春暖花开

 

In his great poem" When Lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd," Walt Whitman wrote eloquently of how he wanted to break the twig of a lilacs so that he could cover the coffin with the perfumed flower. That gesture speaks to the need we have to say to the deceased:" I love you, i care for you, i want to bless you. You are in my heart."

The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.

 

To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.

 

I’d never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous—which is one of the reasons the money was so easy to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, someone was going to identify me, along with a lot of people more or less like me, as a fraud. Sooner rather than later, there would come a Great Reckoning when Wall Street would wake up and hundreds if not thousands of young people like me, who had no business making huge bets with other people’s money, would be expelled from finance.

When I sat down to write my account of the experience in 1989—Liar’s Poker, it was called—it was in the spirit of a young man who thought he was getting out while the getting was good. I was merely scribbling down a message on my way out and stuffing it into a bottle for those who would pass through these parts in the far distant future.

Unless some insider got all of this down on paper, I figured, no future human would believe that it happened.

I thought I was writing a period piece about the 1980s in America. Not for a moment did I suspect that the financial 1980s would last two full decades longer or that the difference in degree between Wall Street and ordinary life would swell into a difference in kind. I expected readers of the future to be outraged that back in 1986, the C.E.O. of Salomon Brothers, John Gutfreund, was paid $3.1 million; I expected them to gape in horror when I reported that one of our traders, Howie Rubin, had moved to Merrill Lynch, where he lost $250 million; I assumed they’d be shocked to learn that a Wall Street C.E.O. had only the vaguest idea of the risks his traders were running. What I didn’t expect was that any future reader would look on my experience and say, “How quaint.”

I had no great agenda, apart from telling what I took to be a remarkable tale, but if you got a few drinks in me and then asked what effect I thought my book would have on the world, I might have said something like, “I hope that college students trying to figure out what to do with their lives will read it and decide that it’s silly to phony it up and abandon their passions to become financiers.” I hoped that some bright kid at, say, Ohio State University who really wanted to be an oceanographer would read my book, spurn the offer from Morgan Stanley, and set out to sea.

Somehow that message failed to come across. Six months after Liar’s Poker was published, I was knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share about Wall Street. They’d read my book as a how-to manual.

In the two decades since then, I had been waiting for the end of Wall Street. The outrageous bonuses, the slender returns to shareholders, the never-ending scandals, the bursting of the internet bubble, the crisis following the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management: Over and over again, the big Wall Street investment banks would be, in some narrow way, discredited. Yet they just kept on growing, along with the sums of money that they doled out to 26-year-olds to perform tasks of no obvious social utility. The rebellion by American youth against the money culture never happened. Why bother to overturn your parents’ world when you can buy it, slice it up into tranches, and sell off the pieces?

 

Ludo Decker ist ein Berliner Boulevardreporter und täglich mit Fotograf Moritz unterwegs, um Prominente für die Tageszeitung „Das Blatt“ zu beobachten. Dies nutzt er häufig für flüchtige Sexkontakte.

Als Wladimir Klitschko Yvonne Catterfeld einen Heiratsantrag machen will, sind Ludo und Moritz vor Ort, um darüber zu berichten. Ludo bricht dabei durch die Glaskuppel über dem Restaurant, in dem sich die Verlobungsgesellschaft aufhält und fällt in die Torte, mit nichts bekleidet als mit einem Bademantel. Er wird zu einer Bewährungsstrafe und 300 Sozialstunden in einem Kinderhort verurteilt.

Dort begegnet Ludo der Leiterin Anna Gotzlowski. Anna wuchs zusammen mit Ludo im selben Viertel auf und wurde während ihrer Kindheit von ihm geärgert und verspottet. Sie beschließt, sich dafür an Ludo zu rächen, indem sie ihn mit unangenehmen Aufgaben betraut. Ludo kann sich dagegen nicht wehren, da sonst der Widerruf seiner Bewährung droht. Er ist weiterhin an neuen Frauenbekanntschaften interessiert und schläft zum Beispiel mit der nymphomanen Mutter eines der im Hort betreuten Kinder.

