All In Vain

Siddhartha Gautama, may he rest in peace, was shocked when he learned that man dies. He felt, as the young, handsome, respectable prince of the Shakyas in Kapilavastu, that the heaven fell over his head and the earth was split to let out the flames from the hell. He no longer drank the ruby wine nor watched the sexy dance, but sat in meditation.
　　
　　When Gautama's fear once struck my jug head on a quiet, breezy night, I felt dizzy in bed, pondering all the way what was going to happen during my postlife time, which was in vain. Life is made up of just two phases, one of which is living, thereof the other is death.
　　
　　That perhaps is a bothering experience almost everyone here has ever encountered. Each time a night rain gently falls, you lie in bed alone ruminating the past day, that annoying, answerless question may come and will not cease to emerge until Hypnos, the god of sleep, stealthily smooths your unrest and takes away your consciousness temporarily for this very night. But that is not an end. Once there you live, you are destined to be confronted by such disconcerting tollings.
　　
　　Looking back, I can clearly remember on how many nights I have been disturbed by that terrifying idea. To deprive himself of this fear, Gautama resorted to an ascetic life, which he failed. He then, with his companions, went to settle down beside a river where Gautama began to meditate in austerity, and on a diet of a single grain of rice a day. That nearly killed him. On the brink of starving, after some struggles, he was helped by a girl who offered him some food and drink. With all the strength he could gather, and the courage to overcome death, after 49 days of meditating under a peepul tree, he attained Bohdi, or Enlightenment.
　　
　　Where am I to attain my Bohdi? Do I need to meditate under a tree, too? Or should I go on a strict diet to keep off fleshly distractions? Over the time, I begin to firmly believe that imitations won't help. The era of Gautama has been left behind and to obtain my Bohdi I'd do it from scratch and anew, leaving the past as the past.
　　
　　This is a book about death. Not a death seen often on this planet, yet one among those that happened and will keep happening out there. And this is also a book about living. Not a dull living lived billions of times on this planet, but one among those that sparkled and will keep sparkling all through the history.
　　
　　And in the void something murmurs, Life has two sides; one is living, and the other death.

Slumdog Millionaire: Blood Is Blood

　My brother fucked my woman, and took her away by violence. Shall I forgive him or kill him?
　　
　　Take your side.
　　
　　I'd forgive him. Because blood is blood. And a woman is just a woman. For Jamal Malik, a slum lad for the first time of his life bathing in the river of love, he probably would not stand with me. But he did. I've spent couple of years to reach that understanding and he did it without a second thought. That's what singles him out.
　　
　　However, there was truly a blood tie between Latika and Jamal, onward from the time she first slept under the same roof with Jamal and Salim on the soaking night, and that tie was again strengthened at the moment the little brothers had missed her hand on the roaring train. Miserable emotions have deeper roots. And a young mind would probably go all the way to tackle the problems however tough they seem.
　　
　　If someone dies for you, you are perhaps the most honored. This moral standard holds true all through cultures. In fact, Salim died first of all just for Jamal, and then he died for Latika. His death's meaning more than doubled because he at last died for us, revealing a mind of responsibility and a heart of blood and love.
　　
　　It's a world separate from mine, down at the south tip of the continent I live in. But I see similar things happening out there, more vigorous, full of hope, and with persistence. If I'd be asked again what India is like, I'd take a second thought and say, I don't know.

RocknRolla: Let's Talk Movie

Once my views go beyond movies, my mind is bewildered, my eyes dazzled, my limbs misplaced and my mouth shut. So let's just talk movie.
　　
　　RocknRolla is a good make that will give you brainwaves at least at my very first glance. Drugs, music, sex, violence, bribery, plus the famous cockney speak that swallows each initial H sound. I won't take to hide my love for this movie in order to single my self out. Or I must say, I am not that type who have exceptional tastes for fine, interesting moving pictures.

　　

    One of the core magics of the modern movies is a chain of accelerated changes of scenes like another dish is served before you finish the previous one in a restaurant, or fast forwards or rewinds of the film as if you were manipulating a real time machine. However, it is important that each scene change would come together and make a meaningful whole, and that the time machine would land you at the designated point. And fortunately RocknRolla is among the ones that succeeded in those.

