Author Archives: Jiayi

Late night

” Love is vivid. I never wanted the pale version. Love is full strength. I never wanted the diluted version.” — Jeanett Winterson

I had impulsively a high blood pressure when I read this. Seldom people, nearly none, can understand or even know how a romantically idealist I am.

I feel sorry for the realists, and they feel sorry for me. No one, however, should apologise.

At the moment I still wanna stay naively young.

O ever youthful, O ever weeping.

soap water

He was like sparkling bubbles, being stared from Michelangelo Square, mixed with the humid yet dry smell of Arno river, with sober yet drunk taste of blushing alcohol, floating over the red cupola of Florence Cathedral in either dark morning or dazzling night.

Bubbles broke. It became in the end soap water.

Shining soap water, but just soap water.

opium

Because of knee injury while hiking I have been on sick leave for one week already.

I limped last night in the rain to the pizza imbiss downstairs, only for a cola which costs 2,5 euro for 1L. My neighbor who was having cigarette break at the entrance had to hold the door for me. It was not the first time I did so – cannot help myself buy a bottle of cold cola at late night only to solve my thirst problem in an optimal way.

My friends can’t understand why I’m so obsessed to cola. The same as most of them do not understand why I am so obsessed to a certain of life style.

It’s maybe, I assume, just because like opium in cola or opium in the air of freedom.

showing off

When I think, that people argue bullshit everyday to suffer another eight hours in order to make some money, which is not really equivalent to how much they’ve pushed the civilization forward, then to squander those money into something, which pathetically mankind cannot enjoy naturally because they are mankind, for example, following the lane back and forth in swimming pools, or moving Z-shaped to the mountain top, to use the sticks poke the soil and show off that they love nature. But nature is just there. It does not love back. It does not care. When would human beings don’t care and stop showing off?

Day-off and reading day

Having one day-off because of the wisdom teeth op yesterday, yet still have logged in the work pc and checked Emails and schedules for next week for trying to be a quasi workaholic 😉

I have started the book Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea for a while already, today moving forward. It was written by american journalist Barbara Demick, who has reported extensively the North Korean refugees and defectors.

It goes slowly today actually since I have searched so many relevant stories and documentaries online, to have a more concrete impression and to feel the feelings in a closer way.

In 2012, Chinese media have surprisingly post and reported a real story about North Korean defector family, who broke through the Japanese embassy in Shenyang, China for political asylum 10 years ago. This showed that the attitude of China to North Korean refugees had turned into a brighter or more humanistic way. (link: http://bbs.tianya.cn/post-no04-1918321-1.shtml)

I watched Joseph Kim’s TED talk. The white audiences were so touched and were giving standing ovation. To be honest, many times I am still confused by the motivation of spreading, obeying human rights, and sometimes, controlling others’ life for an observance. I didn’t say it is a wrong thing. I can not deny that lots of people are helping based on moral principles or because of a bigger word LOVE. But LOVE is too big. Does political correctness lead to love? or does love lead to political correctness? Or there’s nothing, people just do it because it is something correct. But who has ever really defined correctness?

Someone would say I am too naive. No correctness, no rules. I have then to sadly admit that there are the rules in utopia world.

 

The song at the boundary

I’m comin’ home, I’ve done my time
Now I’ve got to know what is and isn’t mine
If you received my letter telling you I’d soon be free
Then you’ll know just what to do if you still want me
If you still want me

Whoa, tie a yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree
It’s been three long years, do you still want me? (still want me)
If I don’t see a ribbon ’round the old oak tree
I’ll stay on the bus, forget about us, put the blame on me
If I don’t see a yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree

Bus driver, please look for me
‘Cause I couldn’t bear to see what I might see
I’m really still in prison and my love, she holds the key
A simple yellow ribbon’s what I need to set me free
I wrote and told her please

Whoa, tie a yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree
It’s been three long years, do you still want me? (still want me)
If I don’t see a ribbon ’round the old oak tree
I’ll stay on the bus, forget about us, put the blame on me
If I don’t see a yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree

Now the whole damn bus is cheerin’ and I can’t believe I see

A hundred yellow ribbons ’round the old oak tree
I’m comin’ home, umm-hmm

(Tie a ribbon ’round the old oak tree)
(Tie a ribbon ’round the old oak tree)
(Tie a ribbon ’round the old oak tree)
(Tie a ribbon ’round the old oak tree)

(Tie a ribbon ’round the old oak tree)
(Tie a ribbon ’round the old oak tree)
(Tie a ribbon ’round the old oak tree)
(Tie a ribbon ’round the old oak tree)

 

Note on “Letters on Wave Mechanics”

I am reading the book “Letters on Wave Mechanics” which collects the correspondences among H.A. Lorentz, Max Plank, Erwin Schroedinger and Albert Einstein.