Im Laufe der Zeit beginnt sich das Verhältnis zwischen Ludo und Anna zu entspannen, und die beiden freunden sich an. Nachdem Annas Verabredung mit einem Mann scheitert, klingelt sie an Ludos Wohnungstür, um sich trösten zu lassen. Die beiden landen im Bett, doch Annas Hoffnungen, dass sich daraus mehr entwickeln könnte, werden vorerst enttäuscht.

Am Ende des Films wird Ludo klar, dass er mehr für Anna empfindet, als er wahrhaben wollte. Er sprengt eine Vorstellung während eines Kinderfestivals und gesteht Anna, die mit den Kindern aus ihrem Hort im Publikum sitzt, dass er sie liebt.

And yet she could no longer believe it was really Eric she was missing. She felt a loss while recognising the object of love hadnot warranted it. Love had been generated by an idea of Eric which the man had never lived up to. She was in the paradoxical position of feeling nostalgia for a situation which had not in fact happened outside the bounds of wishful anticipation. She missed someone, but when she trawled back through memory, she could no longer honestly ascribe her loss to Eric.

 

Were her feelings for him not simply promises which had never borne fruit?Eric had been too poor to answer the emotions he had incited, he had remained insufficient to the longings provoked, unable to assuage or appease her desires. He had been like a stupid person who says something very intelligent without knowing what it means, and therefore cannot be held responsible for the worth another locates therein.

 

The situation was akin to the optical illusion, where a triangle appears only as a result of shapes surrounding it, a mirage determined by objects extraneous to it, as Eric had been a lover's mirage projected by the hopes marshalled around him.

 

It was a reminder of the subtle but vital distinction betw what a person allows another to think belongs to them and wat actually does so- a distinction betw the need they might embody and who they in fact turn out to be.

 

'A part of me is still so attached to him,' Alice told Suzy later that afternoon, 'but i know it isnot really him i miss. It's crazy.'

'It's love,' sighed the flatmate.

去年圣诞节让我深受感动的是一支日本手表广告。本来普通的照片，加上简单手表的背景，意境就有所不同。只是一张朋友的合照，加上背景，就仿佛时间停止在两人欢笑的那一刻，广告语就是被体温温暖的时间。细想一下，每每会味到过去美好的时光，总是因为某一位朋友，或家人，或同学才变得如此亲切和美好。这个广告也就自然而然成为我的最爱之一。

 

拜一下班，高烧39度，若是以往，无论多不舒服，多不提力，还是要一个人准备一切。拖着身体去看医生，爬起床煮泡面。可是这次，也许是上帝觉得我着实可怜，派了3个天使到我家，精心照顾我。他们帮我量体温，拿出家中所有的被子给我保暖，烧水，煮姜汤，让习惯一个人的我眼泪流个不停。

 

去年看了一部法国文艺片，一开始不明白命名的原因，现在才顿然领会。Hunting ad Gathering, 几个陌生人成为朋友，互相照顾，互相关怀，这样所散发出的温暖使房子成为家， 过去成为回忆，生活成为生机勃勃的活着。

My thoughts go out to you today my immortal beloved. I can live wholly with you or not at all. Be calm my life, my all. Only by calm consideration of my existence can we achieve our purpose to live together. Oh continue to love me, never misjudge the most faithful heart of your belove. Ever Thine, ever mine, and ever ours.

---Ludwig Beethoven

 

If Schadenfreude is the word for feeling pleasure at someone else misfortune. This was "Jewelryfreude"

 

Everyday, you know, it's weird. I havn't cried very much at all. Maybe you are only allotted a certain amount of tears per man, and i used mine up.

---Carrie Bradshaw

 

In the end, the Hindu text, the Bhagavad-Gita comes to my aid. I remember the answer that Krishna gives to the warrior Arjuna, when the latter loses heart before a decisive battle, throws down his arms, and says that it is not right to take part in a battle that will culminate in the death of his brothers. Krishna says, more or less "Do you really think you can kill anyone? Your hand is My Hand, and it was already written that evertyhing you are doing would be done. No one kills and no one dies."