 

　　A modern movie won't do without sex. A movie without sex won't be nominated for the Academy Awards. And a movie without sex is like a dinner without wine, or martini. You got to dip your head into the alcohol in order to get a clearer view of what the world is like in your mind. And sex means the same. It touches our more real egos. Had Bobski not had sex with the lawyer, Lenny would've survived. Had Stella not had sex with One Two, she would've survived, and Uri's lucky painting would not have gone all a long way back to Johnny boy.
　　
　　And a gangsta in modern movies smokes. He would flip the cigarette pack open and light one of the slim, white, little devils in a go that catches your eyes. Johnny boy didn't do that, but made verses with piano accompaniment in favor of his beloved king-size. One of the trends of our movie making aesthetics is a blend of classical art forms with common things in our daily lives. Obviously inventions are more difficult while recombination would somehow spark our inspiration.
　　
　　As for music, since it's a rock and roll movie, it does not have room for pop music. In my geeky opinion, long time exposures to pop music kill your brain cells. People with advanced flavors love rock and roll, jazz, blues etc. And exceptional elites listen to Mozart, Bach, Chopin , Rakhmaninov etc. For the wild bunch in the movie, and Johnny boy, the world is a masterpiece, classical, with up and downs, beginnings and endings, plenty of key notes that rock, and finally a highlighted conclusion.
　　
　　So, what is a real rocknrolla? I don't know, because I don't want a fucking lot. What I want is just talk movie, as was said in my first paragraph. Don't expect more from a movie, it is just a movie.

The Day The Earth Stood Still: 烂片一个

这部电影是 1951 年出品的同名电影的重新演绎。糟糕的是重新演绎也没有超过前辈。当然，你可以惊叹现在科技如此发达，让电影可以有如此多的特技，细致的画面，更帅更漂亮的主角。奇妙的幻想，片中那个无名金属制造的机器人也比 1951 年那个更加强大而恐怖。可惜，克拉图的使命很无趣。克拉图的理由很没有说服力，到底是什么让克拉图改变了想法？是否摧毁人类是克拉图可以自由决定？难道还有比外星人说中文和克拉图解数学题更可笑的情节？
　　
　　另一个“日”，也就是《独立日》，则要有趣且有意义得多。起码我们能从中看到希望。到底是爱的力量更大，还是斗争的力量更大？让人类的感情感动外星人从而拯救地球，或者是勇士的反抗打败外星人从而拯救了地球，哪个看起来更靠谱？你也许要争辩说外星人进化了，我们的抵抗都是无用没有结果的，只有用人类的感情来作武器......好吧，我承认感情是最深沉的力量之一，可惜古往今来感情很少改变了历史，倒是勇士的争斗决定了历史的结局。
　　
　　嗯，我是不是有点象片中那个可笑的美国国防部长？作为人类的一员，我必须世俗一点，如果你打败了我，我认栽；如果你杀死了我，我会沉默的死去。当然，如果你是我的猎物，我是不会留情的，呵呵。

The Interpretation of Dreams: Practical Application?

Once a girl told me that her dreams were haunted by such scenes where she kept climbing some stair steps which seemed endless. I concluded at first thought that she was deeply harassed by sex problems. Maybe I was wrong or Freud should be responsible for my wrong.
　　
　　This is not a bad book. The English translation is rather better than the Chinese one from the perspective of a language learner. And do not expect that this book be a fortune teller for we are always trying to tell our tomorrows by interpreting our dreams. Basically this book does not provide any guidelines on how to do the dream interpretation. It is more of an archive of the intriguing cases by Freud as psychiatrist, plus his comprehensive annotations.
　　
　　Dream interpretation is a tough and interesting job. It dives into one's deeper mental realm, scratches out the hidden secrets and carefully examine them from inside out. Meanwhile it is to some degree dangerous in that a biased or wrong interpretation of some dream would lead to probable negative consequences because we truly are very much influenced by our subconsciousness in an unconscious way, where our reasoning retreats but our instincts step out.
　　
　　To end my nonsense, I'd like to go on with that girl harassed by stair steps climbing dreams. She might not have sex problems at all or she apparently was undergoing a critical time of her sex experience, who knows. However, I suggest you be an idiot and avoid conversations on psychic phenomenon while hanging out with women.

Micro Trends: Chinese already said so

There is already a Chinese saying that reads 'tell big from small', or in plain English, (a wise man) can tell big changes from small trends. Actually the author is a wise man that we Chinese have been speaking of for long. However, the way that the author differs from a typical wise man we like is that he backs his thoughts and ideas with numerical figures that are statistically rich and persuasive.
　　
　　 And from his book I can sense a wider gap between a real America and an America that exists only in the imaginations of the plurality of Chinese in China. The small book not only introduces the micro trends that drive America forward but as well displays a finer picture of how the Americans live their lives. No need to panic, I am definitely sure that China will evolve onto a higher and more civilized tier of the civilizations in the universe.
　　
　　 For English language learners this is also a good choice for vocabulary building, extensive reading and/or subway time killing. There in China are too many stereotyping English books at high prices which only tell nothing but pieces of fragments excerpted from their older ancestors, which is one of the worst forms of plagiarism.