The autumn air is tight, and the morning sun rays pierce straight through every layer of veneer I brush upon me. There is so much coating around my person that I feel untruthful. At times such as today, I wear pink sweater with matching earphones feeling like dingledodies, and yet, when I charge straight into the torrent of life, I realize I'm not so strong and reckless. There is, at times, the dichotomy between if I'm brave enough to lead my life and if I'm crazy enough to let life lead me. There are also times when the two coincide, but there is still the fear. It is times like this morning, however, that I realize how estranged from but vulnerable to the actual elements of nature I am. All my humanly conducts are like treading in midair, naively thinking I can feel the softness of autumn leaves beneath my feet.

Earlier this year, it was all over the media when scientist from the US showed that people's social network circle has a strong impact on their health. The few studies that were conducted focused on pregnancy and obesity. It was shown that where you are in the network is associated with your individual makeup, which is unsurprising, but also, the network that is not immediately related to you, is also associated with your DNA. For example, some people like to introduce their friends to their other friends, so their networks are more entangled than others. In other words, how my network and my friend's network look like is more than the sum of our two immediate networks. There is another layer of meaning that comes from the information that describes how we are connected. This is described in the book Connected.

What it makes me think of are souls. We always talk about how we are more than an aggregate of billions of cells. It all sounds beautiful but like a wishful thinking. Now, however, it's much easier for me to imagine how my soul is really there, not just there because I want it to be. It's the part that is beyond.

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For the math/stats nerds out there, I used to think of my soul as the residuals that are left unexplained by my model. Now I don't like it anymore, because all models are false, and the remaining variations can also be explained further by augmenting the model, but my cells are real. Even if I fully understand each cell, I cannot augment my cell model enough to account for all my individuality. Afterall, this is only an analogy. Social networking though, is not just an analogy, I think it's really the same mechanisms.

I was watching the Shawshank Redemption yesterday. (only the best movie ever? Albeit heavy for a happy and light hearted night.) It makes me think about the way we live. We mostly live like Red, enjoying the small things, or we live like Brooks, being kind and furnish a cozy niche for our humble existence. We live in the world and assume the world lives in us. For the past year or so, I've actually been trying to do that. It's a happy way to live. It's an easy way to live. It's a life that harms neither myself nor others, and most of all, it's a life that is not lonely. I believe most of what define who we are, is how we live, the style of which we have a choice more or less. That's why I hate it when someone tells me I as a person is similar to someone else whose life I fear to replicate. I believe I have a choice in the matter.

On the other hand, there are those heros, those who live looking beyond the walls. They harbor hope that stretches long into the future or even beyond time itself. Their happiness lies in the possibilities rather than the existence. Their decisions are driven by the unknown. They are air-headed, because chances are they look so far ahead that they stumble upon a branch beneath their feet. Many people prefer to lead a life like this. I can't. I find it disturbing, in fact.  It's like reversing the universe, putting the spotlight on something you cannot see and dimming the lights on those clear and beautiful details. Black seen as white, and white as black... yikes, dizzy.

Is it really possible to have a vision so wide that you can live both in the present and in the future? Is it only possible in movies? It must be so tiring. My head would explode by the strain.  Maybe the two ways are just the two extremes, and we all live somewhere in the middle. A couple tablespoon of realism and half a cup of airheadedness. Hmm, only if it could be described as an ROC curve, we can find the optimal blend...

I was reading this book called How to Build a Dinosaur. It's about genetically engineering a dinosaur out of chicken. Personally I don't have a problem with genetic modification or even specie creation/re-creation, but one statement both in the book and news release just made me feel... our sense of moral (or should it be ethic?) is so distorted.

Because people questioned the ethics of doing such recreation, the group says that if any specimen/individual animal is to be recreated, they would all be in singleton and would not be able to mate.

Seriously? This is supposed to be more ethical than creating a herd of them? So, too bad, do you not only have to endure all these endless lab tests, gawking and woos and ahs, you will always have to be in your lonesome, all because we need to be very kind to you and make you die before you can make trouble for yourself by having children. Oh, and by creating one of you, I technically haven't done anything.

