When you are given half a glass of water, what do you think?
Someone would think half a glass is not enough, and want to get a full glass, preferably with ice. But some would be grateful for having that much of water, because it is a gift.
It is all in your mind, be contented or want more.
I was watching the Star Wars again.
You pick up different tiny little things every time you watch the same movie. I just figured that the first line young Anakin talked to Padme was "Are you an angel?... I heard the pilots said angels were the most beautiful beings in the universe."
Some people say the first 3 minutes of conversation determine your relationship with one another. I should have said what I thought. You are an angel.
The US is a country made up of webs of highway. Somehow the American decided to build more highway than railway, probably meant to create more jobs for the automobile industry. Now this country is overconsuming fossil fuel.
This is pretty much what you will see in any section of any interstate highway. Wide opening of highway lined with trees and forrest on both sides.
Over I-93, somewhere in New Hampshire; Oct 3, 2004
Sometimes things are not as bad as you think. Modest people usually look at their own and surroundings less positively than arrogant people.
Modesty is good, but balance is important.
The Forty Steps, Cliffwalk, RI; Aug 13, 2006
There is a clear northern sky out there. I bought a book to identify the constellations. I wanted to do that for a while. The weather is still a bit cold to sit outside.
A Japanese company has produced a cute little projector that can project a night sky image onto the ceiling. The little thing can also rotate the image slowly to simulate the movement of the stars over a 24 hour period, and throw you a few comets once in a while.
This little projector no bigger than a soccer ball has a price tag of HK$1500. I think they price it to target only 3 kinds of people: 1. true geeks who buy all fancy technologies; 2. idiots who give in to their girls' romantic daydreams; and 3. men who are desperate to make their girls happy.
For whichever reason you find yourself sitting under a starry sky, try to do nothing but stare at the stars. That is sweet.
I read an interesting research today. It was selected the 23rd important discovery of 2005 by Discover. The magazine has been sitting on th shelf for almost a year. Someone happened to be reading it and left it open at that page, when I was making a chocolate drink.
A team of neuroscientis in University of Michigan measured the so-called "placebo-related brain chemistry" the first time in history. They injected a salt solution into the jaws of 14 men to produce an ache. Then each of them was given a placebo, which is an injection said to be an experimental pain medication. Nine of the men said the pain subsided.
Then, the researcher scanned the brain activity of these people with positron emission tomography scanning. It turns out that those nine people have increased activity in parts of the brain that modulates pain. Radioactive trace also showed that binding occurred at receptors for endophins, naturally occuring pain-fighting sustances.
The conclusion from the neuroscientists: "If somebody believes something will work, that positive expectation by itself, through different connections in the brain, activates mechanisms that suppress pain."
So, now we know that there is a biochemical basis of hope.
If you are in difficult time, think positive. You don't know what the brain is doing, but it can make you go through the difficult time easlier. If you feel you are restricted by the environment, do something to make the environment favorable to you. In another word, make yourself comfortable.
Look around. Hope may be right at your shoulder. You feel what you think after all.
CAPE ANN, MA; Nov 7, 2004
I remember in Science lesson back in middle school, we were taught that a flame is its coldest in red. As the flame gets hotter, it changes to yellow, white and then blue. Now I know that it is to do with the wavelength of the light energy flames emit.
Let's drop the science. Isn't this rose turning up the love it represents from red-hot to yellow-hot?
Rose Garden, Balboa Park, San Diego, CA; Aug 3 2006
Today I turn 32. Friends and colleagues threw me a birthday party. Yvette and Sophie baked me cakes. I am very lucky to have them living together. They are sweet. They bought me the DVDs of the Star Wars Prequels and a nice blue sweater. I love the gifts.
Everyone says happy birthday to me. I cannot think of any reason to be happy but one, which is my birthday wish of this year. I have never made birthday wish seriously. This is my first time.
I was organizing my mail boxes. These are excerpts of some of the old messages:
Aug 31, 2002:
... I want to tell you: you are the best girl I have ever met. I love you and treasure you. Don't worry about me. I will wait for you... you take care of yourself. I want to go on my life with you by my side.
-------
Aug 30, 2002:
Honey,
I just came back from the breakfast in my boss's home. I dont think that I can use internet and telephone in these 2 days. Miss you. So i will stay in my guesthouse...
-------
I didn't even remember she had ever called me "Honey". She rarely did.
I have been to Munich 5 times.
