Poets in insominia:

In a night a few weeks ago the writer of this post couldn’t sleep till the small hours and decided to spend the waking time on researching on what some Chinese poets had written about insomina. Below are a few of related poems (or parts of them):

張繼：「月落烏啼霜滿天， 江楓漁火對愁眠； 姑蘇城外寒山寺， 夜半鐘聲到客船。」

蘇軾：「……轉朱閣，低綺戶，照無眠……」

李商隱：「雲母屏風燭影深， 長河漸落曉星沉…… 」

杜甫：「……床頭屋漏無干處，雨腳如麻未斷絕。自經喪亂少睡眠，長夜沾濕何由徹！……」

韋應物：「懷君屬秋夜，散步詠涼天。空山松子落，幽人應未眠。」

張九齡：「自君之出矣，不復習理殘機。思君如滿月，夜夜減清輝。」

白居易：「……夕殿螢飛思悄然，孤燈挑盡未成眠。……」

溫庭筠：「玉爐香，紅蠟淚，偏照畫堂秋思。眉翠薄，鬢雲殘， 夜長衾枕寒。梧桐樹，三更雨， 不道離情正苦。一葉葉，一聲聲，空階滴到明。」

Book talk by Jeffrey Archer

On Monday (March 31) afternoon I went to a book talk at the University of Hong Kong, organised by the HKU library. The writer invited to speak at the talk was Jeffrey Archer. (Readers of this post interested in who this person is could, for a start, visit the Wikepaedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Archer. Archer’s offcial personal website is: http://www.jeffreyarcher.co.uk/index.htm)

I haven’t read anything written by Archer, but I know he’s a best-seller novelist. So it’s pretty much out of curiosity about what a best-seller novelist would say about writing and about his works that I went to the talk. Archer delivered an entertaining talk. In response to Archer’s well-scripted words and calculated gestures, the audience burst into laughters almost every half minute during the the one-and-a-half hour talk, whole-heartedly or out of courtesy.

Among a wide range of issues he touched upon, he spoke about his experience of getting his first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, published. It had been turned down 17 (hope I remember right the figure) times before a publisher decided to publish it. He also told his audience how he organised his life when he wrote his recently published novel, A Prisoner of Birth. At some point of the book talk, when someone from the audience challenged Archer by saying that there were similarities in this book and the novel about revenge, The Count of Monte Cristo,

Flu attack

I got infected by flu a couple of days ago. Since then I’ve been lethargic about almost everything. What symptoms have I had? Just mild headache, sore throat, slightly stuffy nose, very occasional cough, occasional attacks of feeling of coldness, and occasional slight fever. Yet merely these minor physical discomforts have already been enough to make me disinterested in eating, in talking, in having my regular cup of coffee with my wife at our favorite “tsar-tsan-teng” (restaurant in the HK language) every morning, in responding to my wife’s questions of concern (now, this time I have a good excuse), in meeting up with friends (partly for the reason of not to spread germs/viruses to them), in doing my freelance income-generating work, in doing my regular voluntary work, in practising the few musical instruments (Guzheng, Erhu and Dongxiao) that I’ve been learning to play, and in doing almost anything in life. I can’t imagine

A Tribute to Lydia Shum

(Readers of this post who do not know who Lydia Shum was may like to visit this site to get an idea of the person this post writes about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Shum )

What’s the life expantacy of a Hong Kong female? The CIA World Factbook says it’s 84.6 (as at 2007) (source: http://www.indexmundi.com/hong_kong/life_expectancy_at_birth.html). Although the life expectancy for a person born in 1945 would be a few years shorter than 84.6 (the writer of this post could not find the exact figure), I would still be inclined to consider that Lydia Shum, who was born on 21 July 1945 and passed away on 19 Feb 2008 at the age of 62, lived a life much too short to deserve God’s early summon to leave this world. 