 

When something undesirable grows in my soul, i ask God to give me the same courage mercilessly to pluck it out.

 

An action is a thought made manifest.

I've been thinking abt writing something just to be in memory of Heath Ledger, but i couldnot sit myself down n begin for the past 5 months.

So probably the easiest way is just to remember all the small things abt him n let them tell the story.

 

He was the sweet teenager from Ten Things I Hate About You, with Julia Stiles, their onscreen chemistry was heart-warming and wonderful.

 

His daughter is Matilda-named after a famous cartoon character-a girl born of beastly parents but blessed with magical power that makes her feel as if she's "flying past the stars on the silver wings".

 

His fiance or the love of his life, Michelle Williams used to "be afflicted from an early age with a presentiment of loss".

 

She was, despite all the odds, optimistic about life" what more can you ask for, really? To come up against the edge of your own ability and step over the line A baby step, mind you."

 

Their favorite poem, is from Galway Kinnell

 

 

 

有一本書，我在６年裡買了三次，
前倆次，我把它們從頭致尾細細翻過留在了當時停留的地方。
這一此，想著買來送給一雙新的相遇的眼睛。

19歲讀王小慧的我的視覺日記，讀到她談起早逝的丈夫，
覺得浪漫有矯情，
那正是青春矛盾又自以為是的年齡；
21歲重新在上海讀到時，
因為這朵由上海出發，越海而開放的花，
重回到原處，展出如女性般伸展著生命的花，
在字裡行間想讀到她之後的愛情，
“确實很快樂過，可最終不是最適合的。“
於是想到少年夫妻如兩棵自小生長的樹，枝干相連，根係都緊緊盤結；
而各自繁冒了三四十年的植物，互借蔭榆，卻無法移植嫁接，
那便是個處處事事要問reasoning的年紀，當然也包括感情。

轮到我隨手翻開章節，王的文字並不花哨，
感情原本是些小事:

“自己觉得他摄影绝对技术比我好。所有技术的问题都是他在教我，我也没有耐心去看那些技术的问题。如果不是他这样帮我，是不可能的。等到他知道我特别喜欢摄影，我决定要搞摄影专业的时候，他已经不拍照片了。我们出去的时候，他只是帮我摆三脚架，拿镜头测光，像个摄影助理一样，他全都让我来拍...”

“基本上所有的东西都是他背，我就只背照相机。有的时候，实在走不动的时候。他最后会连照相机也会拿在手里，我还走不动，就会蹲下来。也没有地方坐，他就鼓劲，还唱歌，在后面推着我，一边推着我一边走，一边唱歌给我鼓劲。就这样哄我。那一次我记得很冷很冷的，就是穿呢子大衣，在英国的一个小镇上，还下雪。然后就顶着风、顶着雪，这样往前走，他还给我拍过一张照片，就是风把很重的呢子大衣吹起来的样子。"

他愛她願看到她實現每個夢想而開心，她想起他記得起走不動時他托著在風裡面走。隻那樣一托，牽了我的腦上心上，愛我們的人拉著我們的手，當我們耍賴，沒有動力，累得不走不動時，拉著我們走，為我們每個意願實現而開心。我媽媽就這樣拉著我的手，用最大的耐心一万次把我從床上拉起來，我常常倦怠耍賴的時候，哄我一直拉我往前走。所有的愛終究很相同。

這便是我在25歲時眼裡看到的愛情故事。

For Instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spend military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for oder at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great citiies. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerned efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist?Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You-you yourself are a child of this mass and  a brother to all the rest. Or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.

 

-------Saul Bellow, Herzog, 1964

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

被体温温暖的时间

 

 

In life mostly of the time wisdom doesnot come along with success but with failure. Just finished watching LMS which is very long due for me and today with all the sickness and frustrations in reality, i finally watched it and had a good laugh. This is one of the make-u-feel-good movies. Assuming life sucks and it always always depends on individuals to see the silver lining of all the clouds and still manages to stay postive. In real life ppl have difficulties, some can be overcome while others cannot. What's really important is to always put up a good fight and have someone there for you when you are making a great fool of yourself. So, life sucks, we all have problems, no matter big or small, deal with it, swallow it and move on cos life is way too short to cry over failures. and if you can, do something weird and kinky for a change, it feels good that u dont always have to keep up with the appearances.