It is a city that is unfamiliar but heart-warming to me. It is not the locals who are particularly welcoming, but I was always accompanied by my love there. I always want to fly there and stay with her forever.
Snow comes at last for this season.
I haven't had a chance to take a picture of it yet. I have taken some pictures outside my workplace last winter. It was Februry 2006. The sky cleared up after snowing.
I was so cheerful and excited at that time. I uploaded the pictures onto the web and showed them to people that I cared. I am not sure I will do that again anymore.
NEB Campus, Ipswich, MA; Feb 13, 2006
Aug 13, 2006, the day after Aug 12, 2006, obviously. But the world means completely different to me all at once since Aug 12, 2006. It was quite amazing that I was feeling I owned the eternity only a few months ago back in Greece, and suddenly I felt nothing worthed living for anymore. I could have locked myself out at home but I figured it was better to do something outside. The walk had been planned a week before after all.
So we drove two and a half hours south to have a walk at the famous Cliffwalk in Newport, Rhode Island.
It is not the Rhodes Island of Aegean Sea, but the Rhode Island state of the USA. Historians are disputing the origin of the name. Some historians believes that an Italian explorer name the largest island in the Narragansett Bay Rhode Island because of their similarity in shape; others think that the name came from "Roodt Eylandt", old Dutch for "red island", an Dutch explorer referred to the red clay on the island's shore.
We arrived there at 2 pm. That was fine. The sun was not going to set before 7 pm in the summer. Half of the distance of the Cliffwalk is paved, and half of it is covered with gravels or simply boulders to walk on. As the name implies, the trail is all over a cliff.
With a beautiful view like this, it is quite natural to believe that houses sitting right on this cliff are incredibly expensive. In fact you cannot really buy a house there anymore. People had done that 200 years ago. And they are terribly wealthy folks. They built huge mansions along the trail. Some of them have become museums that admit with entry fee, and some become private clubhouses. There is a private university there too. There are a couple of restaurants there though: one at the head of the trail and a "Chinese Teahouse" in the middle.
A round trip takes about 3 hours. It was a fairly easy walk, except the section made up of boulders. It is mostly flat though, and you can easily maneuver over the boulders as long as you are not on high-heels.
I got this day spent nicely, but worse were still to come.
CLIFFWALK, RI; Aug 13, 2006
Acropolis is always in restoration since 1960's. It is almost impossible to find an angle where you can picture the Propylaea without cranes. It was crammed with tourist even before tourist season.
The Propylaea survived almost two thousand years, through Greece, Rome and Byzantine. It was only destroyed under the rule of the Latin Empire in 1656, and during the Greek-Turkish War in the turn of 1920's. I felt the misery of its state of destruction more than the greatness of the Atheanean culture. It was a good walk though.
I had a dream last night.
In the dream, I was opening the front door of my home with my key. It was a cold day. A cute little mouse in dress ran into me and stucked itself to the edge of the door. It was running away from a tiger. I was not afraid of the tiger. I hit it with an umbrella, but it kept trying to get to the mouse. I used my body to keep the tiger away from the mouse and tried to open the door to let the mouse in. But I couldn't hold the tiger long enough. It took the mouse and swollowed it.
We ran into an art gallery in Fira, Santorini. There are a few art galleries there, but this Mati Gallery is most interesting.
This Galllery is owned by Yorgos Kypris, a Greek artist and a Canadian art dealer. The gallery itself is only about 600 square feet big, but your attention will be caught immediately to one of its walls, where over a hundred of silhousette of fishes carved out of thin aluminum sheets were posed like a flock of fish swimming down from the upper right corner.
Among the other works of Kypris's, the Gallery features some impressive bronze casts: A 3 feet long shark head sticks out of the wall into the street, and a full-size man sits on the roof, looking out into the Aegean Sea. He might have the best seat for the famous sunset of romance, but he has also taken the best spot to look at the joy and misery of the visitors of the island.
Mati Gallery, Fira, Santorini, May 9, 2006
Helen's birthday was on Nov 22. We only remembered to send her a greeting 4 days later.
She wrote back with a couple of pictures. One of them is the birthday cake her friend baked for her. The name of the cake is "Man of your life". It is a shame they didn't finish the cake with the lower half.
I said the cake was cute. Shamik said, "You must be gay to find this thing cute."
2003:
Christmas markets were everywhere in Prague during Christmas time.
Prague is probably the most tourist-crammed city in Europe. I doubt any photographer can take a picture of a deserted Charles Bridge anymore.
