Status updates 2011 - First Half

6/29

英国皇家学会颁“查理二世国王奖”给温家宝，乾隆和马戛尔尼伯爵很淡定。

6/27

共鸣过度诱发脑震荡

[Barbri staff makes announcement before class] Summer's getting thick here and pressure's building....remember don't bring any smelly food into the classroom...oh, also, shower before coming to class...[smothered laughter and whispering all over the place...]

6/16

Central Park in the early summer is always so enchanting. Wanna read up on authors who have written beautifully about New York -- recommendations welcome.

6/14

Hello fee simple my old friend, I've come to talk with you again

Was listening to WNYC last night and there was this interview with the editor of a new book called "Man with a Pan -- Culinary Adventures of Fathers Who Cook for Their Families." It's a 14-minute interview and I enjoyed it a lot: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2011/jun/13/john-donahue-man-pan/

6/12

今天在羽毛球俱乐部和三个高手过招，感觉果然不同。纽约实乃藏龙卧虎之地。

转自XS的新浪微博：“我的揮之不去的高考噩夢是：明明考完了，又被打回去重新讀高中，等第二次高考鄰近，卻發現根本沒復習物理，數學也有半本沒學，卻從不擔心英文。十多年來細節從未改變。”天哪，我在美国的前五年也常常做这样的梦，是不是我们这些读过太多年书，读完硕士甚至博士之后再换专业的人内心深处都有这样的恐惧？或者是高考给我们造成了太大的心理阴影？我的梦还要更纠结一些：我在梦里还隐隐约约“潜意识”觉得自己明明已经大学毕业了，可为什么还要回去再考一遍呢？而且再复习的时候觉得怎么都跟不上趟儿，心急如焚却毫无办法。

6/10

(random thoughts on a Friday night) 其实世间事都是相互转化的。结婚晚一点，将来有一天如果老伴先你而去的话，痛苦可能也就少一点。毕竟属于自己一个人的记忆就多一点。欢乐少一分，痛苦也就相应地少一分。

6/9

(random thoughts during bar review) 中国在本质上是政教合一的。由于中国历来缺乏一个真正意义上的宗教，以及世俗社会和历史文化的高度发达，“中华文明”实际是作为一种宗教的替代品出现在人们的精神世界中。而中国的政体则以“中华文明”这一宗教的守望者的姿态存在，因而获得某种宗教意义上的神圣感。以上观点受到Martin Jacques前段时间在TED的演讲所启发。

6/7

Was listening to NPR's "Fresh Air" this afternoon and the interviewee's voice and tone and accent sound eerily like Obama's but he wasn't. Then started to miss those good old days in St. Louis and Pittsburgh when I drove everyday and got a healthy daily dose of radio broadcast on the road. There was one bright afternoon when I was so fascinated by the program (yes it was Fresh Air) that even though I already arrived home, I sat in the car for another good 20 minutes just to finish listening, and then climbed up the stairs with a heart full of joy. God I love radio.

6/6

A judge in the Guangdong Province High Court just added me on LinkedIn...Chinese judges are so active on social networks! And so young! (this guy was even a year after me at Renmin U.) Is there any sort of judicial ethics code prohibiting them from using LinkedIn, Douban, etc, and tweeting all the time?

I just searched for someone and Google turned up a wedding announcement published in the New York Times on April 17, 1983. Did the bride and bridegroom realize that their announcement would be read 28+ years later by someone born after their wedding? (Anyway, I thought it was pretty sweet...)

-- I love reading these wedding announcements. The newspapers and magazines really do a good job digitalizing their old archives and making them available to the public. The top two articles I enjoyed reading in the Time Magazine were published in 1953 and 1977, which I found by serendipity when researching some random issues. It's amazing how continuous, fluid and serene the American society has been, especially when contracted with the Chinese society which appears interrupted, severed and fragmented by traumatic events like the Cultural Revolution.

6/2

STB北京办的阵容很像一支足球队阿。。。(if you think of partner=教练，counsel=守门员，associate=球员)

5/29

最近常常想写点东西，但又不想被人看见。难道已经到了从博客界退隐、开始写日记的年纪了？

FB gave me a lot of heart attacks in terms of marriage/engagement news this year.

5/25

The Barbri live classroom at 1500 Broadway is great. It brings together students from so many law schools from all over the country, from coast to coast.

When preparing breakfast this morning, I had a strange feeling that this summer resembles last summer in Beijing more than the summer here in New York two years ago. But then the topic today was New York Practice, which drew me back to the memory palace of 26 Broadway.

5/23

The sense of loneliness really started to dissipate in the second half of my sixth year in America. It no longer troubles me even though I spend the majority of my time alone. The nostalgia for the good old days in China gradually goes away. The loneliness was replaced by an encompassing sense of numbness.

5/22

A comment (and a few ensuing comments) is deleted. I maintain a general principle of politeness in moderating comments on my Facebook space. I delete languages that discriminates against or insults a certain group of people. In weighing politeness / collegiality and freedom of speech, my balance here tips in favor of the former. Thanks.

