Boston Marathon Bombings - The Last Mile

Runners in Boston ran the last mile to pay tribute to those who died in April !!!

環保 / Environmental Protection

 !!!    環保第一   !!!

Source/Photo Credit: 環保 / Environmental Protection

Does anti-immigrants sentiment in a globalized world make sense?

A page from FaceBook ..... (updated)




But I have to say Canada needs to speed up deporting ILLEGAL claimants instead of wasting resources by allowing cases to drag on for decades !!!!

大衛·福士特·華萊士: 是日已過, 命則隨減, 如少水魚, 斯有何樂? / David Foster Wallace: This is Water !

已故作家 大衛·福士特·華萊士 對凱尼恩學院2005年畢業班的致詞開始如下:

一條老金魚向迎面來的兩位後輩打招呼: 「小兄弟,今天水氣不錯啊!」

数分鐘過後,兩條年輕的金魚回頭望着老魚的背影,不約而同地説: 「水? 那是什麼?」

没有錯,新鮮出爐的畢業生雄心勃勃,首先当然是要找份好入息的工,跟着就是拍拖,找個如意郎君或窈窕淑女,買楼買車,結婚同居,生兒育女。

不論在情場、商場、戰場,這些年輕人都要壓倒群雄英雌,生命和生活都是要唯我獨尊。

在上班下班交通阻塞高峰期,他們詛咒小販丶行人、和其他/她司機。 C'mon get going you jerk, you are blocking the traffic !!

在購物商場排長龍等待付錢時,她們向前面那些慢呑呑的人投以不耐煩和不屑的眼光。 C'mon coupon-lady, cash your welfare cheque somewhere else, you are holding up the line !!

但是朝九晩五数十年之後,他們有没有回想和明白当年戴四方帽離開最高學府的真正意義和使命?

在社会大染甕浸淫日久,她們有没有醒覺到自己已是同流合汚?

她們有没有想到浮沈多載: 是日已過, 命則隨減, 如少水魚, 斯有何樂?

還是 ....

繼續 ....

!!! 唯我獨尊 !!!

像那兩條年輕金魚一樣, 問:「水? 那是什麼?」



以下是節録 The Glossary 对這2013年5月特製視頻之簡介 // A nine minute video with Wallace's voice of the speech was produced by The Glossary and published on the internet in May 2013:

Published on 6 May 2013

In 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. However, the resulting speech didn't become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we've ever come across, and perhaps the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education.

We made this video, built around an abridged version of the original audio recording, with the hopes that the core message of the speech could reach a wider audience who might not have otherwise been interested. However, we encourage everyone to seek out the full speech (because, in this case, the book is definitely better than the movie).
-The Glossary

Listen to the full speech here:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.ph...

Photo Credit: Screen shots and videos from The Glossary

References / Related Links:

* 普賢菩薩《法句經》: 「是日已過，命亦隨減，如魚少水，斯有何樂......」

* Wikipedia / 大衛·福士特·華萊士（英語：David Foster Wallace，1962年2月21日－2008年9月12日）出生於美國紐約州伊薩卡，美國著名作家，擅長寫作小說、短篇故事。

* Wikipedia / This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life is an essay by David Foster Wallace, first published in book form by Little, Brown and Company in 2009. The text originates from a commencement speech given by Wallace at Kenyon College on May 21, 2005. Before Little, Brown’s publication, a transcript of the speech circulated around the Internet. The essay was also published in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006.

最後衝刺 / The Journey

母親搬了入安老院已有兩星期多，雖然她開始時還有返回舊居的願望，但經我婉轉解釋，指出她已經不能獨立，沒法自己照顧自己，她似乎也漸漸接受了現實。

老媽在表面還是一如常人，但智能卻是隨着時日衰退。 不過 ，人要面、樹要皮，她聽不明白就硬說別人講鄉下話，她記不起就在空白處填上顏色，天馬行空，大話西游，很多時令我啼笑皆非。

每一次母親徘徊在現實和幻想的交界，我這個做兒子的就真是難過。 或許，她想像的是真是假倒不重要，最重要的是她有我伴隨她作最後衝刺！！

Photo credit:
Tim Hortons is becoming one of our favourite spots to sit and watch the world go by.

2013年5月12日母親節

這是我和K在渥太華義大利小食店 Simply Biscotti 吃的母親節疍糕 :)

時光隧道 / Me Time

其一:   

最近真是忙得不可開交，一方面要照顧母親，另一方面又不想冷落枕邊人，一天24小時入不敷出，自己時間完全沒有了。

其二:   

在時光隧道中，一個男人左衝右撞，嘗試在過去和將來空隙中找尋出路。

只恨一水隔天涯, 不知相会在何時? / The Long Distance Feeling? A HK-Canada Relation that failed!

Here's a photo from the FaceBook page of my Alma Mater, the University of Alberta.