What was I doing in March 2006? I don't remember. Must be some stupid things at work. Not as important as the person I wanted to stick with.
MARTINSTRIED, March 2006
I heard a talk today. The speaker was a junior professor at the Whitehead Institute at MIT. He works with Schmidtea mediterranea, a flatworm commonly known as Planaria.
These Planaria look very funny. They are 3-8 mm long, and look like penises with eyes. Well, those dotted eyes are real photoreceptors. There are quite some levels of differentiation of tissues with them. They have brains, literally.
The most funny thing about Planaria is that they can regenerate themselves if they are cut into two halves, or eight. If you decapitate them, they regrow their head in days. If you cut them longitudinally, each of the two halves regrow into two individuals. If you play around with the chopping-up thing, you can cut the worm from its head half way into its body, the cut half of the worm will regrow into 2 full heads and you will end up with a Y-shaped worm with 2 head and one tail.
Planaria can actually reproduce asexually simply by splitting themselves into two, and the regrow into two adults. This amazing regeneration ability had attracted scientists such as Thomas. H. Morgan, who also pioneered the genetics of fruit flies, as early as in 1898.
These worms seem never die - they keep splitting themselves. In fact, they are very busy rebuilding themselves all the time. The turn-over rate of the cells within these worms are very high. The worm you see today will make up of a completely different set of cells a few weeks later.
The cool thing the speaker's lab is doing is, they now manage to use RNAi to knock down the genes in these worms. They have the genome of this S. meditteranea sequenced and designed RNAi to screen for genes that show phenotypic effects on regeneration. Basically they fed the flatworms with E. coli expressing clones of RNAi and chopped them up after 2 days. The worms that showed impaired ability to regenerate would have the gene important for regeneration knocked down.
So they have opened the treasure chest that holds the whole new world of stem cell and cancer research. The way the neoplast grow, differentiate and migrate parallels that of stem cells. The whole worm can be labeled by antibodies and BrdU, and the cells can be easily dislodged for FACs. Another goody: the differentiation is slow - it takes days to show phenotype. With such a simple system, they will be able to pick up signals that trigger regeneration/differentiation in different tissues quite easily. Also, with rapidly dividing neoplast, these worms rarely develop cancer. They must have some unique and tight control for cell division, as well as DNA repair and replication checkpoints to make sure that they do everything correctly during cell division and pass on their own genome very accurately.
The speak was Peter Reddien. He did his post-doc in Alejandro Sanchez's lab in University of Utah. Being an HHMI investigator and invited to write review articles in the Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology and Nature Reviews Genetics, Sanchez must be a respected figure in this field. He looks he is in his 40's only.
We visited Greece before the tourist season started. It was way cheaper and less crammed there.
Athens is not a particularly appealing city. The remains of the ancient Greece are great, but not much to see otherwise. Their olives are great though.
They have restored the centuries-old Olympia Stadium, which is used for the Athens Marathon every year, and the Marathon for the 2004 Olympic Games. It is a shame that it is closed to public for the rest of the time.
OLYMPIA STADIUM OF AHTENEANS, MAY 5, 2006
I have ski only twice. The first time was in Jan 2005.
I went to Sunday River Skiing Resort, Maine, with a bunch of friends. They were all good skiers and snowboarders.
Remus and Helen brought me up to the top of one of the green trail without giving me any instruction on the ground. They did show me how to ski on the way down, and I literally rolled down the hill... I kept falling onto the snow every 10-20 feet.
After 2 more ski/roll down the green trail, I decided to do some basic practice on the learner's slope. I looked at the instructor who was teaching a bunch of 4-6 years-old children. After an hour of practice, I started to have better control on my move.
After lunch, I went up the green trail again. I managed to fall only once or twice on the way down. Even Remus and Helen said I learned fast.
I can tell people that I learned ski in 3 hours. I am quite proud of it.
SUNDAY RIVER SKIING RESORT, ME, Jan 22, 2005.
What a bloody year this 2006 is. I don't mean it in Iraq, which is literally a bloody diaster.
In this year, there have been 10 break-ups of relationship from friends of mine. Two of them were husband and wife. Two more break-ups are pending.
What the hell. Even the weather is not right. What is this freaking 13 deg celcius doing here at the end of November??
Franconia Ridge connects Mt. Lincoln and Mt. Lafayette, 5089 ft, Sept 30, 2006
I borrowed this book from Shamik. He insisted that the book was much much better than the movie in terms of the psychology of the characters and the questions it evokes the readers.