However, for a person who began her career in Hong Kong’s entertainment industry at the age of 15 (in 1960), Lydia Shum made her continuous presence to the people of Hong Kong for a period of 47 years, i.e. almost half a century. And who in the world (not to say Hong Kong)  has been able to stay active in the entertainment business in its history for a period longer than Shum did? What is more, what Lydia Shum did for the people of Hong Kong and for those in the wider Chinese community throughout the world, is that throughout her performer career she brought laughters to her audience. Laughters do not necessary imply happiness. The writer of this post buys into the Buddhist notion that life is suffering, and that happiness in life is unachieveable for people who lead only a mundane life. However, this should not prevent one from living a life of laughters, albeit admist suffering. Indeed, the fact that life is suffering makes laughters and fun all the more valuable for ordinary people like the writer of this post. Thus the loss of performer Lydia Shum is saddening,

Food for thought from Mother Teresa

The quotation from Mother Teresa below (texts in bold print) is more for reminding myself on how I should handle my life than for sharing. Readers of this blog are welcome to contemplate on it though.

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centred; forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway.

If you are sucessful, you will win some false friends and some true friends; succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone would destroy overnight; build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway.

Give the world your best anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.

Note: Believers of different faiths could interpret the word ‘God’ in the quotation in their own way, in accordance with how their faith defines the word. I interpret the word to be equivalent to one’s conscience.

Chinese New Year

In the Chinese culture, today (7 Feb) is the Chinese New Year (CNY) Day. It’s also called the “Spring Festival”. On CNY day, and for a few days onwards, when the Chinese people meet their relatives, friends and acquaintances, they would exchange a few phrases of good will such as wishing each other good luck, making great fortune, etc. Like Christmas and the Mid-Autumn Festival, in Chinese cities like Hong Kong, the CNY has become highly commercialized, in the sense it has become an occasion for many businesses to make money from it. When I see a commercial on the TV paid for by a certain business, such as a supermarket, offering good wishes to its audience, I can’t help suspecting that the boss of this supermarket does so more for his/her business than for really wanting his audience good luck.

Although I’m Chinese, I’ve never liked CNY. I would even say that I have always disliked passing CNY, for different reasons at different stages of my life.

I didn’t like CNY even when I was small.

My reasons to blog: 3

To continue with the revelation of why I spend time on blogging, here is my third reason to blog: to make myself write. Wait a minute, isn’t this the second reason for my blogging? Well, yes and no. Yes, but as my second reason, it refers to how often I write: this blog is to serve to make me write more often than I would normally do. No, because as my third reason, it refers to providing me a platform to express my thoughts and feelings about a wider range of issues than I would do so without it.

I’m a person who has his own views on almost anything, and such views are often unconventional. I enjoy expressing my views on things. Yet,

My reasons to blog: 2

It’s been almost a month since I wrote about my first reason for blogging. This evidence of my tardiness in writing helps to explain the second reason why I decided to blog: to make myself write more often than my self-discipline is able to do so. While I can almost write on anything of any length once I sit down and begin writing, my problem lies in taking the first step of sitting down. There are always other things that I consider more interesting or more pressing than sitting down to begin writing. Maybe I lack a reason to write. Blogging could play the role of offering me a reason to write.  So this is my second reason to blog: to make myself write. But then why do I want to make myself write? Well, maybe it’s for giving my thoughts and feelings a place to anchor, to be known, and to be re-visited, not all thoughts and feelings, but those that are not too personal to the extent that they should only be in my personal diary .

Since I was a university student (quite many years ago),

My reasons to blog: 1

I knew about the practice of blogging on the Internet more than two years ago, but haven’t really got down to begin one for myself until 7 Jan 2008. I can’t use “I’m busy” as an excuse for my tardiness, because I know there are many people who are much busier than I am and yet have been keeping their excellent personal blog(s). Anyway, this post is not meant to justify my tardiness in starting a blog, but to explain why I now want to blog.

My first blog entry

Mon, 7 January 2008 marks a special day for me, as it evidences the appearance of my first blog posting. In my next posting, I’ll explain what I’d like this blog to do for me.