On Space Projects

I used to be very simple-minded and against the Chinese government launching space projects with astronomical (a suitable adjective, at least literally) amount of money when there are many children in rural areas unable to receive proper education. In my over simplistic mindset, the expenses of the government can be invested in many other ‘more urgent, essential’ areas, like improving education, fighting poverty, raising productivity, and so on, instead of those ‘useless, showing off’ areas, like space projects and gigantic constructions.

But I have also been a NASA fan since the first day I came to know its existence. I cheer for every NASA success and love all those NASA legends. Why I supported NASA but opposed Chinese space programmes could only be explained by my deep distrust in the Chinese government and the Communist Party.

Yet I was wrong. Gradually I have come to understand the importance of space projects, even if it is done by communists.

Space projects are not just showing off abilities and strength — in fact, it is the most expensive way to show off strength, so expensive that the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union had to come to a halt without conclusive winner. Space projects are more science oriented, rather than politics oriented; they are to benefit the whole human race, instead of a limited group of politicians.

The technologies developed for space programmes are mostly deployed in civil productions. Military industry of course would be benefited as well, but those benefits can be justified by the benefits bestowed onto the public. Even at the height of space race, NASA carried out scientific experiments and developed many technologies that we have taken for granted today.

The first artificial satellite of China was indeed an ideology propaganda tool, but that does not nullify the importance of Chinese space programmes in recent years. Time has changed.

However, no matter how much I support the space programmes, be it of NASA or Europe or China, I could not make myself agree to the propaganda elements in the Chinese media reports. ‘The hundred years of waiting ends! We Chinese have realized our dreams of flying to the space!’ Frankly that is nothing to be proud of if a country, who thinks highly of herself, can only manage to accomplish what the other countries have accomplished decades before. And talking about ‘dreams’, have the Chinese really dreamed of anything close to this? Those vague, bluffing, bragging, pretentious slogans only make supporters like me disgusted.

Loss of Memory

After 10 years I came to Parkway Parade in 2012. It was so different to what I remembered a decade ago — but what was in my memory? I could not remember so clearly. In fact, Parkway Parade in my memory had been so blurry that I doubted whether it was me who had been here at least twice a week during the period 1998 – 2002.

The sense of loss came to me as well as I visited the district in Swatou in 2010, the district where I lived from 1987 to 1998. I knew it had changed dramatically but I could not figure out how it was like in my blurry memory. It was like everything had been redefined, and my memory had been erased completely.

This happens not only to places but to people too. Sometimes I wonder where the person in front of me has come from and why I get to know him or her because that person has changed through the years and yet I cannot remember how he or she was like when we first met. Is it a punk played by life, or a cognitive phenomenon that is natural to common people?

No doubt I am very nostalgic but my memory keeps failing me.

I cannot remember clearly how Singapore looked like when I first came here fifteen years ago. I can only remember that the MRT system was still a new thing then, and people were generally happier. What has made Singapore so different now, I cannot tell, but she is different.

I cannot remember clearly the life in Chung Cheng High School (Main), but when I went back as an East Zone teacher I could sense the fall of my alma mater. Not that she was at a very high status when I was a student there, but she did fall, as far as my sense told me.

I do not know what has ruined Singaporeans’ happiness, nor can I come to understand why my alma mater has slipped through the years. My memory is not capable of recalling the past and obviously of comprehending the cause of changes. What it is capable of is just a deep feeling of loss.

The world changes fast, no matter how my inner self refuses to accept that. The world changes so fast that my memory cannot absorb the recent events before it needs to face new changes. People say that change is the only constant. I fully appreciate it, and do make myself adapt to new changes. But it is still something lost that I cannot retrieve any more, that saddens me much, that makes my past a worthless mess.

Why I am here is due to my many selves in the flow of river of passing currents, and those selves are all gone.

