山东

我要描述山东那一趟旅游！

山东是个小型的FUSSA秋游。我是和Leon，Zhengjun，Sixi，Jiaming，Ivana，Julia，Weiming和Zhipeng着八位同志一起去的。
All in all, we visited 3 places. 曲阜,淄博and济南. This time, I did not get cheated, traumatised or overly horrified and appalled at the terrible excesses and inherent evil of human nature.

Come! Enjoy some strange photos of my fellow companions!

Amusing JuliaGlorious Ivana

A strangely bashful JMThe awesome girl that helped us loads with regards to bus tickets...

I would say that a definite upside to this trip was the interesting company. Personally, i draw my delight during traveling from the beauty that surrounds me. I loved the Chinese gardens, the slanting autumn light, the iridescent pearl on the petals of the chrysanthemums. I love the seeming mundane quality of the long roads, the hours spent traveling with total strangers. I love waking up in the morning and brushing my teeth next to some snorting old man spitting into the metal wash basin. I love meeting fellow photographers and exchanging tips with them. (I learnt something awesome from an old man in 济南! :D) I can go on and on... but i'm sure that i have made myself quite clear.



All that aside, i begin to realise that perhaps its not enough. My companions were schooled in chinese literature and thus had an acquired ability to appreciate the culture and history that surrounded us. They drew their enjoyment from a different source. The genuine excitement that flashed upon Sixi's face as he walked through 李清照’s former residence struck something within me. I am inadequate. Therefore, this time i took something different away from my trip. I took away greater self knowledge, and a drive to become more informed about chinese literature which will thus teach me about chinese history and culture. For that, I picked up a book of Tang and Song poems! Yes. I did look up 李清照’s work and yes... now,to a certain extent, I understand Sixi's delight.

The trip also brought other flurries of new revelations. I learnt more about some people and am determined to continue filling the tank.

That's Sixi.

拿得起，放得下

这是我的新人生规则

Red leaves

Red leaves. One of the below is constant, faithful, loyal to its nature. From the second it blooms on the wrinkled surface of a twig till the day it untangles itself and withers to the ground, it remains red. The others are changeable as opal, shedding their green and yellow glory as the winds blow. Fickle them shedding their multicolored dresses like dancers changing partners in a masquerade.

Can you tell them apart?


Mark a few lines in the poem, Song-Inconstancy in Love by Robert Burns...

Mark the winds, and mark the skies,
Ocean's ebb, and ocean's flow,
Sun and moon but set to rise,
Round and round the seasons go.
Why then ask of silly Man
To oppose great Nature's plan?

P.S.
Blogger misrepresents colours. It infuriates me.

Honor

After listening to Beyonce's "If i were a Boy" on my sister's blog, intrigued i went in search for its lyrics. I was incredibly struck by something...

f I were a boy
Even just for a day
I’d roll out of bed in the morning
And throw on what I wanted and go
Drink beer with the guys
And chase after girls
I’d kick it with who I wanted
And I’d never get confronted for it
Because they’d stick up for me

I have reached a conclusion after reading the words in Red. Friends stick up for their friends. They don't condemn and judge. That's honor. To any outsider, I will defend and protect. We deserve to do what we want and be safe, for our friends will stand by us. especially here.

Where i am

Light through glass patched with rust,
a room of white gossamer.
Thick dust
smother white, matted, damp.

Silentium Amoris- Oscar Wilde

As often-times the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.

And as at dawn across the level mead
On wings impetuous some wind will come,
And with its too harsh kisses break the reed
Which was its only instrument of song,
So my too stormy passions work me wrong,
And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.

But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show
Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;
Else it were better we should part, and go,
Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,
And I to nurse the barren memory
Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.

Shandong

I'm back from Shandong. It was a good trip. But...it was confusing.

Love-the realization of it

When i was a few years younger in age and several years younger in thought. (or so i would like to think), i told myself that the day i fell in love with somebody, I'd know by the following scene...

A bus stop: I wait as usual for my bus after a long tiring day in school. Beside me stands, oh so wonderfully the object on whom my love is to be tested. Rather than hoping my bus comes before his (as i always do with my friends), i would wish his comes before mine.
When/If that thought entered my mind, i would know that i was in love.

To understand the above, one must have a clear picture of the social strains accompanying waiting at a crowded bus stop outside a girls school. To wait alone, i am ashamed to say...was a very uncomfortable thing... especially when you are at the age of adolescence. Then i thought, when i was willing to put my discomfort above his, i would be in love.