One part in a letter, which was written by Schroedinger to Plank, reveals the fact that why I did not choose quantum optics as my specialization in my master study, which I knew for long already.

The concept “energy” is something that we have derived from macroscopic experience and really only from macroscopic experience. I don not believe that it can be taken over into micro-mechanics just like that, so that one may speak of the energy of a single partial oscillation. The energetic property of the individual partial oscillation is its frequency. Its amplitude must be determined in quite another way – I believe by normalizing the integral of the square of the total excitation to the value of the electronic charge. 

The professor of Max Plank once tried to persuade Plank not to take Physics as his major and said to him: “In dieser Wissenschaft schon fast alles erforscht sei, und es gelte, nur noch einige unbedeutende Lücken zu schließen.” (In this study almost everything has been researched already, and there is only some unimportant gaps left to be filled.) And Plank answered: “Ich hege nicht den Wunsch, Neuland zu entdecken, sondern lediglich, die bereits bestehenden Fundamente der physikalischen Wissenschaft zu verstehen, vielleicht auch noch zu vertiefen.” (I do not have the desire to discover a new land. I only want to understand the existing foundations of physical science and perhaps even to deepen it.)

The fact is, the micro world is way too sophisticated for me to understand. I don’t have such spirit to deepen the already too abstract foundations. I don’t have interest and I don’t think I would have the ability to seek infinitesimal in infinitesimal. The micro-theories make the world be more “the true, the good, the beautiful”. The macro-handling deals with the civilization level of a society, in a more superficial way.

读《胡适留学日记》第一卷札记

昨日读完胡适先生的留学日记第一卷,有几个地方有点儿意思。

其一是这个宴字的用法。胡适在日记中经常使用“宴起”,“宴睡”。这个宴字看着就舒服,结构上下平衡,左右相称。读音也软软的,没有棱角。遂查文言文字典查找它的准确意思:

详细释义
yàn
①<动>快乐。《左传·成公二年》:“衡父不忍数年之不。”
②<形>安闲。《雁荡山》:“雁荡经行云漠漠,龙湫坐雨濛濛。”
③<动>以酒肉款待宾客。《醉翁亭记》:“山肴野蔌,杂然而前陈者,太守也。”
④<名>宴席。司马光《训俭示康》:“闻喜独不戴花。”
【宴安】安逸;舒适。
【宴尔】安乐幸福,亦喻新婚之禧。
【宴居】闲居。

有意思。在脑海里已经有整个语境的大概概念,但是如果单提出这个字本身,根本没有能力去解释单个字。然而如果看了注释,会发现官方解释确实就是自己所理解的那个意思。我觉得这就是自小对语感的积累而产生的效果,也是非母语者最难攻破的一个点——按照感觉说话,按照感觉理解。而非母语者学习外语的方法很多就是抠字眼,比如去一个个字查,这个宴是什么意思,然后一二三条解释,记下来,背,可能再背个例句。可是没有感觉,白搭,学得太慢。

忽然恍然大悟。

再举个书中的例子:

八月十一日(星五)

上课。下午晤Brown君夫妇。此君夫妇皆尝至吾国,……

结合语境,就是说这对Brown夫妇之前都来过我们的国家呗。可是这个尝字单拿出来要怎么翻译?查字典,尝作为副词就是曾经的意思,比如“未尝”,“何尝”。这些词都很常见,但是用得时候根本没有意识到每个单字有怎样的意思。

 

其二。胡适在1911年6月4号写到:

温德文。德文之“主有位”(Genitive Case)甚有趣,汉文“之”字座主有位时亦与此同,他日拟广此意为作“之”字说。

嗯。在美国康奈尔农学院留学的胡适不仅经常手伴英文书,也经常“夜读德文”。我觉得可以在各种语言中将语义用法等融会贯通的人就是真的语言天才。品作者的这句话时非常有成就感。有时候真的觉得多会一门语言,就打开了一个新的世界这话太对了。读到此时为自己会德语而感到庆幸。