Basically, we believe that if we let one individual die, it's alright, but if we create a species and they somehow go extinct or escape... then we are inflicting pain on the poor fellas. That doesn't make sense unless you are a big advocate for mass abortion or even sterilization.

I didn't know that a thousand years before the Renaissance the people actually called the time they lived in the "Middle Times". This is rather interesting because I always thought terms such as the "Middle Ages" and "transitional period" are all retrospective. Nowadays we always think of ourselves are being post-such and such, or even apocalyptic for some. I wonder what kind of difference in social mentality would constitute to the different hopes and prospects for the future. Doubtless to say, different groups of people would have different views on this, and I yet to find out who those people with long term visions to see themselves as the middle of two primes.

I was walking on the over pass enveloped in the sound and sight of traffic flowing under me. My heart thumped with resonance.

This is definitely not the first time I marveled the sight of traffic. "Artery" is definitely the right word for the ceaseless, and yet dynamically immobile torrent. The whole thing often reminds me of a water fall, the sound muffling any screaming punk in my earphone, and the sight leading my eyes from one horizon to the other. BBack in Beijing, these over passes are more easily encountered, I often leaned over the railing trying to decide which lane should be numbered 1 and which one 16. It was even more fun to see the relative speed amongst all the lanes, a much grander sight from above than at ground level.

It's almost embarrassing to feel the city is just as astoundingly beautiful as nature, so long as I'm outside and treading each fibre, although I did eventually realize, the heart thumping effect was mostly due to climbing up the whole way than the excitement.

I wouldn't say I'm very surprised to hear Michael Jackson's death, after all, everyone dies, especially in the news. He does hold some kind of significance doubtlessly. I have to say that he was probably more adored in Asia than in America, I'm probably somewhere in the middle, I find him so far away from what I can comprehend that my mind cannot produce any kind of opinion.

One of the news report from Asia says his contribution to modern pop is incomparable and he has made the music community accept people of colour, okay that to me is quite some BS, especially since what he'd done to his own skin. I recall when I was in high school, some guys loved his songs so much that they sang them in every talent show, karaoke competition they could find. He represented american music more than Back Street Boys or Elvis. One guy even tried to dance like him. Even at that time, I felt sad for myself, because I could not understand even the guy who mimicked Jackson, let alone the celebrity himself. Nonetheless, the ferver was there, unmistakable, the probably must had been in myself.

Then when I came to Canada, everyone is bashing him like a half dead fish. I felt a little sorry for the guy. He's soul was so beaten I felt that nobody gives him a breather. Why would people hate him so much when his life is so sad? Mostly though, I find him in such a distant world from my own, I don't think I can ever have a place in my heart that either relate to hate him. He's... really just a picture on the wall, impossible to get off, stuck there forever.

I don't usually get the sentiment of loss of innocence, because I don't feel that children as we were had less worldly troubles than we do as adults. Adulthood here obviously refers to the part I have so far experienced. Somehow, just now I felt a longing, a longing to go back to the muddy child I once were. It probably is music induced, nonetheless, it was there.

The kinds of trouble I had as a child would always be so clear and sharp. A letter to the parents about unfinished homework, a bully I just wished to kill with the biggest TNT tank, a fear that my dear father would not live with me for ever and ever. They made it so easy to wish for something, though sometimes there was no way to grasp that wish in my childish hands, unless I could really get hold of TNT.

Troubles these days come in dull tinkerings. They are like currents of underground lava. It might be that I'm just stoic, but I think the real reason is I am so aware that there is no simple answers to these reservoirs. The destitute of either a heaven or hell for them leaves them churning. What can I wish now? I can only wish for vague things, empty things.

Or is it that I am now afraid to wish? Someone once told me that my lack of faith is my lack of expectation and disappointment and that my starved relationship with God was because I was afraid to ask.