I told him that the book had the most awful cover I could imagine. He said, "Fuck off. I read the book, not the cover."
I said, "You fuck off. Now I need to put the book upside down all the time when I am not reading it. The cover makes me throw up."
Well. The content is pretty cool. Planet Solaris orbits around 2 suns: one red in color, the other in blue. After 80 years of remote and on-site study, scientists had established that the ocean, which covered over 95% of the planet surface, was a single intelligent mega-living being. An observation station was constructed and hovered over the ocean. Three scientists were conducting research there. They did an experiment which is forbidden: they shot a high-energy X-ray beam into the ocean. Few days later, each of the three scientists had a visitor popped up from thin air. It turned out that the ocean was extracting the memory and unconscious part of their mind, and infused these memories and sensations into these "human puppets". These "human puppets" bear the memory and sensation of the person who was most important to these scientists.
It is not an easy feast. There is always a reason or 2 (or more) for that particular person to sit in your unconscious part of the mind. Be it love, be it guilt, be it regret. When you are forced to face them in a prison-like setting, if you are not strong and courageous enough to confront your own past and sensations, just like one of the characters, you may end up killing yourself.
This book is not as dark as it seems. The main character is a psychologist. His had said something that made his love of his life killed herself 10 years before he was sent to Solaris. In the second morning on his arrival, "she" appeared and sat by him on his bed. In a few days, he managed to find out most of the facts behind her "appearance", and finally accepted that "she" was not merely a replica of the original "she". She was unique. He fell in love with this new "she" and tried to leave the station with her.
This book is written by Stanislaw Lem, a Polish science fiction and philosophical writer. It was first published in Warsaw in 1961. It is a thin book of about 280 pages. Yet it is quite addicting. It is not a blow of mind, but it reminds you the importance of confronting your own past up straight.
I am tired but I can't sleep. I looked up my collection of pictures and found this.
A bear is sad in the wilderness. Her best friend, a crow, sits by her. The crow always looks at the bear with affection. Sometimes the bear is so sad that she forgets what that affectionate look means to her.
We parted in the summer of 2002. Before that, we spent a few days in Hainan.
There was a beautiful beach, a pretty swimming pool, a luxurious lawn, and beautiful flowers.
The flowers looked prettier behind her ears.
HAINAN, Aug 23, 2002
September 2004. It was the third time I flew out from Munich on my own, after spending a week of nice summer time there.
It was sad to be parted, but at least I had the hope to get back together.
Hope is what one can hang on with in difficult times, next to faith.
GATE 32, MUNICH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Sept 13, 2004
We have a gallary here at work. Artists are invited to show their works for 2 months.
A while ago the works of one artist caught my eyes and my soul. His name is Alex Gerasev.
He has most of his works shown on his web site: http://www.alexgerasev.com/
Alex Gerasev, Waiting, 2001, pencil & oilstick, 22" x 28"
I read an interview of Mariane Pearl in a magazine.
Mariane is a freelance journalist. She married Daniel Pearl, the chief of the South Asia bureau of Wall Street Journal. In 2002, She was pregnant and expecting her first baby when Daniel was sent to Pakistan for an interview with a leader of the terrorists. It turned out it was a hoax, and Daniel was kidnapped and held hostage in demand of releasing prisoners from the US.
A few days later, Daniel was beheaded. The terrorists filmed the execution and put it on the internet.
In less than two weeks, Mariane gave birth to their son, Adam.
Adam is 4 years old now. Mariane said she was not angry with the terrorist anymore. She now wanted to get different civilizations to talk but not fight.
I found myself more touched and more connected to people who lost their loved ones than before.
Learn more about Mariane in www.danielpearl.org
I decided to fix my teeth with braces.
This morning, I went to my orthodontist's office for some X-rays and impressions. Nowadays they have phased out the X-ray film and have the X-ray images imported to the computer directly.
I saw my skull popped up on the computer screen. It is really funny to see your own skull. It is even more funny because you can see my silhouette if you look closely.
I asked the nurse whether she could give me a copy of the photo. I got a printout and scanned it.
And I just figured that the way my front teeth connect and extend from my jaws looks very much like the pecks of birds.
MY SKULL, Nov 22, 2006
What's going on? I am so blue tonight.
Was it work? The pear I ate that made me lame in squash games? The weird chest pressure? Or something deep inside me?
Although it was the fourth Halloween I spent in the US, it was the first time I carved pumpkins.
