Summer Is Comming

So summer comes back, after two years. I am washing my t-shirts now and hopefully the sun won’t go away before I dry them.

It has been another two month since my last post here. I have my excuses, as usual. To be honest, it has been an eventful. There is good news and there are bad ones. I really shouldn’t be gossiping about myself because it is against the gospel of gossiping. Besides, it has been such an eventful in the world. We’ve got more interesting stuff going on that me.

Talking about interesting stuff in these two months, how could anyone leave the fantastic Olympic torch rally behind? The term fantastic here is both real and sarcastic. It is real because the Olympic torch rally should be a fantastic event. It goes over all continents in the world. It connects all races together. The flame goes around the global represents a union of the human kind regardless to their background, their belief or whatever uniqueness each individual may have. The essence of modern Olympic is the celebration of this great gathering of all human sprits. And who could ever miss such a chance to have some fun. Apparently, lots of us didn’t and some did manage to make this sarcastic.

Apparently, Olympic is no longer Olympic because China is hosting it. Therefore we should stand against it. Of course, because China is the host this time, we should dig out the ancient dusty history and point out that the Olympic torch rally was actually coined by Nazis making all the people who had ever been excited about any Olympic torch rally big fools. And surely we have to go on BBC 1 and say that it is only ‘slightly unfair to compare China with Nazis’. We have to attack China hard on this so we must not let anyone know that Tibet was operating a slavery system before someone really funny was exiled. We have to be pro-Tibet so we have to call it a conflict between Tibetan and Chinese, knowing that Chinese actually refers to a population includes 56 ethics groups such as: Tibetans, East and West Asian Muslims, Koreans, Mongolians and Hans, which would’ve made the phrase conflict between Tibetan and Chinese no sense. But it is obviously very unreasonable of us asking our news editors to research into such deep background. It might involve using Google, you know!!! Did you know there was a worldwide protest supporting Chinese Olympics? There were 2,000 people in London, and thousands in Paris, LA, and Australia. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Thankfully, our media mostly blocked it. What is the point of showing the positive side of China? It is not going to make any news.

Maybe it is strange to many people in UK but Chinese take Olympics every personally. The whole nation is so proud of it. Everyone would like to donate money, if the government would take it. Some western countries’ attitude had seriously hurt the feeling of 1,300,000,000 Chinese. But of course we shouldn’t care about people’s feeling from a communist state.

China is getting rich now. It is starting to share some of the world power. It is doing the 2008 Olympics, which will be better than ever. Get over it!

And enjoy a nice summer.

My Weekend

There goes another weekend. I was doing what I have been doing for over a year now during weekends: cleaning the local hospital. It is a part-time job I took to help with my bills. Of course, being a PhD student, I have my ridiculous proud. I didn’t really feel good about it at all in the beginning. I was even reluctant to tell people there that I was doing a PhD.

Things change. Surprisingly, I found myself quite well suited in this job. It is peaceful. I don't have to struggle with difficult questions there. Just simple sweeping and mopping are keeping everybody happy. Nurses can be rough but most people are very nice. Patients always appreciate my work. Moreover, I always take lots of funny stories back to my house. There are funny things around. Like today, one of the good looking charge nurses has been promoted to matron. One of the patients has been singing with another tone all day. I am actually having fun working there sometime.

Well, the only problem we cleaners have is to get over the hospital in the morning. We all have our magic. Some share a cab. Some get a lift. Just by chance, a very nice Spanish lady started to give me a lift. Actually, her daughter drives. She is a very nice and beautiful woman. It is never boring in the car. She always has lots to tell. To be honest, as the car is nosy and I am not quite used to her accent sometime, I will normally lost about eighty percent of her story. I will then just keep smiling and nodding and repeating: ‘is it’. It works like a charm. Hope she never finds out. I can’t thank both of them enough.

When I am back to home, it is the boring bit. I am normally too tired to do anything. Now it is Sunday night and I am just annoyed that I will have to go to university to teach tomorrow knowing it is going to be raining heavily.

Over Gary's

It is 3:49 am. I am here at Gary’s to help him with some of his work. He is in bed now and will have to go to work at 6 am. The silly man just got married to an amazing girl. Every single one of us agrees that she is way out of his touch. I haven’t met Michelle, his wife, that many times but I’ve heard a lot about her, either from Gary or from the gossipy Chinese student community. She is very independent girl from a big family. Being rich back in China, she is determined to fight for a career here in London. It was actually quite a story. After Gary and Michelle graduated from Warwick, she only managed to find a position in a marketing firm with no basic salary but commissions. What she was doing was standing in the shopping mall and trying to sell insurance policies or other products of that sort to people walking around. Yes, we all know she was the kind of people we don’t even bothered to say no to while enjoying our precious time spending money that we haven’t earn yet. It was really tough for her of course. The newly graduated Chinese girl didn’t back out at all. Not even after Gary had tried hundreds of times asking her taking an easier road, which always ended up in family crisis as Gary would say. She said she’d carry on because she thought she can learn something. I actually wasn’t so convinced of that but no one could argue with her. She wasn’t doing so great at the beginning though. For mouths, she only managed to do a few deals, each of which only got 20 pound commission. The two had to struggle with Gary’s wage in London. She started to do better later but the reward was still pathetic.