It could also be that I'm just so incapable of explosion. If there is going to be lava, it probably would be healthier if I can errupt once in awhile. Being someone with a very strong will but very little temper, I wish I could fire up a little more. It's not even that I don't like chaos. I like going traveling to extremely unfamiliar places just to seek chaos. I'm probably afraid of chaos that I can't get out very easily eh?

Aye... but yeah, I wish... something, let's find something to wish for.

So for awhile I've been holding the strong view that our current culture, namely, value structure, foods, aesthetics, relationship common ground etc, only depends on a very near past. For instance, foods we eat and recipes we use were only discovered very recently, like potatoes and tomatoes and so on.

Nonetheless, there remains a complication and I think I have come to appreciate the dependence on the further past. 

Our culture has a time series structure. Each step depends only on the very near past, (in a first order structure, Y_t = f(x_t, x_t-1), ie, the currently situation depends on now and one generation back), we can probably extend this to 2nd order, and that's really as far as I'd go. However, over time, present is still indirectly dependent on the very far past.

I guess this has always held true in my head, but not really in my mind. Or rather, I have under estimated the amount of influence that carries forward, or how slowly cultures actually evolves. One reason I saw it that way is because the dependence between one generation to the next is not always a positive correlation but rather a negative one, ie, if the mother generation is into pink, the daughter generation would detest pink. This is not always the case, especially in culinary. LOL

So these "back and forth" of cultural movement shows a canceling effect that fogs my eyes. It's evertheless a dependence that can hardly be ignored.

The anti-globalization activists say that since the time of Columbus the number of languages in the world has declined from 15K to 6K, which means our languages are not as rich of an reservoir as before. I don't have the knowledge of the evolution of many languages, but I still beg to differ, at least in the way the conclusion is reached.

I won't even argue about how those two numbers are counted since so many languages or dialects in this world are geographically continuous. The more important thing is there are diversity between languages, as well as with in each language.

In the past couple hundred years, both English and Chinese have incorporated a lot more foreign concepts. The Chinese is a little harder to measure due to the linguistic reform, but in the whole, diversity still exists, just within each language.

I know also, for some colonized places such as Singapore and some countries in Africa, local concepts are not lost, the incoming language has absorbed local languages into their fabric and even spread beyond the borders.

This type of new diversity in my opinion is better because people can actually understand and take pleasure in the diversity rather than simply having it present in this world but only some language expert of God can have a good laugh over it.

 

"Home" is an onion word to me for the past few years. Home was where I slept and where my radio and books and underwear were, when my parents and I stayed put. At that time, home was the familiar smell from the cracks of walls; it was knowing exactly where the floor creaked; it was knowing all the neighbours without knowing when and how I knew them.

Then home was where my parents were when we moved around. During that time, the structures of the walls no longer mattered, but each night, there would be similar topics over food or TV shows. I could walk to the other room, taking for granted there would be two most familiar people, completely careless about what is covering their private parts.

After that, home becomes an ambiguous word, I hesitate to Beijing or China home, because I didn't feel like I knew either very well. I probably knew less of it when I was there than when I left. However, it is home in a way that I feel my heart enlarges whenever I go back. My heart would pump blood more strongly and I felt like spinning round and round. I felt like smiling upon the thought of people I knew.

What about Vancouver? I feel I have more of a home here than anywhere else in the world. Maybe because if I were to move here now, my life would go on without much kicking and screaming. Then how about Seattle? I have an apartment there, all my *things* are there, and there are people I care A LOT about. My life also moves on as I'm living there now... Do I have to have just one home? Is the feeling diluted otherwise?

Yesterday I was downtown, above a coffee shop we went to there is a gallery called Traver's and displayed glass work from a couple of artists. Once artist has all hir glass in the form of twigs and twine, "woven" into baskets or other containers. Each small glass pieces were shiny as crystal, showed all its crispy and unbending nature. My muscles twitched a little, because I felt a sense of inalterable destiny. They were held together in such intricate elegance, but they are exactly as they are individually. There's no change in them because they are woven together. There's no changing their positions. If the glass were in mashed texture and softened surface, I might felt otherwise, but the icy radiant saddens me. I could helpt but lifting a finger to touch it, just in case I'm wrong... maybe they were warm and soft afterall? But no...