5/8

"蒐"字对应的简体字原来是“搜”！多年来每次看到“蒐藏”、“蒐集”都会楞下，今天终于知道了。这个字简体和繁体都是12划，“简化”它的人到底是咋想的？

为什么中文五千字看起来跟玩儿似的，英文五千字就好像很长呢？为什么一秒钟看10个汉字不费劲，看10个英文单词组成的一句话就反应不过来呢？

It is a crime not to be outdoors today.

5/7

secrecy and dispatch
做个诗人真是郁闷，写出来的诗要是没人欣赏又得唧唧歪歪半天，难哪～

5/6

After listening to "Smooth Jazz" for 4 years, I recently switched to "Martini Lounge." It's been a refreshingly new start.

I spent late afternoon sitting in the Heckscher Ballfields in the Central Park, watching kids in red and green shirts playing softball, and parents rooting for them from the bleachers. It was a bliss opening up all senses to soak in nature and not having to stare at a computer screen. For all the people I could see, I was the only Asian. For the first time in a long time, it felt completely American and un-New York. It was like a movie scene.

5/2

Getting tenured at an American university is not unlike being inducted into the Chinese officialdom. You get security, and a lot of contempt.

4/30

I was reading George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" on the subway tonight. There was a slight sense of disappointment, and I suspect it is because 1) too high of an expectation; 2) my English is not yet good enough to pick up all the subtlety in his language; 3) I'm not really in a mood to read a novel of this genre; 4) the Chinese novel I read last night, "Love in a Fallen City," by Eileen Chang, was simply too good.

4/29

《倾城之恋》果然很短，今天在地铁上便看完了。很有趣的故事。“香港的陷落成全了她” ── 是不是只有一座城的陷落才能成全一个人？

4/20

最近不少朋友在庆祝清华百年校庆，掐指算来等人大百年校庆时我都53了，真郁闷

4/18

今天在地铁里见到一美女，披肩发，身材也很好，很像是中国人，不过肤色略暗，眼神似乎比一般中国人更亮、更锐利些（我本来在看书，抬起头时发现她正盯着我看，四目相对的一瞬间我只觉得自己的眼神被“砰”一下弹了回来）。下车时发现该美女斜挎着一个小小的包，包上有个小小的logo，上面是大写的TIBET。

4/14

Chevron & Chevrolet

3/31

my senior editor circled 150 small circles in my paper. that means I will have to expand the footnotes from about 150 to 300. for a 50-page paper. oh yeah.

这篇论文里引用的新闻稿本来几乎是清一色英文报刊，只求易辨识且无需翻译，无奈领导要求严格，每项事实都要求有出处，于是只好又加上一些之前参考的中文文章。有篇文章的题目叫做《鼎晖创投从“傍大行”到“大行”》，看到时先愣了一下，思忖片刻后译作“CDH: From Gold Digger to Gold”。似乎还保留了一些原题的风味。

3/30

sold 6 books on Amazon since Feb. Is this what they call offloading?...

3/27

I need an alarm clock that rings once every hour, so that I can remember to get up and walk around a bit.

One way to reduce frivolous emails is to insert a middle stage into the sending action: first you send it to an "interim box," and then you have to go to that interim box and click send again. Basically, to increase the cost of this action.

3/22

我用拼音打“苏州创投”，我这小白的无比智能的输入法立即反应出“宿州床头”。其中定有隐情！。。

3/14

Life's good after an afternoon cup of Victorian Earl Grey and an impromptu serenade from Enrico Toselli.

Cat's Cradle. Kurt Vonnegurt. Schlachthof Fünf. Bombing of Dresden.

3/6

infinite approximation

3/1

The Wachtell speed as recorded by Word's Track Changes. Positively awed.

2/26

一个人可以没有文化，但不可以没有情趣。

With the new ultra-light, double-hang wardrobe lying comfortably against the wall, I now officially pardon my new room's not having a closet.

每次搬家都会和一堆只有每次搬家时才会注意到的东西较劲

2/23

Sitting in my First Amendment class, couldn't help but imagining teaching a similar, semester-long seminar with these interesting cases to CPC Central Publicity/Propaganda Department officials. Must be fascinating discussions. Strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, who else on earth could know better than those kids?

2/20

The greatest hidden peril of the internet is not that it eliminates the distance in space, but that it eliminates the distance in time, so that every moment in the past can be now, and now can be any moment in the future. (random thought on my way back home from dinner.)

2/14

雨后春笋 v. Mushroom

2/11

surrounding myself with the hallucination of being a fancy corporate/finance lawyer by writing this PE paper

hatching a spectacular footnote on a sunny Friday afternoon

Rose (Georgia), Orange (Ukraine), Cedar (Lebanon), Tulip (Kyrgyzstan), Jasmine (Tunisia)...轮到中国是不是该叫牡丹了？嗯，牡丹革命有点意思，应该把这个概念包装一下搞上市。来个triple listing就更给力了，纽沪港一起上。

2/9

零丁洋里叹零丁，聚贤庄上听聚贤。

2/8

给力是一个很不给力的词语。我们应该用一个更给力的词语来取代它。

1/28

going guirrilla