Der Herbst

Kühl am Morgan, Nebel, bunte Blätter, manchmal auch herrliche Sonne und wunderbare Farben in Waldßdas is der Herbst. In der Freizeit gehe ich mit Lind spazieren, wir sammeln Pilze oder gehen wandern.








Der Frühling

Der Frühling_ Das ist meine Jahreszeit! Die Tage werden wieder länger, die Temperaturen sind angenehm, der Schnee geht langsam weg, die Blumen blühen und die Vögel singen. Da macht das Fahrrad fahren wieder Spa? Und der April ist wie ich: Er macht, was er will.

April, April, macht was er will.
Mal regen und mal Sonnenschein,
dann schneit es wieder zwischendrein.





Schatz, melde dich mal,
Dirk, wo bist du?
Im Atzinger. Kommst du auch?
O.K.,bis dann.
Hast du noch lieb?
Ja, vergiss mich nicht!








Ich kann früh morgens noch nichts essen. Bei der Arbeit trinke ich einen Milchkaffee.







Gestern: Tee, Brot mit Butter und Käse
Heute: Tee und Broth mit Butter. Na ja...
Morgen: nichts! Ich muss erst mal einkaufen.






Entschuldigung!
Guten Morgen.
Morgen, einen großen Kaffee, bitte.
Möchten Sie auch was essen?
Ja, Semmeln mit Butter und Käse-und ein Ei, bitte.
Wollen Sie vielleicht das Schelling-Frühstück?
Was is denn das?
Ein Kännchen Kaffee, zwei Semmeln, Butter und Marmelade, Wurst und Käse und ein Ei. Außerdem noch ein Glas Orangensaft.
Ja, gerne.

 

Remarks of Bill Gates

Harvard Commencement

I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”

I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.

But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.

Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.

Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.

I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.

What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.

But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.

But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.

Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?

For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.

During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States.

We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.

If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”

So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

But you and I have both.

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.

I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don’t … care.” I completely disagree.

I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.

All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.

The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.

To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.

Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.

But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.”

The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.

We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.

If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.

Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.

Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.

The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.

Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.

The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.

You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.

But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.

I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn’t bear it.

What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives?

You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.

Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past.

The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.

Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”

Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.

The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.

The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.

At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.

We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.

Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.

What for?

There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?

Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:

Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?

Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?

Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?

These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.

My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”

When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.

In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.

Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.

You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.

Knowing what you know, how could you not?

And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.

Good luck.  