The Meaning of Photographs

One of my pupils, who graduated from our school 3 years ago and is going to Secondary 4 in the coming year, is now very sad because her iPhone cannot get recovered from iTunes backup and therefore has lost her 4355 photos — she does not have the habit of synchronizing her photos to either iCloud or other cloud storage but solely depends on her backups on a PC.

Of course no one wants to lose anything, or the storage service providers, either online or offline, would not exist. But we do not need to grieve so much that our precious sleep has to be sacrificed in mourning. As I told that pupil, nothing is eternal, and starting anew is actually easier than imagined.

‘Those photos are my memories! They capture those precious fun moments!’ She said.

No, they are photos, not memories. True memories exist not in photos but in hearts and minds. Photos capture those moments, yes, and help to remind you those moments. But if you need photos to remind you those moments, are those moments really precious? Are precious moments not preserved in your fond memory?

Fun moments normally will become sour and bitter in future. They are bad evidence of the past because, in future, either your life is no longer fun or your friends are no longer there to share your joy. Either way it is, is seeing those photos of the fun past not a torment?

I take photography as a form of visual arts. I take photos not because I want to preserve the moments, as I cannot do so by clicking the shutter button. I take photos because the sight is beautiful and it somehow expresses myself through colours and shadows. Beauty is temporary; everything decays. If the world remembers it, then it gains some kind of immortality in the collective memory of mankind, and I do not need a copy for myself. If the world does not, why should my own pride bring the photos to my grave?

Some of my colleagues see me as ‘full of negativities’ because I seem to see only weaknesses, stupidity, inhumanity and irrationality in the bureaucracy. That might be true, but only at work. In life, I can see beauty in every corner and find humour in every speech and action. My cameras, including my smart phones, are deployed to capture the beauty and humour in life, not because they are precious moments and ought to be preserved but the lifespan of photos are much longer than that brevity of bliss. The extra length of this lifespan enables the sight to be exposed to a larger audience with a hint of my personality. That is all.

Never attach too many ‘meanings’ to the photos. Photos are just a media, a platform, and will be gone, sooner or later, together with those ‘meanings’.

In fact, you have lost your childhood friends, your cuteness in kindergarten, your primary school works, the clean air, cheap food, youthful vigour, purity of innocence, ignorant optimism, and many other things when you grow up (and old). Losing some photos is no big deal.

Fragmentation

It’s been almost three months since the last post. I have been updating on Twitter and Weibo, on all kinds of topics and yet seriously fragmented. Fragmentation seems to be the major trend and concern in today’s world; from content generation to content consumption, from software development to offline education, from organization management to daily grocery, we all face the overwhelming urge and often inevitable necessity of fragmentation: breaking a grand, higher order mission into much smaller, easier tasks, which can be accomplished by utilizing our already fragmented time slots, and yet most of time stop us from seeing the actual mission, making us focus on short term benefits and instant gratification.

Fragmentation has its value in this fast-paced, information-overloaded era, but it is an enemy of pleasant reading experience. I started reading Dan Brown’s new novel, Inferno, on 14th May, and finished it on 25th May. If I were to read it during a holiday without any work to do, I would have finished it in at most 3 days, and because of the continuous, uninterrupted reading, I would have immersed myself in the book more deeply and enjoyed the flow of the events with more anticipation and fulfilment. However, in reality, I finished the book in 12 days, with some days in between without reading at all. As a result, the flow of the events did not seem intact, and I needed every time to re-read the previous page to get myself reconnected with the story. I could not absorb myself completely in the story, like I did when reading Angels and Demons. I still enjoyed the book, but it would have been so much better without the fragmented reading process.

Not just reading; fragmentation affects my work as well. A very obvious example is the setting of examination papers. I can set a complete set of examination paper of high quality, with all formatting perfectly done, in just three or four hours without any interruption. However, ‘three or four hours without any interruption’ is more and more a luxury, partly because of my never-ending official duty and flooding of emails, partly because of my inability to resist distractions from my phone and my web browser. The time taken to set a paper is not simply ‘three or four hours’ plus ‘the time spent on the web and other distractions’; it is a typical ‘1+1>2’ situation. Besides a longer process, the quality also drops, even if given longer time to finish. In another words, fragmentation reduces efficiency and effectiveness.

