Norwegian Wood Review

I finished reading Norwegian Wood yesterday. Then I went shopping for a whole day today, to let the stories sink in my brain. In general, it's about a young guy's (Toru) growing up story, and his relationships with several women ---- Naoko, Midori and Reiko.

Toru: In the novel, he is the one who tells the story. Born in an ordinary family, went to an ordinary university, got ordinary grades, he got nothing special but a dead friend Kizuki who committed suicide at the age of seventeen. I wondered why many women got a crush on him. The only reasons I figured out were: 1) He was an honest person. He never lied to people that were important to him. 2) He was a good listener, with brief comments and much patience. Besides those, I can hardly find any merit of him. He didn't have a smart brain. He was sometimes very lazy. He didn't have an ambition for career. All he did everyday was reading and thinking about women. If I ever knew this guy, I wouldn't fall in love with him for sure. He was just too ordinary, nothing attractive to me. Plus, he was too young. It is obvious that he was still growing and sometimes confused towards life. Anyway, he is the person that I care the least in the novel.

Naoko: This girl is the one that Toru loves most. She was sick, and finally died. Frankly speaking, from the girl's experience, she didn't necessarily to be so sick. She was born with a beautiful body. She was at her best age, 21. She had a man, Toru, who loved her with heart and soul. She had a wonderful female friend and teacher, Reiko. She was supposed to be really happy and grateful about what she had. However she was sick, and eventually died... I agree that life is fragile. But the way she died, there was nobody to blame for, not her sister, not Kisuki. She dig the grave for herself. All she needed was to LET IT GO and move on. The deaths were not her fault! There is a long way of beautiful things ahead of her to experience, why bother to grasp the bottle of unhappy past. She was just not able to let it go...

Midori: She has the most tragedies in her life, while the healthiest personality. If there is anyone in the novel that should be sick, it must be her. Both parents died. She went to a private school with no money. She got a boyfriend who didn't understand her. Plus, she had to cook for the whole family, taking care of all the sick relatives and watch them dying, running a bookstore at the same time going to school. She put all the load on her shoulder, but still have positive thoughts and beautiful imagination. That's what sustained her and made her so happy and strong. Indeed, it is easier to say "Goodbye" than building something on a desert brick by brick. She chose the hard one. She loves Toru, but in my view, she is a way better than Toru. I don't quite like her. Because I sometimes see me on her.

Reiko: She is a talented and honest mature woman, the only person that made my heart tremble while reading the novel. If she was never sick, she would have been a very successful musician who owned a happy family with a lovely daughter. She had a very smart brain. Words from her mouth were brilliant. Her life was ruined by hospital experience and the evil sick 13 old girl. It is butterfly effect, irreversible. I believe she is not a born lesbian. But if it happens, it happens. The book didn't have much content for her, compared to that of Naoko and Midori. But she is the one that is most attractive: her talent towards piano, her brilliant comments towards life, and her mysterious early life, even her cigarettes. One thing I don't understand is why she had sex with Toru when she got out of the hospital. There is no way that a woman at her age would love a man 19 years younger. It was only for sex.

I like Haruki Murakami's writing very much! It was really a joy to read through the lines. It is amazing how those words, piece by piece, form a completely new creature, charming, mysterious and beautiful. I can vividly see the words, hear the words, touch the words, or let the words touch me. Sometimes it would touch the very deep area of my heart, making me completely isolated from the outer world. Time ceased, the world became so quite as if I can hear a needle dropping on the ground. That's the beauty of reading. I'm looking forward to reading his another book --- "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle".

2011 Tiguan

Bought a new car today, for Christmas. I picked the color. :) Merry Christmas!

The Scene

My friend said he would be reminded of A's project by looking at the windows of his office, and B's flaws by looking at the walls. Indeed, some random objects would remind you of a specific scene of the past experience, with the accompanied mood and feelings. Sometimes you may overpass the scene, while directly associate the objects with the mood and feelings.

One of such special objects for me is the song --- "Hotel California". 4 years ago, I was repeatedly listening to it, day and night. When listening to it today, a thrust of deep sorrow and confusion mixed with solid determination and hope rushed into my mind, making my heart stopped for a moment. Then the scene showed up --- The doors. Those were the wooden doors of all the offices inside the department building: enrollment office, department chair's office, lab office etc. All the doors looked exactly the same: wooden color, tall and thin, with poor sound isolation quality. I used to do roller-skating on the fourth floor of this building, passing by every door at the full speed, but never noticed those doors, until one day they tried to lock me inside the doors, to be more exact, lock my heart inside those doors. I was staring at the doors: those are not office doors any more, they feel more like prison doors: once in, never out. That was exactly what they expected me to feel. They also tried every means to make sure each door was firmly locked.

As a prisoner, of course, I wouldn't do what the guards wanted me to. All that in my mind was ways to escape... Another scene I clearly remembered was when I was ready to fly, I cleaned the dorm thoroughly as if it was my first day to school, and put up a big white board with two salient words on it --- "Prison Break!". Then I disappeared... :)

Dumplings

Food is always good! Even Lady Gaga needs to feed herself three times a day. :)
I make dumplings once per week, in large scale. Below are some photos for today.

1) Prepare three types of filling:

2) Making dumplings, three plates, 30 counts/plate.