As I walked outside later in the night, it was snowing, the streets were dusted by small snowflakes. They were hardly flakes at all in fact. Snow is beautiful no doubt, but for a while I felt they also look very lonely. They don't care about each other, and aren't influenced by each other. They come down into the world in their own accordiance, and stay on the ground just as they landed.

Then again, I collided in midair to form bigger flakes, they get scooped up and squeezed into a big snow ball but puffy soft gloves filled with cotton. They land on the nose of a squirrel and give her a little start and be shaken off. They are everywhere and tumble into all sorts of troubles. Is that because they were not glass, or was it because they didn't stay in a gallery?

So, after my stat exam I went to the UW pool for the first time. I haven't swum since this summer in Malaysia I think! It felt soooo good.

The pool here is not as professional as the UBC one, but it also had fewer people. Instead of rushing in and out of the pool like boiling potstickers in a large restaurant, I enjoyed a lane, though short it was, by myself.

Water is my favourite element. It has the most soothing and yet the most powerful sound. The pool definitely doesn't have the sound of waves or gurgling of stream, but when I duck my head under, I can hear the incessant chattering. Water has accents too. There is the water in old lakes, they scream and claw my skin; there's the water in the grand tropics, they dance and roar in the most colourful dresses, as if I don't exist; then there's the pool of course, where the water is a little sour about its humble existence, though still full of energy.

My life is probably not so grand that it has an orchestra of colours, or exotic experiences for the dinner table. Probably it's just like an indoor pool with people occasionally coming in and out, either to swim or to make sure I'm filled with yucky clorine, but I love my existence. It's full of people and things I can gurgle or giggle about.

So I went to see the promo preview of Slumdog Millionaire with Dan. It was such a good movie! When I saw the trailer, I thought it would be one of those movies that use the "strangeness" of the poor developing countries to appeal to the exotic seeking western audience, while in fact, I found out that it's not, or not in it's essence at least.

The movie is very full of flesh, full of beautiful people. It's really about the human emotion and the joy and pains of life, rather than pitiful big-eyed children appealing for sympathy. I felt heart wrenching rather than tear soaked.

The film had a large cast, the three main characters had 3 stages of their lives acted out by three actors/actresses each, and the kids and youth were people from the actual slums. I can't believe they were such good actors! I have to say they were much better than those from Yimou Zhang's film.

Danny Boyle, the director was also there. He answered questions with lots of straight forward sincerity, didn't stumble on any questions. I just felt that answering questions on the spot would always be really hard. So I guess either he's just really good at these things, or he just devoted so much to it that he probably had 10 times as much prepared without actually preparing in terms of the Q&A.

So the new theory is that our sense of smell doesn't base on the shape of molecules but rather the vibrational frequencies of the bonds. The support is that molecules with very similar shapes smell drastically different while those with similar frequency spectra smell very similar. As for how our nose does it, there is only a proposal, or I should say, some mechanisms have been proposed as possible in our physiology, but not known to be a fact.

This is very interesting, because our vision, hearing and touch are all vibrational, now adding the sense of smell? Is taste then a different sense from all the others? Is this another beautiful tough tough question in the science Tri Bond?

If our perception of the world is so based on vibration, it makes me think of the nature of our detection of information. Is it another extension of the uncertainty principle that, if we can only detect vibration or movement, then we have to absolutely acknowledge the nonexactitude of all that we know. I personally haven't a clue how quantum mechanics work, but if that's the case, are all sensories more or less a detection of vibration, ie, even in a smaller scale?

How about time? Time flows forward as we detect them, is that a trivial kind of vibration? What is vibration anyway? Maybe the vibration a chemist talks about is different from the vibration a physicist talks about? One in a larger molecular scale, one being the quantum level electron clouds? Umm... I'm not sure, all very very fascinating.....