To counter the negative effects of fragmentation, schools organize intensive classes, some companies (like Facebook) hold coding and design days, cinemas hold movie marathons, and some text processors (like iA Writer and Microsoft Word for Mac) provide full screen, distraction free environment. Even WordPress editor comes with a ‘distraction free writing mode’, in which I am writing this post.

Piano at Night

In 1995, I bought a cassette with my little saving. The first and last music cassette I bought in my life, it contained a dozen of piano works, with the first one being the then very popular ‘A Maiden’s Prayer‘. I bought it because, in the novel I was then reading, this ‘A Maiden’s Prayer’ was kind of the theme song of one of the heroines. I played the cassette every night, in a low volume, when I was ready to sleep. With all the lights off and curtains closed, the soft, clear piano melodies were floating in the room, charming me into peaceful dreams, and sometimes making my eyes wet because the slowness of the music, the calmness of the air and the darkness in the room made me sad — and yet this sadness was so pleasantly sweet; the unshed tears made me aware that I was alive and able to feel.

There was a music radio station, which had a classical music night every week. The DJ was a gentleman who spoke with a soft and calm voice, and the music he chose was all soothing piano solos and concertos, occasionally alternated with violin concertos and quartets. The timing was just when I was ready to sleep. So on that particular day of each week, I did not play the piano cassette but turned on the radio. I tried to visualize the images and scenes described by the music and to empathize with the composer’s emotions expressed through the melodies. It seemed to me it was the best time to feel and appreciate classical music at night, lying on my bed, without any light on, because then I could own the whole world and I could focus on the sound instead of being distracted by the modern materialistic world.

People say I have an old man’s soul. Listening to soothing piano music when going to bed is one of the ‘symptoms’. Maybe I have had an old man’s soul since 1995, when I was 13 years old.

The cassette era was gone for good, and the CD era came. I bought quite a number of piano CDs (including more than two Richard Clayderman‘s), but none could give me the same sensation. Perhaps it was because then I was staying in a hostel and it was inconsiderate to play my music through loudspeakers, especially at night. I could only listen to my CDs with earphones, which I did not dare to put on while sleeping. Things changed in 2002. Some months before my ‘A’ Level, I started studying in an air-conditioned study room with a long sofa. There was no one else at night, so I slept on the long sofa and played my piano CDs through the cheap loudspeakers, in the same low volume, just like 7 years before.

Then I discovered Kevin Kern. It was a Sunday afternoon when I was browsing the CDs in a shop. And I was captured by the beautiful music that filled the shop. I put down whatever CDs I held in my hands, and went to the counter to check out the ‘Now Playing…’ box. It was ‘In the Enchanted Garden‘ by Kevin Kern. Without second thoughts I bought it.

Kevin Kern’s music gave me exactly the feeling I felt listening to the cassette in 1995. It was magic. After a whole day of hard work, I read a chapter of some novels before sleep, with this CD as the background music. Lights off and eyes closed, the music again charmed me into peaceful dreams and sometimes made my eyes wet. I bought almost all his albums. But ‘In the Enchanted Garden’ remains my favourite till this day. I played it when preparing for ‘A’ Level in the hostel, in 2002. I played it when trying to get rid of all those negative feelings at night, with moonlight pouring on the floor on the second storey in the rented house, in 2003. I played it when I could not sleep in my university dorm, with breezes flipping the curtains and cats meowing outside the windows, during my college days. I still played it frequently after I started working as it made me recall the difficult days and be grateful for what I owned at the moment.

Of course I also discovered some other great pianists and  composers, like Roberto Cacciapaglia, Lin Hai (林海) and Shi Jin (石进). Especially Shi Jin. Born in 1981, he composes and plays piano music that feels pretty much older than his age. I like playing his music while working and writing, but I love his music even more when I play it while I am getting to sleep. Three of his four albums are titled ‘(Piano) Melody of the Night’ and I think these titles are very appropriate.