广い宇宙の数ある一つ  
靑い地球の广い世界で  

小さな戀の思いは届く  
小さな岛のあなたのもとへ  

あなたと出会い  
时は流れる
思いをこめた  
手纸もふえる  

いつしか二人互いに响く
时に激しく
时に切なく  

响くは远く  
遥か彼方へ  
やさしい歌は  
世界を变える

ほらあなたにとって  
大事な人ほど  
すぐそばにいるの

ただあなたにだけ
届いて欲しい  
响け恋の歌  

ほら～～ほら～～ほら～～～响け响け恋の歌
あなたは气づく
二人は步く  
暗い道でも
日日照らす月  

握りしめた手  
离すことなく
思いは强く
永远誓う

永远の渊  
きっと仆は言う思い
变わらず同じ言叶を  

それでも足りず  
泪にかわり
喜びになり

言叶にできず
ただ抱きしめる
ただ抱きしめる

ほらあなたにとって  
大事な人ほど
すぐそばにいるの  

ただあなたにだけ
届いて欲しい  
响け恋の歌  

ほら～～ほら～～ほら～～～响け恋の歌
梦ならば觉めないで  
梦ならば觉めないで  

あなたと过ごした时  
永远の星となる  


ほらあなたにとって
大事な人ほど
すぐそばにいるの

ただあなたにだけ  
届いて欲しい
响け恋の歌  

ほらあなたにとって
大事な人ほど
すぐそばにいるの

ただあなたにだけ
届いて欲しい
响け恋の歌

广阔宇宙中的唯一仅有的
蓝色地球上的广阔世界中

想起了小小的爱恋
送给小小的岛屿上的你

遇上了你
时间在流逝
对你的想念
随着互通的信件增加

不知不觉二人互相呼唤着
时而激烈
时而难过

呼唤远方
遥远的彼岸
温柔的歌
正在把世界改变

看，那个你想得到的
最重要的人
正正在你的旁边啊

只希望从你
得到那首
回响着的恋歌
喏～～喏～～喏～～～不断回响着的恋歌
两人结伴走
即使是昏暗的道路
月亮也像太阳般照亮

紧握的手
不会放开
我会内心坚信着
许下永远的誓言

永恒的渊
一定我所想得一样
不会打破那同样的言词

尽管如此并不够
要把你的泪
变成喜悦

虽然能够说出来
但只想抱着你
只想抱着你

看，那个你想得到的
最重要的人
正正在你的旁边啊

只希望从你
得到那首
回响着的恋歌

喏～～喏～～喏～～～回响着的恋歌
如果梦醒过来就变得风平浪静
如果梦醒过来就变得风平浪静

与你度过的时间
会成为永恒的星星

看，那个你想得到的
最重要的人
正正在你的旁边啊

只希望从你
得到那首
回响着的恋歌

Today is a good day as coincidentally both Liqing and Libin called me and told me they've found themselves a wonderful job.

Last week it's Duzi and Chenpeng spilled out their good news with me. That reminds me that Lao Fan is also doing well in her life. It seems all my close friends are having the time of their lives. Plus, it's barely halfway in 2007, i've already been invited to three weddings. Not that i am a big fan of weddings, i still need to go and share the happiness of my friends. So i guess that deserves a toast to 2007. The best is yet to come.

深夜里电话铃响。

是朋友的电话。

他说：“忍不住要给你打个电话。我忽然心里难过。非常非常难过。就是这样，没别的。”

说完他挂断了电话。

我从困倦中清醒过来。忽然非常感动。

我也曾有这样的情况。静夜里，忽然有一种异样的情绪涌上心头，那情绪确可称之为“难过”。

并非因为有什么亲友故去。

也不是自己遭到什么特别的不幸。

恰恰相反：也许刚好经历过一两桩好事快事。

却会无端的心里难过。

不是愤世嫉俗，不是愧悔羞赧，不是耿耿于怀，不是悲悲戚戚。

是一种平静的难过。

但那难过深入骨髓。

静静地意识到，自己的生命实体是独一无二的。不但不可能为最亲近最善意的他人所彻底了解，就是自己，又何尝真能把握那最隐秘的底蕴与玄机？

并且冷冷地意识到，自己对他人无论如何努力地去认知，到底也还是只近乎一个白痴。对由无数个他人组合而成的群体呢？简直不敢深想。

归纳，抽象，联想，推测，勉可应付白日的认知。但在静寂清凄的夜间，会忽然感到深深的落寞。

于是心里难过。

也曾想推醒妻，告诉她：“我心里忽然难过。”也曾想打一个电话给朋友，只是告诉他一声，如此如此。但终于都没有那样做，只是自己徒然地咀嚼那份与痛苦并不同味的难过。

朋友却给我打来了电话。

我自信全然没有误解。

并不需要絮絮的倾诉。简短的宣布，也许便能缓解心里的那份难过。或许并不是为了缓解，倒是为了使之更加神圣，更加甜蜜，也更加崇高。

在这个无庸讳言是走向莫测的人生前景中，人们来得及惊奇来得及困惑来得及恼怒来得及愤慨来得及焦虑来得及痛苦或者来得及欢呼来得及沉着来得及欣悦来得及狂喜俩得及满足来得及麻木，却很可能来不及在清夜里扪心沉思，来不及平平静静、冷冷寂寂地忽然感到难过。

