The Strange Tales of Liaozhai and the movie of Stardust.

http://www.wellbeing.com.au/article/Features/Wisdom/What-is-Relationship-Astrology_681

I'm on school vacation now and I've read some of the books of The Strange Tales of Liaozhai and "coincidentally" watched the movie of Stardust by a local channel before the party of ZoukOut. The origin of The Strange Tales of Liaozhai consists of 409 short stories and a lot of the stories are about love of a couple. So, it is not hard to find the similarities between The Strange Tales and the movie of Stardust. Both are about the hardships that the couple has be through and thus earned their eternal love for each other and being together happily ever after.

Fairy tales of eternal love seem to be impossible to happen in my era of time. In fact most of the people would think it is not real and thus decided to forget it and "wake up" for the "reality". But I believe that everybody, including myself of course, wants it and so lots and lots of this kind of movies had been produced and attracted millions of crowd to watch it. Similarly, I also believe that one of the reasons that The Strange Tales can ever exist until now, either in literature or drama series, for more than 250 years is because of the same elements: most of the people would like to have eternal love.

So now arises a question that a lot of people would like to ask and trying to search for the answer: Can eternal love be gained without any hardships?

I think eternal love would not come for free. There is a price that the couple have to pay in order to gain it: they have to go through some hardships just like The Strange Tales as well as the movie of Stardust. Nothing is free. If it is free, it would have no value and the couple may break easily.

So, people who is living in a peace era like now in Singapore, London, Tokyo etc would means that eternal love will never exist? Frankly, I don't know but I suppose so.

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This year marks the fifth year of the break-up between me and my ex-girlfriend and I can still remember that the way we got together was far too easy and without any hardships and obstacles. Now, when I look back at the relationship (after reading The Strange Tale as well as watching the movie), I'm lost and confused. My experience of "easy-come-easy-go" (can I apply this idiom to relationship?) agrees with The Strange Tale and the movie and thus I think I can safely conclude that no eternal love without hardships. But in reality, how am I suppose to "mix" hardships into a relationships if I ever have a chance to "fall" again?

Maybe it is a curse that come with a peace society. Maybe I'm talking "false dilemma" or maybe I'm thinking too much again (damnit!). Whatever will be will be and I shouldn't worry too much.

Lastly, a small request: please don't laugh at me if I happened to be single for the rest of my life.

Finally..AY10/11 Sem 1 is over (II)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/digbyross/2505974224/

Now back to the sad part.

Sad, because I don't think I did well for PC2131 (E and M). All along, I heard people says Study Smart. Well, sometimes I wonder: What is study smart? How to study smart? Study smart means simply study for exam and test? Study those will only come out in the exam and test? I don't know and apparently it is the case.

I am used to "study all" and neglected "study smart" as I always think that the exam and test question is simply unpredictable and the lecturer can always change his style now and then. But, I've changed my strategy this semester simply because, judged by my current overall performance (CAP), "study all"--or rather Study Hard-- is not going to work for me. To me, the biggest difference between study smart and study hard is that study smart is only study for whatever that will come out in the exam or test and study hard would be study everything (is it a correct "definition"? Again, I don't know..). Now, let me ask you some questions. If you were decided to study smart, were you look back and study the mid term tests? Were you look back at the tutorial and study all the tutorial questions again? Or you would look at the "potential" questions which you think would come out in the final exam? Well, you can simply say "both" but don't forget that you don't have the luxury of time to do both as you have other exams to take care of. Maybe I am stupid or something, I've decided to give up on the revision of the mid term tests as well as the tutorial question. Guess what, in the final exam, 2 mid term test questions and a tutorial question (90% similar and exact) came out in the final exam. My face turned to red and blue on the spot and immediately I'd like to scream my lung out: "WHAT THE FU*******************K!!!!!"