I remember going to the campus post office almost everyday hoping to receive mail from Hong Kong.
There was no Internet then. It took 7-10 days for an aerogram 航空郵柬 to go from Edmonton to Vancouver for transfer, then onto a plane to HK. Sea-mail 平郵 would take at least 21-30 days. Multiply that by two and that was how long one would get a return message.

For someone on student-visa, long distance phone calls were prohibitively expensive ~ CDN $3 per minute !

Needless to say, I was both home- and love-sick the first year.

往事只能回味 !!!!

過敏季節 / Allergy Season 2013

Trees are blooming, I am sneezing, Spring is here !!

On Sunday, after an enjoyable long walk in the Gatineau Park, I took my puffer medication and ran a fast tempo pace from my Mom's place back home in 30 min.

Allergy season 2013 has begun .... But it will end !!

Reference / Photo Credit: Wikipedia
過敏性鼻炎 又稱為鼻敏感，是一種成因很複雜的上呼吸道疾病。因花粉過敏而引發的過敏性鼻炎可稱為枯草熱、花粉症或季節性過敏性鼻炎。

《愛是神奇》 / To The Wonder

On Saturday night, K and I went to the Ottawa ByTowne Cinema and watched Terrence Malick's movie "To The Wonder". The story is existentially similar to "The Tree of Life" but not as sad. At the end of the movie, there was no applause from the audience, just a silent moment of reflection and perhaps a few sighs of relief that the movie was over.

If you like explosions and car-chases, don't bother to spend your money and time. But if you like beautiful cine-photography and enjoy abstract stories of the touchy feely type, you may want to go see it with your wondering cap on.

Related link: 生命樹 / The Tree of Life

+++++++++++++++++++++

The following is from Wikipedia:

《愛是神奇》（英語：To the Wonder）是一齣2012年製作的美國愛情片。由《生命樹》導演泰倫斯·馬力克執導同時兼任編劇。電影於第69屆威尼斯電影節期間首映並參予競賽。主要演員有《ARGO–救參任務》導演兼男主角賓·艾佛力，《新鐵金剛之量子殺機》奧嘉·古莉寧高、《情迷午夜巴黎》女主角麗素·麥雅當絲及於《新鐵金剛：智破天凶城》飾演反派角色之查維爾·巴頓。

美國人尼爾(賓·艾佛力 飾)到法國旅行時遇上一名於巴黎生活的烏克蘭人單親母親瑪琳娜(奧嘉·古莉寧高 飾)。當兩人到法國的聖米歇爾山旅行時，兩人沉醉在他們的浪漫旅程，尼爾同時又對瑪琳娜作出了承諾，並帶瑪琳娜及瑪琳娜10歲女兒一同返家鄉俄克拉荷馬州生活。但他們到美國生活後的關係開始冷卻……

(Source: Wikipedia 《愛是神奇》)

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The following is from the Ottawa ByTowne Cinema website:

Just two years after The Tree Of Life – hardly more than an eye-blink in terms of his usual production-rate – Terrence Malick has returned with something which could be seen as a B-side or companion piece to that film. It is a bold and often beautiful movie, unfashionably and unironically concerned with love and God, and what will happen to us in the absence of either.

It is the story of a love affair doomed to failure, or at any rate doomed never quite to succeed. Ben Affleck is Neil, a stolid, handsome American engineer who has a passionate relationship in Paris with Marina (Olga Kurylenko), a sensual free spirit. Their love achieves an almost ecstatic state of happiness when they visit Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy and are all but overwhelmed by its islanded beauty. (‘We climbed the steps to the wonder,’ recalls Marina.) Easy-going, good-natured Neil gets on just fine with Marina’s 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship and offers to bring them over to live with him in picket-fence middle America. But transplanted to the U.S., their relationship begins to go wrong and Neil becomes aware of a childhood friend, Jane (Rachel McAdams). In parallel with this, there is a priest, Father Quintana, played by Javier Bardem, whose consciousness begins to guide the movie in its American phase, and whose crisis of faith colours how we see the painful trial of Neil and Marina’s happiness.

The locals don’t know quite how to take Marina, but it is specifically Neil’s work that brings him into conflict with the community. He appears to be investigating soil subsidence and problems with the water table in the surrounding neighbourhood, issues that might affect the viability of the whole district. People nearby tell him he is making them nervous; one says that even the dog is behaving strangely. Despite the vivid gorgeousness that Malick discovers everywhere, there is a fundamental problem with the American soil itself – a real crisis of faith – and Neil and Marina’s existence is wilting. Malick may intend a visual rhyme with the earlier sequence at Mont Saint-Michel, in which the couple were running around in the squelching mud which seemed to ripple and bounce under their feet. There, the effect was playful and sensual, now the soil’s treachery is disturbing.

Marina’s visa can’t last for ever; a decision about marriage can’t be delayed as they both begin to doubt if America is really for them, and here is where Jane enters the story and Malick conjures a sublime sequence in which a kind of alternative-reality love affair is played out. Would a monogamous commitment be an affirmation of trust in God and in the mysterious beauty of life, which would generate its own success – or just be a terrible mistake?

– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian