A Dinner Time

中文版

miao~ 

Before we went to dinner, met "Little Black" and "Little Grey" at the place we usually feed them.  It was two hours before usual.  Well... fed them a little earlier was not bad...

"Little Black" is more than 2 years old, now she looks a little.. sophisticated...

A blog post (in Chinese) shows some pics of the young "Little Black", and her brothers and sister.

"Little Grey" is the nephew of "Little Black".  (the son of her sister "Fat Calico")
Sometime he looks ... (cocky?)...

After dinner by the edge of campus, on the way back we met "Fat Belly".  Her voice was hoarse as always. We gave her some cat food.

"Fat Belly" has owner, not a wandering cat.  Her belly is really... fat...

When we got to the place of the "Little Cat", we saw (1)"Little Little Cat"(Little Male Cat), (2)"Little Dog Cat"(Lazy Cat) and (3)"Black Cat", except (4)"Little Cat".  They looked anxiously at...

Here came another adult male cat "Beggar Cat"... So the male meets the male, trying to bully each other...

Beggar Cat and Black Cat had fights before.  Here are the photo in their previous fight.

When we were about to go, we found "Little Cat" hiding around.... Little Cat is a female cat, so she can be around Beggar Cat without fighting each other.

Little Cat raised Little Little Cat and Little Dog Cat.  Look at the picture when they were kittens, and compare to the updated picture.  They've grown up.

Walked on passing by the library, met two cats "Little White Cat"(calico) and "Grey Stripe Cat" (actually she does not have many stripes).  So we gave them some food...

The picture below shows their family.  "Yellow Calico" (the mother brings up their 3 kittens) and "Grey Pale Cat" did not show these days.

......

So the dinner time ended...

miao~

~

Let's show 3 close-ups:

the Manly Beggar Cat;

the Handsome Little Male Cat;

the languid Little Dog Cat...

Love, Confused

Love, confused

"I'm not, I'm not infected. I'm not infected. Please. ... Please take my baby."

In these days I set the above word as my signatures of GTalk, MSN and QQ. If you have watched the movie "I AM LEGEND", maybe you would remember it was said by a lady, who seemed obviously infected, with her baby in her arms. She tried to get out of the quarantine area. The soldiers were checking everyone who went by the gate, scanning everyone's eye ball. If they find anyone whose pupil is enlarged, they would not let him or her pass.

Obviously, the lady was infected as blood was almost spreading to her eyes. She tried to get pass with her baby. When she was pushed aside, she tried to explain and said she's not infected. She was trying to gain the chance to get out, for a better chance to live. Then she came to know that she would not be able to get out of it. So even she love her baby very much, she would implore the Lieutenant Robert Neville (Will Smith) to take her baby, because Robert has the right to pass. That's the last scene in that movie about that lady.

Well, as the story kept on going, I was not thinking about that lady or that word. But, sometime after the movie finished, I watch the trailer in the iTune. The word stunned me deeply. After that, this word kept on hovering in my brain. Very Impressive. I just couldn't get them out of my mind.

There are two main reasons:

• The mother's love

She would rather let other take her baby away, enduring the pain of losing her baby. I thought that's love. That's the love to give, to endure, to sacrifice…

• How should Robert choose?

This is one of the hardest choices. Shall he take the baby? At that moment, he was escorting his wife and daughter to be transfer to safe place. They need his help more than anyone else. Maybe he could take the baby and give it to his wife. Let his wife and daughter leave with the baby. It seems feasible in the movie. But, shall they? If they take this lady's baby, how about other ladies' babies? If they don't take any baby, will it be right? It did seem like they could take one more baby with them. This was something I could not know how to do. What should be done? I am confused.

How tough is the decision, when it comes to love? That's something I could not understand. That's something about love. Not just the love to your relatives, it's the love to the mankind in general. When it comes to the love, it's confused. For me, at least...

Love, Confused.

To be an Explorer, Nate is Heating!

To be an Explorer, Nate is Heating!

This is the word I engrave on my iPod. Explorer, is a good word. Not because it relates to Internet Explorer, let's look at the explanation in the dictionary: a person who travels to unknown places in order to find out more about them. (from Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary) Two points here: First it is going to unknown places. The one who goes back home and lies on the couch is not exploring. The other point is that the goal is to find out more, the more information or knowledge about the unknown.

When talk about moving to a new place, we won't forget this word: you cannot discover new ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. It quite makes sense, right? You need the courage, enough courage to be an explorer. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. It's US former president Reagan's word when he gave a speech about the accident of Challenger, the space shuttle.