Who would expect this? I know that the lecturer is being kind and would like to help the student but it turned out that his "favor" is killing me and I'm in hot soup now. I expected the opposite and studied those that have not come out in the mid term tests and tutorial.

Now, I'm really confuse with study smart and study hard. If I were to stick with study hard, my situation now won't be that bad as I would study the mid term tests and tutorial questions.

有早知,冇乞兒 (Cantonese slang: if "predictable" exists, beggar will not exist)...

Finally..AY10/11 Sem 1 is over

My QM I, II and III "guardians". (1927, Solvay Conference)

http://regnirts.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html

(Taking a very deep breath and sigh...)

Well, AY10/11 Sem 1 is over and I have just finished the final exam of PC2131 (E and M) 1 hour ago and PC4130 QMIII 5 hours ago. It was really fast and so does this semester.

While writhing this post, I am happy and sad. Happy, because I have finally completed the most important courses for this undergraduate study: Quantum Mechanics I, II and III. Seriously, I consider myself has graduated as physics graduate because, in my point of view, QM is the most important training that I must complete and QM is far more important than the rest of the module like E and M, Classical Mechanics, Mathematical method etc. I cannot imagine myself graduate without QM I, II and III. Why QM is so important to me? Well, honestly, it is a matter of pride as well as because it is very cool, interesting ( I still cannot accept Schrodinger's Cat and quantum entanglement) and yet to be fully understand by human being. Pride, you say? What pride? Well, just like the old good Chinese proverb says (translate by me): It is better to have a very sharp knife (only one) than having a lot of "normal" knife. As you may aware, I am pretty weak in physics (in fact very weak) and I really cannot give up my pride and just let people think that I am "nobody". Now, with these three QM modules under my belt, at least, I think, I am "somebody" because not much people can "stand" QM very long and very often people just switch their mind off when they heard someone talking about QM. On the other hand, seriously, I have think this over and over again: is this a correct attitude and mindset towards learning? I seriously don't know. Is it correct to think yourself as "somebody" and put your pride as high as your nose? My faith is shaking because this is really heavy and very often I have consider giving up and live my life an enjoyable one. No stress, just study whatever that is easy and able to graduate. You may confuse now and think that QM I, II and III are core module and compulsory to go through. As the matter of fact, only QM I and QM II are core and compulsory for normal degree undergraduate. QM III will only become core and compulsory for those are taking Honors degree. In my case, I am most probably graduate without Honors simply because of my poor and lousy CAP (a measure of overall performance) and it is up to me to choose to study QM III or not. So what the big deal since a lot of honors students are also "equip" with QM III? Well, the big deal is that I am the only non-honors student who dare to compete with the honors student in this "sounds difficult" subject! I must admit that it is really disputable and up to individual's point of view to think "I'm daring or not", but seriously it is really extremely rare to find a student like me who dare to do this and most of my senior who graduate without honors would have no QM III in their transcript.

Well, let's get back to the initial "discussion" now: Am I right to lift my pride as high as my nose but yet get myself very tired and sad very often? Tired and sad because physics is just not my field and my knowledge of physics is very fragile. I can easily forget what I have learnt over night and repeat all the mistake again and again during mid term test, final exam and even tutorial sessions.

On the other hand, it may be true to think that life is about a battle. In that sense, maybe I am right and I should continue this "battle" of challenging myself and hopefully it would lead me to somewhere better. If it eventually lead me to somewhere worse and stuck in a one way street (undergraduate degree is one of the most important factor that determine my career and it may have a huge ill-effect if i have selected it wrongly), well, I may as well just take it as another battle.

Maybe I just shouldn't take it too seriously and think too much about it because, better or worse, I will learn and grow and eventually nothing to lose. So what if people laugh at me and think that I am not realistic (keep doing something that you are not good at ) and deserve a failure? Well, I guess I have to just let them laugh but tell myself that at least I have tried my best to earn myself a pride.

Who knows? Maybe life without pride would be the worst failure after all...

(to be continued...)