenes gradually slow down as I continue to play the tape of my memory.

I find myself has fallen into a kind of self-compulsion. I tend to force myself to forget everything about the past. As a result I had no idea when the professor was talking about Fourier Transformation last semester, though I’d just learnt it several months earlier in China. I once read a book about memory and it said that human tend to forget the unpleasant things for self-protective reasons.

The bad news is I cannot even recall some happy experience. Am I a pessimist? Oh no. What are the first 20 years of a pessimist to be like? I really did not want to define myself as a pessimist and denied those happy moments I shared with my dear ones. I started to print photos I took and sent some of them to my friends.

I asked my roommates in ZJU to check mail box. One of them told me that a girl said she missed me so much. Omg I’ve almost forgot how she looks like.

But then I was able to uncover the whole thing. There was such a time that I asked her out every night…to study! Oh what a stupid idea! But I was able to sit very properly and finished all my homework. And on our way back I was saying exaggerated words for myself. What was she feeling like? I don’t know.

I tend to talk a lot about girls with my male friends but in fact waste no thoughts on girls’ ideas. Even about that girl, I was instigated by my roommates. They said she is the prettiest girl in our class although I actually did not see any girl in that class as pretty (I heard about that several really beautiful girls switched into that class after I changed my major).

I forget what we talked on the way back now.

Why were we walking back?

Oh, I remember now. She didn’t know how to ride a bicycle and I didn’t have a back seat on mine.

Whether she spoke something or not?

Oh, it seems she did talk about her father!

No! She was saying that I was like her farther. What a poor description! No wonder I forget the whole thing. But there must be something about those nights still remaining in my mind.

The shining stars, the ringing bells from bikes of the passers-by, a mixture of  the fragrance from the flowers together with the mugginess after the military training, or a certain kind of impulse when we first gained a feeling of freedom.

Oh, how could I forget those beautiful summer nights! I have not even seen a girl riding on a back seat of a bicycle here.

Was there once a girl lying on the grassland next to me by the Qizhen lake talking about her dream? Did I promise a girl to present a bouquet at the end of drama performance but I just sit quietly watching her helpless face on the stage? Was there a midnight by the West Lake I bought a girl roses after an old woman chatter endlessly to sell them? Was there a girl that grabbed my oranges every day and taught me to take off the skin rather than cut them? Was there a mid-autumn night when a girl had crabs and beers with me in an empty classroom?  

Whether I played beautiful piano songs for them? Whether I held one of them on my back to watch fireworks? Whether I sang karaoke with them all night long? Whether I was forced to pay them a big meal after I got awards?

Now I doubt whether I’ve actually done those things. Were the girls separated ones or were they the same girl? What if they were just made up by me?  I no longer believe in what is in my memory, but why I still clearly remember what one ordered in the restaurant and what another’s favorite song was.

Oh, they all exist, in the most beautiful time of my life!

I suddenly realize how romantic the life in ZJU was. Students are protected not to be exposed to society too early and  they can enjoy a 4 year long freedom, which is a best gift in their life. And I cannot complain any more about why I never win girls’ favour. It is me who have never treasured those memories.

I just somehow miss some very things of the past so much – A restaurant where I had dinner with weisuo and a corner in high school where we got a good look of the sister who raised national flag and other pretty girls; A small canteen where we stood up and called linda ‘big boss’; The football court where huangwenzhi shot the football towards dead angle of a goal and fucked the security staff off, and where a black guy said to manwu ‘你踢得很好’.

‘I’ll feel too lonely to finish a meal by myself’, I remembered a girl once told me those words in fengwei canteen of ZJU.

(end)

written on Jan 6, 2011

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Sometimes, I try to figure out who and where I was a year ago. Maybe I was having a University English 5 class or doing the homework for the damn course named principle of circuit which will not have any relationship with computer science even on the doomsday.  Well, who knows how I decided to participate the dual degree program and picked up computer science as major. Even though I am indeed in computer science I have no responsibility to learn the circuits. The fact is, I have to take all these courses, said in an inexplicable way by our director in ZJU. But later on what leads to my balance was that all students in ZJU have to finish more or less these kinds of strange schedule. I, and probably most of us would enjoy working hard and cursing hard towards these absurd courses.