Today, i have a different view. :) I'll know when I'm in love upon the onset of a strange phenomenon. But this test can only happen if he lives above me and we use the same lift. HAHAHA! the likelihood of that?!
Lets set the scene...

A Lift: I live on the 9th floor, the object lives on the 15th. Every time i get out of the lift, be it at the ground floor or my floor I'll press the button 15. Just so he'll have the lift waiting for him if he ever wants to get on.

And how has the maturity of my thought progressed? HAHAHA! But there is a difference... Its no longer self sacrifice, but a more sensible priority rearrangement and respect.

A square

In a square, wherever you face you will never be able to simultaneously see anything and everything at the same time. What stretches ahead is an incomplete 3/4 of picture. If we wanted to see everything, consider everything all at the same time, we'll have to make a super human effort to spin and twirl endlessly in the middle of the square. But the spinning will cause us to lose important details and compromise our ability to absorb what we see.

I have been burdened by the sheer amount of things to consider while living on this earth. I've been spinning and twirling, trying my utmost best to see and think about everything on all sides of the square. But I've never been able to do that... which irked me. But now, i realize that perhaps we are just not made to think about everything at once. We are limited as human beings... but that being our nature, perhaps its something we should accept and embrace. Maybe that's why specialists are paid more and the phrase "Jack of all trades master of none" used as a derogatory term. We are 1.6crop bodies...full frame may exist in cameras, but not in humans. Perhaps that is why "the dude" sent us all here with different purposes. Its like a puzzle... pieced together only at the end. That means we'll have to concentrate on our own pieces for fear we add a blotchy piece to the puzzle as we were too busy looking at and trying to comment on what other people were doing.

I'll stand still on my side of the square.

优生学对于残疾人士所提倡的方法

Let me share something with the chinese readers of my blog.
I would write the following in english. But i decided that its about time i learnt or tried to express some thoughts in chinese. Deepest apologies if your eyes are damaged after reading my clumsy inexpressive chinese... But one must always start somewhere.

今天的生命伦理课（Bioethics）使我恍然大悟。教授谈的是优生学（Eugenics）。其实我明白偏见在教伦理时是很难避免的。但是这位教授说的话使我浑身不安。她支持优生学，还说中国第一节的生育控制已经做完了。数量控制好了，现在要制质量。更让我吃惊的是她说第二节是随着新加坡的脚步执行的！但那不是今天的重题。只是说说让你们知道一下中国人是怎样看待新加坡的。

一直以来，我积极的支持实行优生学。因为我总是认为社会利益比个人利益更重要。如果优生学能提高人民的质量的话，为何不实施呢？但今天当教授讲到强制执行绝育，对缺陷胚胎执行安乐死时，我的心灵突然被恐惧的那双冰冷手扼住。中国这个国家一直偏向生育控制，他们的“一孩政策”是世界恶名昭著的。但少人知道的是这个政策到底执行到怎样的程度。一个好例子，有一段时间在甘肃省男女如果要结婚的话，不绝育（sterilise）是不能得到结婚证的。这我认为是已经违反生存的权利，反对人的自然过程。但是人口过剩也是一个很大的问题。我觉得凡事都要适度进行，“一孩政策”就够了，不应该强制执行绝育。而且，这还是执行在正常人生上！

能不能执行在残疾人士身上也是另一个问题。优生学提倡用避孕，人工流产，绝育的方式来除掉残疾者。赞成执行者常用的原因是残疾人士是社会，家庭和人群的负担。但我觉得这也不一定。我们不能忽略他们能带给社会的贡献。比如，有他们就能展出社会人性的一面，特别是在这种先进，迷恋金钱，冷酷无情的时代。而且，世界也有非常多残疾英雄，数也数不清。一些例子是Ludwig Van Beethoven, George Washington, Albert Einstein, Woodrow Wilson. 这样，怎能说残疾人士是负担呢？我对这方面没有研究，但是我觉得应该用利益来判断这个问题。实施优生学会不会带给残疾者和社会利益？如果一方得到利益，会不会伤害另一方的利益和生存的权利。而且，我们是否用正常人和残疾人士的两个角度和观点来做判断。我很想用 “容让别人，别人也会容让你” （live and let live）这句话来做个总结。但是我不能否定对于严重残疾者，可能执行优生学的方法利多余恶。

这只是我随便发出的一些观点。可能语文程度不够好，把意思表达错了。