Sophie and I bought a pumpkin for each of us from Russell Orchids. Yvette bought a kid's pumpkin carving tools.
I looked up one of the books of Phoenix, and carved the Japaneses Sacred Guide against the devils on the right.
PUMPKIN CARVING, Oct 22, 2006
Last summer we went to New York City.
I had been in NYC a few times. But it was the first time I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In the African exhibit, I saw a couple holding hands.
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NYC, Sspt 5, 2005 
I made a lobster dinner for the night in Maine.
Before we went, I looked up on the web and couldn't find a seafood market in that area.
Luck. On the our way, I took a wrong turn in a small town and ran into a man who was selling lobsters and clams and fishes in his truck on the curb. So we had lobsters for dinner.
We had 4 2-lb lobsters and 5 lbs of clams. I simply boiled them with salt. I also cooked some pasta to fill up.
Everybody was happy with the food.
Bunt-Inn, Greenwood, ME, Sept 30, 2006
I love my car. It is a VW Jetta, made in 1999.
I bought it in Sept 2004, when it was 5 years old. I was not looking at this particular model but it happened to fit my budget and I just saw the ad on the newspaper.
Lars told me to be the first one to see the car, because it was a good car and the seller was asking for a very reasonable price. So we set off at 7 am and saw the car by 8.
The look of the car is good, round edges but not too round. Looks like it has some muscle. The first moment I hit the pedal, I was in love with it. Fast response, accurate turn. I feel the road from the steering wheel and the engine from the gas pedal.
I didn't want to bargain. I asked the seller his bottom line. He said $6600. Two hundred down from his asking price. Dealt. He turned down the other 2 parties scheduled to see the car after me.
I have had it for over 2 years. It has some minor complaints but has never disappointed me. I love driving it so much.
A few months back I was so depressed and lost that I wanted to get a hold on something. I turned into the automobile market. I was attracted by a few newbies, the Mazda3 hatchback, VW Rabbit, Saab 9-3. I tested drive 2 Mazda3 and a VW Rabbit. I felt nothing from the steering wheel nor the pedal.
It was partly the money factor partly my pretty Jetta that woke me up. I don't spend extra money on something that is not better than what I am having. Why move on to something that is not better than what you already own?
I heard on the radio that some drivers pat their cars like patting their lovers. I started to do that long before I heard it.
Milton Friedman died today at 94.
I am no economist. I took an entry economic class in college and I have long forgot everything I learned from it.
Friedman's theories had influenced the whole post-70s world. In 1960s, no one listened to his theory of free market backed although it was backed by vigorous logic and mathematics, when the Keynesian economics of heavy government intervention was at its hype. When his prediction of the end of economic boom created by intense government intervention after the World War II, and the beginning of the lengthy depression and loss of jobs became true in the 70s, Friedman found himself under the spotlight. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were deeply influenced by his theories and advices on limiting government power. His theories also pointed out the fallacy of communism, and inspired a few people in the East Bloc who led the upthrow the rule of the communists.
As Ben Bernanke, now chairman of the Federal Reserve, put it in a speech honoring Mr. Friedman in 2003, “His thinking has so permeated modern macroeconomics that the worst pitfall in reading him today is to fail to appreciate the originality and even revolutionary character of his ideas.”
Thank you, Mr. Friedman.
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
I got up at 4:10 am to catch the first train at 5:10 am from Bristol to Heathrow for the first flight at 7:30 am. I didn't want to waste a second.
It was a warm summer day of Europe. Clear sky. We picnicked with ham from the supermarket and fresh bread from the bakery.
There were people sunbathing in complete nude on the designated lawn. Among the rules, no ball games nor horseback riding.
MUNICH, Sept 9, 2004
It is not easy to be alone in a foreign country. You feel helpless in difficult times, and simply can't stop asking yourself why you are here.
I always know my reason. I am seeking a home. A home built by me and my loved one. That had kept me in a positive attitude.
MACAU, Jan 2006
I missed grandma very much today. I called her up and we talked for over 20 min.
I used to be very closed to her. My mom needed to work and grandma was the one who looked after me since I was born. She hefted me on her back to the market everyday when I was a toddler. She taught me what was right, what was wrong; how to behave and how to respect people.
A few years ago she needed to implant a heartbeat regulator onto her heart. I flew to see her and stayed with her in the hospital. I held her hands the first time since I grew up. The doctor said she was strong and healthy otherwise. She recovered very quickly and only stayed in the hospital for 3 days after the surgery. I was relieved.