白日里，人们杂处时，调侃和幽默是生活的润滑剂。

静夜里，独自面对心灵，自嘲和自慰是魂魄的清洗液。

但是在白日那最热闹的场景里，会忽然感到刺心的孤独。

同样，在黑夜那最安适的时刻里，会忽然有一种浸入肺腑的难过。

会忽然感觉到，世界很大，却又太小；社会太复杂，却又极粗陋；生活本艰辛，何以又荒诞？人生特漫长，这日子怎的又短促？

会忽然意识到，白日里孜孜以求的，在那堂皇的面纱后面，其实只是一张鬼脸；所得的其实恰可称之为失；许多的笑纹其实是钓饵，大量的话语是杂草。

明明是那样的， 却弄成不是那样了。无能为力。

刚理出个头绪，却忽然又乱成一团乱麻。无可奈何。

忘记了应当记住的，却记住了可以忘记的。

拒绝了本应接受的，却接受了本应拒绝的。

不可能改进。不必改进。没有人要你改进。即使不是人人，也总有许许多多的人如此这般一天天地过下去。

心里难过。

但，年年难过年年过。日子是没有感情的，它不接受感情，当然也就不为感情所动。

需要感情的是人。

人的情感首先应当赋予自己。惟有自身的情感丰富厚实了，方可分享与他人。

常在白日里开怀大笑吗？

那种无端的大笑。

偶在静夜里心里难过吗？

那种无端的难过。

或者有一点儿“端”，但那大笑或难过的程度，都忽然达于那“端”外。

是一种活法。

把快乐渡给别人，算一种洒脱。

把难过宣示别人，则近乎冒险。

快乐可以共享。

难过怎能同当？

但有时候就忍不住，想跟最亲近的人说一声：我心里头忽然难过，非常难过。

在那个时候，人生的滋味最浓酽。

也许进入悟境，那难过便是一道门槛吧？

I am trying to find a road to freedom, thorough freedom with liberation of human nature in depth, in which one shall not be enraptured by material wealth or be depressed by destiny. It seems to be so far away. So what? Hesitate without stepping forward, be a lofty recluse or admit your incompetence? I am not sure. Time and time again, I struggled to forget, and tried to  reshape a new life, only to find myself end up in utter loneliness, wandering in the marsh of the ulcer of the past, being sick of the stale smell, indulging in the aged arts. Sentiment, be it touching and sweet, intoxicates one from nowhere, and kills one in no time. Why does the chagrin still hover over my head, permeate from my skin with gloom? Is it true that only the physiologically inferior would resort to arts to express themselves and that only those who are destined to end up alone would look for consolation from abstractions? I am not willing to believe but have to . How can I see through all the mess, distinguishing the truth from the deceiving riot of illusions? Is it a game of enticement, chicanery and betray, for a simple and primitive purpose? Oh, pathetic human, as experiments of the holy god: for no reason we were born, and for a whole life time we are tying to decipher the intention of god, who might have been bored by his silly game of simulation. Don't think over the unfathomable, nor pursue the unattainable. Think like a happy electron: when I am imprisoned, I have more freedom;  when I am no where,  I am everywhere.

Lena is my neighbour during first year in college.

Lena is the girl who is slim,tall, hot and tough.

Lena is the girl whom you always meet somewhere near the sports hall.

Lena is the girl whom I shared my first year struggles and excitements with.

Lena is the girl who likes to decorate her room excessively, yet full of charms.

Lena is the girl who is very active at various ECAs in school and maintains a high profile.

Lena is the girl who knocked on my door at 3am for a teeny tiny caterpillar.

Lena is the girl  who seems to be aloof but actually has a good heart.

Lena is the girl whose sister is, she proudly shared with me, studying arts in Paris.

Lena is the girl whom i haven't seen in a year.

Lena is the girl whose mortuary portrait i saw on the newspaper in a barbecue party.

Lena is the girl who died in a car accident on 6 June 2006 in canada during her graduation trip.

 

In Memory of Lena.