One day, she was still doing her usual selling in a shopping mall and was still full of energy as always. She walked up to a woman and started her routine of persuading. Luckily, this woman appeared to be interested and stayed to listen. While she thought there was another 20 pound almost secured, the woman gave her a business card and said: You are actually very good. Why don’t you come and work for me? And there you go. She is still working in the new company that is much better and actually pays a reasonable wage. I never thought it would work out for her but it just did. I found myself have to admire her for that.

Well, that is just some story I thought I will keep telling for a long time. In order to make a better life, the couple do some causal work as well and that is what I am here to help. I had to finish it quick as I will have my thesis left to finish so I am working nights today. I actually enjoy working nights. It is so quite and I can concentrate so well despite the fact that I am exhausted. The instant cappuccino from Kenko wasn’t so tasty at all. The foam had such a dry taste and I almost felt disgusting after two cups. But I think I am almost done for tonight.

Darkness of the night always brings up the feeling of loneliness in me. Gary was lucky but I never have luck. Thinking of it, I should have saved some luck for not buying lotto for 26 years. I wonder when and how I can redeem it. And now it hits me that I still owe the newly wedded couple a wedding gift. I will need to give it some thought.

Relief

It is of course very unprofessional of me as a blogger to leave here untouched for almost another month now. Luckily we have 29 days for February this year and I get to catch the last train.

So what’s new? Plenty! This February has been such an eventful. Both my professional life and my personal life have added such strong flavour to my life. It was bitter, spicy and sour. I have been stressed into such an extent that I practically hated everything. And now I know why. I have so many expectations on so many things and when the bubbles burst I apparently can’t take it too well.

So the last bubble burst this morning. It was such a usual stressful morning and I was trying so hard to fill up my thesis. I was just moaning my less ideal life to a friend of mine and I realised that the last bubble just burst leaving no trace behind as if it was never there. There I was. Setting there finding all the expectations I had became past memory with only a pile of ‘what if..’ left. I thought I would be sad and pessimistic again like I always do. 

But I didn’t, surprisingly. I felt a relief, a long over due relief. Maybe with all the expectations gone, I felt that I then couldn’t get disappointed or upset by them anymore. So the burdens that I have been dragging along just faded into thin air. 

What bubbles did I have? I will tell one day. For now, I just feel great, calm and full of energy for the cleaning tomorrow in the local hospital. We are going to have a clean ward.

I AM Pessimistic

I thought what I wanted was so simple yet every step I took towards it was so difficult and the outcome was always less ideal or rather disappointing for many occasions. Being an atheist, I could only believe it was somewhat fate. Fate is, however, such a tricky idea. It is rather sarcastic for some atheists like me who believes no supreme power beyond our mind but think there is such matter as fate somewhere controls our uncontrollable existences. I too found it foolish and had endeavoured to actively challenge it but I was less convinced by the results of my efforts. Therefore I concluded that it must have been my expectations being so high that I ended up unsatisfied.

As a consequence, and also as a result of brought up by my father, I have grown this habit of picturing the worst outcomes of things all the time and getting myself repaired for such scenarios. In short, I am very realistic, although most of my friends disagree and crown me as pessimistic. In my defence, this is simply a form of self-protection mechanism. Equipping myself with imaginable least ideal consequences prevent me from being upset from less ideal results. A friend of mine once told me that all I was enjoying was the surprise given by the outcome of something, which at the end was proven better than I had expected. He might be right.

It is actually just a strong form of insecurity. It might be, in fact, caused by my strong desires of the best outcomes, which led to my disappointment and not being able to believe myself again. It does sound sad and it probably makes it sadder when I am, now, speaking of it out loud, not very proudly though. But of course I am not such a sad little thing in all respects. I am extremely confident about the utterly odd Neural Network online learning framework I proposed in my PhD research. Well, I am confident that it is odd enough, at the very least. So, the light of hope is there somewhere after all, and I will propose to my PhD thesis tomorrow. I’d have to get a ring tonight somewhere.

By the way, happy Chinese New year. It is going to a splendid year of rat.