I will continue to have an old man’s soul, listening to soothing piano music when going to bed, till I am indeed an old man, because I do not foresee any possibility of dropping this habit in near future.

Numbness and/or Inner Peace

Something really bad happened to me last week. Ridiculous and baseless accusations and defamations just showered on me. But my emotion was under control. I was enraged at that moment, but rather briefly. I only showed my anger by slightly faster breathing, and nothing else. I sat straight, kept cool, and made firm eye contact with that person. I told myself, I was much better, in terms of manner, logics and anger management, than the person sitting opposite me across the table.

Very soon after this episode, my emotion was back to normal. When my colleagues came to console me, I genuinely told them I was alright. I still enjoyed myself in my reading, my work, my conversations with friends and pupils, and my food. Really. I did not hold a grudge against anyone, any more. I found myself especially positive on that day.

Some may say I was numb, while others may say I found my inner peace. To me, the words ‘numbness’ and ‘inner peace’ are equivalent. To be peaceful in this imperfect world, you need to be numb in some situations. The only questionable part is not whether it is numbness or inner peace, but in what situations one should be in such a state.

The mentally strong ones can decide what to be numb to, and what not to. I am not strong enough because my mood still swings occasionally without any particular reason. I do want to be strong. I wish I could have steady breathing in the situation mentioned in the first paragraph.

An introvert thinker I truly am.

Lunar New Year

When I was very young, living in the village, I liked Lunar New Year more than any other festival. My mother made new clothes for me, using all new materials. My father came back from work in the Town and bought us nice food. They gave me a hongbao (red packet) containing 50 cents each year till we moved to the County.

Poverty could be seen all around the village, but the villagers were happy, as we didn’t see many floods or droughts, and the field usually provided us enough crops. We also had pork and poultry, which were scarce because we all raised our own pigs and chickens, and they were only meant for offering to ancestors, gods and fairies during festivals. Every family had at least two strings of firecrackers to burn. I can still vividly recall the sound and the smell when the whole village was immersed in the smoke and flying red paper strips.

On the new year’s eve, I bathed early, put on the new clothes my mother made for me, and waited for the most important dinner of the year to begin. My grandmother sat at the chief seat. My uncles, aunts and cousins sat freely around the huge table. Different from Northern China, we did not emphasise on the presence of fish dishes or dumplings. We did have fish, but the main item was the hotpot. The traditional hotpot we used was aesthetically beautiful and scientifically unhealthy: we used charcoal as fuel, the smoke after which combustion raised up and went through the short chimney at the centre of the hotpot, while soup and food were boiling in the pot around the hot chimney. The small windows of our old houses were all high up, leaving the room dangerous of carbon monoxide concentration. Yet no one ever died of that, and therefore no one ever thought of that.

I moved to the County when I was 4, and still went back the village during Lunar New Year, till I entered primary school.

Firecrackers were illegal in the County due to the density of buildings, but we could still hear them scattering around the neighbourhood. Pork and poultry were now very common in daily life, and the traditional hotpot had been replaced by a mini gas oven with a stainless steel pot.

There was more and more money in the hongbaos given by my parents, justifiable by inflation and the increment of my age, but I often paid the school fees with it. But I no longer longed for the new year to come.

I started to hate the crowd and noise during the festival. I hated the smell of cigarets when my relatives and my parents’ friends came to my house. I hated the faked smiles and insincere flatteries of the guests.

I started to spend the Lunar New Year week in the bookshops. I knew every single bookshop in the County. I knew their locations, specialties, rare items, discounted items, speed of restocking books, service attitudes and business hours. I would buy one or two books if I had enough money left after deducting the school fee from my hongbao, otherwise I would just read books in the bookshops.

The number of bookshops shrank dramatically with the widespread of the Internet. In 2003, I was at home during Lunar New Year, and I could only find two bookshops remaining.

I spent my Lunar New Year in Singapore from 1999 to 2002, went back to China in 2003 because I was waiting for my A Level results and there was no schooling. Then from 2004 till now I did not go back any more. I spent 14 Lunar New Years in Singapore. The number is overwhelming. But it is true that Lunar New Year means less and less to me. Most of time it is just an excuse to have a good rest and friend gatherings. Sometimes I cannot even have them.

Orion

Whenever I look up at the dark night sky and find the three stars in that nearly perfect straight line, and the four stars that form two huge quadrangles with the belt, my mind always drifts back to that cold night, in that small county that I call my hometown; and it drifts once more to that breezy evening, in the school that I call my alma mater.

Orion is the first constellation I managed to recognise, simply because it is bright enough and also easy to locate. The three stars on the hunter’s belt serve as the landmark, and once you see them, you get Orion. I got it at home when I was 11 years old, and my interest in stars lasted for a few months before it slowly died due to the constantly worsening light pollution.

Before I joined the Astronomy Society of Chung Cheng High School (Main), I could recognise three constellations: Orion, Leo and Scorpio. They are huge constellations with easily visible stars that can be connected to form beautiful shapes. Somehow I knew about Antares, the heart of the scorpion, too; and knowing that this heart is constantly aimed at by the arrow tip of Sagittarius, the half-horse, half-human creature, I learnt to locate Sagittarius too.

On the first evening after I joined the Astronomy Society, I saw Orion, the dominant figure in the sky. I also learnt that the three stars mean more than a belt. They even point to Sirius, the brightest star in Canis Major, one of the hunter’s two loyal companions, and to Aldebaran, the alpha star in Taurus, the hunter’s eternal target in the sky.

And if you extend the shoulders of the hunter to the left you can find Procyon, the alpha star of Canis Minor, the smaller dog following the hunter. The star on the hunter’s left shoulder, Betelgeuse, also the alpha (though only the second brightest) star of Orion, together with Procyon and Sirius, forms the Winter Triangle.

I read about this fascinating triangle on books before, but it was my first time connecting the three stars and looking at the triangle. We were lucky that the first evening in the Society was a clear, cool night. The sky displayed the full panaroma of all these blinking stars and shining planets above me, and for the first time I felt overwhelmed at the sight.

This sight took away my breath. I started to imagine what the Earth would look like if there were some aliens looking at us from some lightyears away. I started to feel the moving of our planet through the emptiness in the space. I started to visualise the brevity of our life and the meaninglessness of our everyday trouble. I started to see clearly the tininess of the space we have occupied and the ridiculousness of human beings fighting over territories.

I was amazed and scared at the same time.

The majestic constellation, Orion, and the Winter Triangle always remind me of the feeling and thoughts on that breezy evening. They are kind of the dearest friends to me because, after all, we are some remnants of ancient stars. We are stellar dusts, too.

小诗

我是一棵四海漂泊的老树
不停地流浪八方，沉默
沉默千年，却居无定所
我只愿有猎户闻风追来
一箭射穿我的胸腔
并用他鹰隼般的眼神
扫过我如茵的灵魂
大笑而去

我是一只盘根错节的野兽
牢牢地抓住土地，怒吼
怒吼千遍，却动弹不得
我只愿有樵夫迷途而来
持斧砍断我的身躯
并用他树皮般的手
数着我血染的年轮
大恸而去

石叻歌

我虽身处北纬一度的岛国
心里却是一片寒冬
几万世纪的冰棱垂下
刺伤了满眼的郁郁葱葱

太平洋和印度洋的海风
交缠于双眉的皑皑
从马六甲吹到苏门答腊
卷走了星光，或是未来

我的心没有这热烈的阳光
也没有缠绵的雨季
我躲在冰川倔强的怀抱
将偷窥世界的眼帘放低

传说狮子的城市从未哭泣
泪水都染作两鬓霜华
我只想走在微曦的小径上
偶尔停下采一朵蓝色的花