Grandma is a very smart and clever woman. She made many important decisions for our family that were proved to be correct. I always think if she had had the chance to go to school, she would have had a great career. But she would probably not be my grandma.
I am very lucky to have a great woman guide me throughout my childhood. You gave me all it takes to make me a decent human being. Although we are not related by blood, your teaching and love always flow in my blood. I love you, Grandma.
Grandma, my mom's sister and me in Edinburg Square,
Hong Kong, 1977.
Today I got all my squash buddies together to watch the Round 1 of the US Open Squash. It was the first time I saw the world's top players play in live.
Four of us, including an old friend who happened to be visiting Boston from Melbourne, Australia, went to Harvard Field. They got a nice indoor squash and tennis stadium there.
Since it was the round 1, the seeded top 10 players of the world played players of lower ranking. We watched the world number 1, 4, 5 and 7. The most entertaining match was number 4 vs number 24. Both of them play an attack type of squash and the match went onto the fifth game. It took Number 4 lots of hard work to win.
The first match started at 1:30 pm and the last match of the day had not started till 8 pm when we left. It was a great day. I think I have picked up some skills to play better.
World's No. 1 (in white shirt) was very patient with his
contester who ranked lower than 50.
It was a trip of short notice. It was hot and wet. One day I met the rain.
We were in a bookstore in TST. I took my cell phone out and wanted to take a picture out of the window. The storekeeper came by and told me I was not allowed to take pictures in the store.
I asked him, "Not even outside the window?"
He said, "No, I am sorry."
He walked away and I took this picture. I don't follow stupid rules.
STAR FERRIES, Sept 4, 2006
It was a sunny day. Blue sky, white clouds. Temperature at 15 degrees. It was a bit too warm for November in Boston. People are still debating on global warming.
Today we had the funeral for my friend who died Wednesday. It was as sad as you can imagine for a man who died young and left a wife and a teenage daughter. It was the speech of an old friend of his that got me in tears.
The speaker quoted my friend's words said after he knew he didn't have too much time left in his life. My friend had said, "It is not my life that I worry about. My life had become my daughter's life already." The speaker then turned to the daughter and said, "his life is your life, and you life is his life."
I had known him loved his daughter very much. In fact he had lived his live for his daughter.
Tears came down from me. I suddenly realized that I was also living my life for my loved one without being aware of it.
It may be too much for a relationship, but I don't regret it. Life is short after all.
Now I know how a lost dad can change a girl. It can turn a lively and dependent girl cool and defying.
Now you see a line, a worm, a spiral and a rose. There is one thing in them in common. Guess.
Answer? The worm, the spiral and the rose all come from the line. I simply played the line with the "twist tool" of Adobe Illustrator. The harder you twist the line, the more collapsed the line will be:
and this:
There must be some maths behind it. I am not any good in maths, but I see some philosophy in it.
Something as simple as a line can be twisted so hard that you see it something else.
Should we step back and look at the nature of things, and appreciate what is behind the twist?
I went home for lunch and shower after playing soccer. When I finished and started my car, I saw in the mirror a wild turkey walking down my front yard.
I pulled my car to the driveway and figured that there were actually a pair of them.
They were about 2 feet tall and only a few feet away from me. I wanted to take a picture of them but I didn't have my cell phone with me.
I didn't move. They ignored me and walked across the street.
Florence is a beautiful city. The Cathedral, The David, Uffizi, endless scriptures and paintings.
Italian pizza, cappuccino, the ham.
The tiny hostel, the walk of the city, up to the Michaelangelo Plaza.
People always say you should treasure your loved ones. I always do.
Life is short. Don't wait.
A friend of mine came from China. He was a professor in pathology back there.
He was diagnosed liver cancer a couple of months ago. He stayed at home since then. His home is only a mile down the street from my home. I drive pass his home everyday but I have never happened to stop by and say hello to him.
Before his wife and daughter came, I used to go to his home for dinner once in a week or 2 for a few months. He cooked great.
He was rushed to the hospital last week because of internal bleeding. I was going to see him last Sunday. I called him up and he sounded weak. He said he would be home in a couple of days and told me not to see him in the hospital. I thought it a good sign and told him I would see him at his home in a few days.
Last night I saw his car parked outside his home. His car had not been there since he went to the hospital. I thought he was home, and things should be getting better.
This morning, I heard the news. He died yesterday. He was 43 years old.
OUTSIDE MY WINDOW