3) Ready to eat! :)

Running and Shower Strategies

I have so far run for 3 weeks on an everyday basis, 2 miles/day. Some good things happened: 1) Belly fat is reduced. 2) I sleep less, yet with better quality. 3) It's easier to concentrate on work, and never get tired during the day. 4) Most importantly, I barely have bad things in mind, always in good mood. :)

However, there are things that need to be improved. 1) Running speed is slow (17-18mins), and there is little improvement in the 3 weeks. 2) Muscles start to grow, which I seriously want to avoid. Since I have to spent 1-1.5 hours time on running everyday, it's important to make the most from that time. The following strategies will apply and I will see what happens:

1) To run faster, I will try different tempo on treadmill, starting at 5mph, then go up to 5.5mph, 6mph, 6.5mph, each speed for 5 mins, then return to 5mph. One day on treadmill for training, the other day on racetrack for testing (sounds like Machine Learning stuff).

2) My friend suggested a shower strategy: taking a shower in hot water first, then gradually switch to cold water. It gently stimulates blood circulation, thus is helpful for body metabolism, and more importantly, maintaining beauty. I tried it today, it was amazing! I was able to bath under cold water without feeling cold!

3) For the muscle problem, I need to read some diet/nutrition materials. It's my Christmas assignment. :)

Paper Reviews and Quality of Men

I was assigned as a reviewer for a journal paper by my boss during internship. It is a middle/low rank journal so I generally don't expect much from the assigned papers. I have so far reviewed 3 papers for this journal. Paper reviews and quality of men, those two terms never seem to be connected in my mind, until the moment I finished reviewing the third paper assignment today. A bridge across the two terms gently forms, out of the anger of being pissed off by those papers.

I summarized the major problems of those papers: 1) Pretend to be big and complicated. Paper A has no structure, but full of complicated equations copied from a physics book, and nothing else. It reminds me of baking dogs, voice represents the fear. 2) Non understandable English. Yes, it is not a top journal, but it is still an "English" journal. Please write in English! 3) Quoting others as theirs. Paper B has a total of 16 pages, with only 0.5 page of its own contribution (nothing new), other parts are all quotes, no wonder the language of this paper is understandable. I would say, it's really a waste of paper! Please save the earth! There was no joy in the reviewing process, however, it certainly broadened my eyes on how ugly research work can be done.

Those are not technical problems at all, but attitude's problem. In other words, it's personality problem. How can a responsible person send out a non understandable paper without grammar checks? How can an honest person take other people's work as theirs? Those personality problems lie in women too. However, people usually don't judge women by how great her career is, but how many children she has, how good is her family. So they have a backup not to be accused of. But how about those "career oriented" men? They even don't have serious attitude towards work, not to mention how far they can go on the career path. Thinking deeper, Does he possibly have a girlfriend/wife? Can one expect him to be responsible if he accidentally makes his girlfriend pregnant? Can he be honest about himself while dating? Now I understand why so many women can't find their Mr. Right. Because there are so many Mr. Irresponsible and Mr. Dishonest out there.

Healthy Relationship

Today I talked with my old friend A. She is in Shanghai and had disconnected from internet for quite a while. Because she is in a relationship with a man B. I am a little concerned because I know she is the type of woman that once in a relationship, it becomes the only focus of her life. I asked her if she is happy. She said "yes, most of the times, but sometimes B would complain that I put too much pressure on him. I don't understand, I already did all the cooking, washing at home, and even quit mixed drinks classes several times to stay with him." I could imagine the situation. She would satisfy any need of the man to make him happy, in return, she expects a little, but definitely something. Such "something" pressured B, so A and B are not always happy.

I have another girl friend C who asked me out last week talking about her ex-boyfriend. We had a conversation in Rice Village for about 2 hours. I roughly calculated the time that she was talking about her ex-boyfriend's feelings, and the time she talked about her own feelings. The ratio is 9:1. In her talk, most of the sentences started with the word "He"... The man broke up with her for exactly the same reason: "too much pressure, not happy".

As I noticed, quite a few good women are emotional animals. Once in love, they are willing to compromise, do all the cooking/washing, give up their own hobbies to stay with the Mr.Right, even give up their own career, to the extent they totally lost themselves. However, at this moment, Mr.Right is no longer right, he becomes Mr.Angry, Mr.Pressured or Mr.Unhappy. What is the problem?

The problem lies in exhaustive compromise from one side of the relationship. It's not healthy. Relationship is like a baby. To keep it healthy, one needs to consistently feed it, by mutual understanding and compromise. Understanding and compromise from only one side will make the relationship seesaw completely leaning. The baby will be spoiled, yet not healthy. The healthy way to maintain a relationship is to have space for each own career and hobbies, while remain connected by pleasing each other. Under some conditions, if one agrees/has to compromise, the other needs to appreciate it. Again, there is no recipe that can only feed the baby once, and make him a grown up. To make the healthy relationship grow, it requires patience and hard working for life long.

The Butterfly Effect...

A small disturbance will result in a chain of consequences. It is interesting that butterfly effect exists everywhere in nature, from weather forecast to traffic congestion, or cascading failures.

For humans, unfortunately, not a single person is able to be exempt from the butterfly effect. Life is typically not controlled by any individual's wish, no matter how wealthy or powerful he/she is. No one is able to tell the exact stock price for tomorrow. In this case, life is fair for everyone. :)

It is sad to notice that the driven force of the long life path is only a few flashing moments. The moment you got a college offer, the moment you met your boyfriend/girlfriend, the moment you got married, the moment you had a new born.... Life path changed irreversibly by those moments, no matter it is good or bad. Once changed, you have to accept it, and keep life going.

I was wondering if there is a way to predict such effect. The answer is "no", from the materials I read regarding butterfly effect and chaos theory. The basic idea of chaos theory is that it's impossible to predict nature, since we are all controlled by it, and it is far beyond human's knowledge to predict. In this case, humans are not distinguishable from cats, dogs or birds... They are all vulnerable under nature. Nature is fair for all the species. :)