Coming back to the web browser, the fun is that, beside Microsoft's Internet Explorer, other companies also use the positive word to name their browsers. Netscape uses Navigator as its browser's name, and Apple uses Safari. Both the words mean similar to explorer, or says the courage to go to some unknown places. That must be the spirit of the Internet Surfing…

My English name is Nate. As a graduate student, what I want is to explore the unknown knowledge… To be an explorer, Nate is Heating!

Do you want more or less?

Do you want more or less?

It's a pretty interesting problem, I think. Of course not the problem alone, but with the context... If you own more, will you want more?

Several days earlier, a friend from Europe asked whether Chinese girls always want to marry someone who have to have car, house, credit card and so on. Do they make it a standard to choose husband? It's hard for me to answer this question. Even harder to defend for the Chinese girls.

I try to explain that the girl that a foreigner might meet would likely to be some ambitious girls from China. The reason is that most of the time only the ambitious Chinese girls would go aboard and the general girls stay where they were born. So as a result, the small part of the ambitious girls could not represent all the Chinese girls. OK. My friend might accept this explanation....

However, what I added after my last word and what my friend replied give me the reason to write this post. I said that as the foreigner might meet the Chinese girls who are in the universities, these girls have better abilities and they own more source than others. When someone own more, they often want even more. I even thought that it's natural. On the contrary, my friend said that's different in his homeland. When a girl, for example a well-educated girl, have more, she may want less because of this.

Actually, this problem is complicate. In my experience, most cases are that what I said just now. The ones who own more want more. Just a small number of people would be the case that when they own more they want less. But most of my experience was in my homeland. What's the case in the world? And why there's the difference.... Maybe we could know about it better later...

PS. Maybe I should added this link here as it's popular on digg.com. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22360651-1702,00.html
Maybe it's really a topic we have talked about for centuries.

You won't see it if you don't like it

It's true. You won't see it if you don't like it. The reason is not that even you look at it you choose to ignore it, but because you will find every means to get rid of it if you dislike it indeed. The result is that thing will not appear in the world again, that's why you won't see it.

Why I talk about this? There's a story. In somehow I investigated the "Web 2.0" concept last month. When I talked with some friends, some of them worried about the advertisements. If everyone uses RSS to read the web pages, then no one will visit the website. At present, the advertisement is one of the major revenues for the website. No one visits the web means that the ad-agencies will not pay the website. Then, will Web 2.0 kill most of the websites which depend on the advertisement? It seemed that their concerns were quite reasonable. I thought about it for a while, then I said that the websites could learn from the cable TV. They could provide free services to the public, with advertising in them. The high quality services are also provided, without advertising, but charge for some fee. I didn't expect this will evoke the panic. It seems that when comes to money/fee everyone will widen his/her eyes.

Why widen the eyes? They started to worry about the public website services will be mixed with all kind of advertising that they don't want to see. But, that's quite normal, right? On today's website, could you avoid yourself seeing that annoying advertising? If not, why do you keep dreaming "Web 2.0" should sweep them out completely? Actually, I thought Web 2.0 has already done this somehow. When you use RSS to subscribe some content, you will only read the summaries or the full articles you want in your RSS reader, no advertising.

On the other hand, the worry was not unreasonable. If everyone just subscribes the RSS and read the contents just in the RSS reader, how could the website get their income from advertisement? Will they embed the advertising into the RSS contents?

Maybe yes, maybe no. In my mind, at least two strategies exist. The first strategy, as the above mentioned, include some advertising in the RSS contents, provide the RSS without any charges. If the user want to read the plain contents without advertising, they could subscribe and pay for the ad-free RSS. The second strategy, the website would not earn the money from the ordinary users who don't want to pay. They just provide the services. And when the user want more than RSS contents, they could charge the user on different levels. As the famous saying, the 80% profits come from 20% clients; 20% profits come from 80% clients. If we choose to be the 80% ordinary clients, we don't have to worry about the advertising. The website would provide us the services for free. They would just need us to compose their hierarchy of clients. They would make money from the other 20% clients, or from other ways such as the co-operating companies or sponsors.

Viewed from the user's side, you won't see it if you don't like it. If the user don't want to see the advertising, he/she will try to find the ad-free website to read. If he/she could not find this kind, he might start thinking about pay some money to avoid the advertising. Or maybe he/she should give up surfing the network for this reason. Or, maybe he/she will set up a company to provide such free services without advertising.

Put the network aside, in the daily life sometimes we just complain something, but we never do something to avoid them. Why? Maybe in our mind we don't dislike them enough. When we see some negative phenomenons in the society, do we criticize it enough? Or do we do something concrete to prevent these phenomenons? Think it over how much you like it or how much you dislike it. Then let's do something for what we believe is right...

You won't see it if you don't like it. That depends on how much you dislike it. All on you.

No Forget and No Ending

There's no Ending. Something just keeps scaring me. No, it just keeps trying to scare me. The insecurity always pushes one to do something, which doesn't go towards his or her original goal. Everyone suffers this.

Actually, ultimately, what do we fear in this world? Torture or death? Maybe in one word you can call it hell. But, many like to say that he or she is in the hell. How about this word: "If you're going through hell, keep going.(---by Winston Churchill)"? No matter you cherish life or not, no matter you curse it or not, you have to go through life, ... except suicide. We fear the unwanted situations which we have to face, so we try hard to avoid them. So, if there is nothing more that we don't want, we will have nothing to do anymore. Some kind of insecurity is scaring me. That keeps me consciously feeling that I am still alive, not death. Only death is the ultimate ending to oneself(but not to the human race [or one's spirit/faith]).

I promise that I will keep something till my death. Another word in a movie says that "If I forget, it means I was gone(died)" I know that the insecurity is real and perceptable. If it comes, I will be in a relative worse situation. On the contrary, I don't want to be pushed by this insecurity to compromise. Sometimes compromise is wise, but sometimes it means losing the principle or deviating from the origin. At this point, one should choose carefully. Something has been in my mind for such a long time, from its beginning till now. I still remember what it is, where it came from, when it started, how it appeared, why it acted like this...etc. No forget to it. I don't think any temporal or eternal insecurity could end it.

I read the words in the movie "Perfect Storm". In the movie, Bobby spoke to Christina "I love you now and I'll love you forever. There's no goodbye. Only love." The last 4 words become my favorite word that you can often see it on my site. "No goodbye. Only love." As I promise no ending for the faith, there is no goodbye to the faith. That has been with me all along, and that will be with me till the end.

It doesn't over till it's over.
----by Rocky Balboa

I promise no ending.
No goodbye. Only love.

Poly is perfect

Well, I would paste a favorite dialog in the movie "The Great Waltz"(named "翠堤春晓" in Chinese). A friend talked with me about it yesterday. I always thought that the words is so moving that after Poly said so, no one could shout at her anymore. I'd added some explanations for cast and each clips.

THE CAST

Johann 'Schani' Strauss II (as Fernand Gravet)
The protagonist of the movie, here is the short intro from answer.com: Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), or Johann Strauss Jr., composer, known as the "Waltz King", son of Johann I. You can find much information on internet or click here to read something about the family of Johann Strauss. They're all great composers.

Poldi Vogelhuber
Became the wife of Strauss II later. In the dialog she was called "Poly".

Carla Donner
A singer and noble. Also called "Donna".


FIRST CLIP
At that time waltz was not recognized among nobles, but Strauss just quit his job from the bank and decided to form his own orchestra just with some friends and relatives. "Shiney" refer to Strauss.

Poly: Shiney if you want to write Waltz you write Waltz.
...
Poly: Shiney whatever career you choose it will be the very highest.

SECOND CLIP
Strauss said on the wedding dinner. The bride was Poly of course. The guest included many friends in the Strauss' orchestra.

...
Tonight I found even more than happiness
More that our success together
And believe me you can't find the riches palaces
You can't find any heart cover with gold brave
Of behind falls painter laughter
You can't find peace and deep quiet breath of living there
Because now that I know
I know because I find out here tonight
In my wife, in my music and my friends...

THIRD CLIP
Strauss was in love with Donna. And he might even want to divorce Poly to marry Donna. He came back from a night staying out with Donna(that night was not about sex in the movie). He found trifle to shout at Poly, just want to find an excuse to flee to Donna. When he had shouted some words, Poly said...

Poly: Don't shout at me please
If you have something on your mind
If you have something you want tell me (then) tell me
But don't shout at me.
If you don't want to tell me
You don't need to make excuses for yourself
You don't need to act like this
If you want to stay out at night, carefully to do so
But you must leave me for you to worry about you if I like
You must respect my feelings to be the wife of your Strauss
is not a little thing
I have tried to be worthy of it.
I am very proud of it.
I will not let anyone to shout at me for your sake
As well as mine.

Strauss: Forgive me Poly
I've always seem to be shouting to you.
I don't know what's the matter with me.
Poly: I won't change you.
Nothing on you, not even your moods or tamper.
Because I know you must be like this to be you.

After hearing the words from Poly, I don't think there will be any man who still want to divorce Poly. In the movie, Strauss and Poly were with each other till the end.

Best wishes for all the ones in love.