Shenzhen. It is 3:44 am in the morning while I’m not able to sleep till, maybe, leave for work today.

 

Twenty-three days now has become a past. When it landed in HK airport yesterday morning, I was telling myself “finally I’m home after revisiting another ‘old house’ ”.   Time space traveling feel still haunted in my mind like it was 3 years ago, as I felt the true “difference” between the two countries just can’t be represented well by the time zone it locates. Many things behind it that determine the striking visual differences, which in turn requires more in-depth thoughts and re-clarifications on quite a lot of things we learned, heard and/or misunderstood in those past months. So I decided to dedicate a few more personal time in the coming month to write detailed interesting travelogue (including photo sharing) of my NYC trip in which I am sure a lot of you may be interested, and thoughts on several serious social-cultural topics which may not sound so fun to read, but personally I think it would be monumental to reinforce personal beliefs about the world, the people, and the one links those two, which is called LIFE.

 

OK, stay tuned, keep warm and Happy New Year!

 

 

 

( "Seven Pounds"  and "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" )

 

Both films are having heavy themes and plots such as life, death, retribution and salvation, though they are the words that definitely do not fit in the holiday season.

It’s been more than three years before sitting in a U.S. theatre again watching movies regardless what type of films they are and how good they could be. So, it did have sort of personal sentimental feelings, however, unlike people sat right behind me weeping for a good weeping reason, my feeling was not directly retrieved from films themselves.

Severe blizzards just stormed Northeast America and it worries me in a great deal about the upcoming trip to NYC.  Weather channel now is a must-see and nothing can be done to change Mother Nature’s temper (and temperature) but only pray.

 

 

Special experience continued at this rainy night. We just had dinner at a local Chinese fellow’s house 2 hours ago and the presented food  was HOTPOT. We had this dinner for one good reason as the house host shared the exact same Chinese name with me, which rarely happened in real life especially when you are talking about the name of ours. He should be more than 20 years older than me, came to the U.S. in 1980s as international student from Beijing. What amazed us more was his father has been living in the city of my home town for many years and he is also so familiar with my hometown. Speaking of their current U.S. life,  I believe he and his family are doing well living in a big luxurious house in the middle of woods or mountain, located at Bella Vista, where is fabulous enough to park a Z4 in the garage. The hostess also showed us around in their back yard with high hospitality.

Many subjects have been covered during the dinner, and I even took the initiative asking for a drink to relax more. He opened a closet inquiring what kind of alcohol I needed, and that wasn’t an easy quick choice for me to make.  So finally one glass of Merlot was good enough to get me buzzed up and I ended up lying easily in a couch and fell asleep for unknown period of time till our leaving.

My original working plan of tonight has been interrupted. Hadn’t I been to his home, I would have finished my order review of the week. Well, what a heck! Life is too short to indulge ourselves too much.

“Hello?”

“Hey,may I speak to Isabel?”

“It’s she...”

“ Do you recognize my voice?”

“No…uh…are you Sean?”

“Yes, it’s me”

She actually got the message I left on her voice mail the other day and later on she told me she listened the message three times but still couldn’t find any contact phone number I may have left, which actually I didn’t do.

We chatted a lot about what had happened to each other during past years just like I did with Joanne on the phone the other day. And one of interesting questions she ever asked was “Sean, do you have any one to speak English with you every day?”  I laughed because she, my former English teacher, is just like old time, very serious about what goes on in the life. 

I told her I got her phone number thru Joanne who looked up in local phone book for me when we had phone conversation last weekend. Isabel (together with her last name) was the only name listed on the local phone book  as we (including Joanne) were aware of ,  and the phone book was just published in this Oct, so it’s highly probably her number. I called once but only reached answering machine so I left a message likes “I hope I got this number correct, Isabel, this is Sean your former student came from China…”  Last night when I gave the second buzz, it’s found out to be a busy tone first, which was a good sign. Then waited no more than 3 minutes, I dialed thru and had someone picked. When she first answered, I was already 90% sure it’s her!

She now lives in a one-bedroom apartment with a job as English tutor for two ESL students from the Univesity. During our conversation, another Isabel was just walking into her house, and that Isabel is her granddaughter who now is in 3^rd grade. How fast time went by, as I still remember back then Isabel Jr. was a little cute blonde toddler.   

I also asked Isabel to look up in phone book for me in order to find how to contact Mary…So you see how it works: networking, phone book (if not Facebook) and believe in the law of six-degree separation.  

It’s glad to know everyone is doing fine. Things are not really difficult to as I thought that I might not be in touch with any of those.  I guess we are just living in a world that big enough to forget someone but also small enough to refind someone out there, maybe just one phone call away. We just need to go that much further to be hooked up again.

So who are you thinking of at this moment?

(My phone greeting season just begins…)

So it was -9 Celsius degree as we were sitting in Kyle’s big van right after work. Road surface was all frozen up as hell as it went on with excel worksheet on my laptop.  That’s why I decided not to wait the damn slow computer recuperate after 6pm.  Closed the lid, pulled off the cord, and took it with me no matter what, let’s figure something out later tonight.

Kyle is kind of American young fellow that I could only wish to hang out back when I was in college. The way he talked just reminded me of someone else from old times. Instead of going straight on Walton Blvd, our Mr. “Taxi” Kyle went just somewhere farther so that we had nice sightseeing trip before hitting the hotel.  “We will find out a way to get you there” he once comforted us just in case we might become anxious about this endless driving. “I’m not worried”, I said “ go as you wish and I’m actually enjoying this sightseeing trip….we are pathfinders and it doesn’t bother me even you drive all the way down to China”  He then just laughed...

 President Bush received a memorable shoe-throwing press meeting some hours ago. That was one of most hilarious news footages I saw when I had breakfast this morning. For sure it’s not from goofy movies like “Harold & Kumar” series, and he was quite a good actor as he was trying to make fun out of this accident by saying that he noticed the shoe-thrower was wearing a pair of size 10.  Right on!

Only slept 5 hrs last night; however it's still a delightful day working in the Home Office. Had quite some small chats with colleagues here besides covering daily business; the communication went really smooth and that's really surprising to me.  Then, I started cracking jokes, especially "cold" ones, with them as we were buddies for long time.  When U.S.-style humor met with Chinese cold jokes, it's almost felt like a fusion of two social cultures that are meant to complete each other.  

 

More later...