Time flies and somehow I am thousands miles away from that piece of land. In fact I don’t know how many thousands it is from here to my home, but now I would chat with my family at least once a week, which is much more than I did when I was in ZJU. I am not supposed to have strong feeling of distance. Is that true?

The courses here are well-designed (in fact as I mentioned before everything is well-designed here). So one has no need to specially look for a gap in this perfect system of academy (maybe the system of whole Canadian society?) and curse for that (which was once our favorite entertainment in ZJU). The only thing you could wish yourself to do is following the right track and going straight along.

That reminds me of the English lesson in my primary school. “Excuse me, how can I get to XXX station?” “Go straight along this street and turn around at the XXX corner. You will see XXX in front of you.”

So, excuse me, how can I get to the end?

Go straight along this track we have designed for you and don’t turn around! You will see glory in front of you!

Who’s glory? What a woeful thing! There is someone arranging the life for you! You do think your life is unique. But you don’t know your life is just an instance of a template. There are lots of other templates in this land where I am stepping on. 

People in North America are always full of confidence. They used to believe in God but now they only believe in theirselves. I don’t know who gives them fatuous confidence and they just think they are the unexcelled ones in the world.

But who ensures you a glory for yourselves? You don’t know the template-like citizens are the easiest to govern.

Life on my dear motherland is much more excited. One will be faced with all kinds of absurd things. That’s because around you, everything is developing, which gives you extra energy every single day. That’s so-called developing country.

Life in Canada is more foreseeable and steady. It is good for physical health. It is good for those inside the main culture as well. But for an outsider, if you stay here long, colors of your life will be fading away, until one day when you see your children enjoying the night party with their friends, you suddenly recognize the fact that you have no common topics with your own children.

Who will then understand you? Where has your own life gone?

You will even fail to recognize who you used to be.

(end)

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SFU is good!

SFU is good because here I am no longer worried about a seat for selfstudy. Study places are everywhere in the academic buildings, and in library there are even specific areas for quite study or silent study (although I can’t tell the difference between these two).  I can stay in the library till almost 12pm (I supposed it to be 24 hours open before I came here), and some safe guards will soon come and shout ‘library is closed’. What a fantastic idea to warn students by shouting!

In ZJU, the situation is very weird. A piece of sad song ‘梁祝’ or ‘song from secret garden’  will disturb your mood for going on studying. Except those have great endurance, one must leave on time. But you will find that it is only 10pm or so if you look at your watch. I always wonder why the library will be closed so early for a top university.

In ZJU seats for study are always in short supply. During the exam week, it is not a strange thing that you get up at 6am and rush to the classrooms only to find that all the seats have been occupied. Wars are on show every day between those who have occupied seats and those still hunting for a seat. In these wars, a boy is no more a gentleman and a girl can discard all her femininity. Boy friends are the backups for the girls. People around are paparazzi who are always ready to report these events on the school BBS. (OH! Why there is not a formal BBS for SFU?) And those seats are just crowded together and you may be disturbed by others from time to time if you don’t wear ear plugs.

Well, in SFU, every study area is well designed. The seats are enclosed by covers, and soft sofas are offered for group study. It is just like other things in Vancouver, or in Canada, they are well designed and efficient and reasonable existence. In China, there always exist absurd designs. As in ZJU, there are lots of empty classrooms and even empty lands leaving unused, but at the same time the seats are not sufficient. Also in my hometown Guangzhou while forests of skyscrapers over hundreds meters and the world’s tallest towers stand in the city, the poor citizens or outlanders are still struggling for a shelter.

However, I found that happiness cannot be easily defined as absolute fairness and satisfaction. In ZJU, one can be cursing those occupying seats for a whole day and at the same time still feel very happy during this process. In SFU where all facilities with efficiency have been maximized, few will have interest to use them.

Happiness is not enjoying what others design for you but witnessing magnificence from which you gain motivation to chase the fully satisfaction of your own.

(end)