Who cares

Slumdog millionair won eight oscars. On IMDB, many Indian protested this movie. The reason is simple: the India depicted in this movie is not their India, or at least it is not the India they saw.

This reminded me of another movie: Hong Gao Liang (1987). This film also won an international award. I remembered that when this movie won award, many chinese people were disappointed, since this movie revealed the dark side of the chinese society. It seemed to be a shameful thing to let "foreign people" to see our scar. I was only about 9 years old at that time. I believed everything the adults told me.

Even nowadays, I still believed that westerners are fond of gazing at the scars of other society. I carefully avoided any conversation with them about the dark side of our chinese society. I felt embarrassed to discuss the human right with any westerners. I also have a mixed feeling about all the movies exposing the uncivilized moments in chinese history. I confess, I am a narrow minded person and prone to guard the reputation of our chinese society.

My point of view, however changed after I watched "the slumdog millionaire". First of all, I don't know if this movie deserves 8 oscars. I haven't seen other nominated movies. Therefore, I cannot decided which one is better than the other. I liked this movie, because it touches my soul.

When I was watching this movie (I watched it three times), there was not even one moment that my mind was focused on the poverty of the slums of India. There was not even one moment that I think that human rights in India was lacking. After I finished watching that movie, my impression about India is more improved.

I had chances to talk with many Indian. Based on my previous experiences, their general character is "Talk" rather than "Do". But after watched this movie, I believe they are all born with a beautiful character.
What we call "Slum" is called home by them. Their home is no different from our home, since it provides love and hope. What has been fostered in their home is however difference from ours. Maybe, we are more civilized and have more attachment. We wear designer cloth and we drove expensive cars.

But look what the civilization do to people: to secure their attachment, they are willing to electrify their own people, and they are willing to prison/blind their own people. Do those movie makers have a choice? If the three children in the movie were born in a rich society, they would never face choices between live and death, and they will be bleached "White" by the golden survival rules of the rich societies.

From this sense, I have no feeling of superior for living in a more civilized society. I even like India more than ever. This movie gives me confidence that we, human being, without nationality, are all born with a beautiful character.

Even I praise this movie that much, I don't think that I would prefer to live in a slum. I live with what I was given. I never felt that we can choose our destiny. Just like now, I don't like many things about a so called civilized society, but I still live in it. I just lost my tendency to guard the scars in our chinese society.

I suddenly realize what I called scars, might not be scars in other people's eyes. I call them scars is because I don't know how to accept beautys in a different form.

I have quited argument. In my recollection, no argument can change people's mind. People's minds change on their own.

Besides, who cares what other people think??????????????

Baby, let it go

Baby, let it go
I know it is painful.....
all those laughters are still surrounding our hearts....
you and me
all those happiness came from heaven...
no other places...
only heavenly happiness can be this pure.......

But, baby, please let it go....
I know it is unfair......
all those smiles are still infront of our eyes....
you and me
all those memories came from heaven....
no other places...
only heavenly memories can be this beautiful......

I know it is hard to let it go....
since you don't know how to let it go....
you never let go......
let anything go........
it painful to watch you climb on a train flying into the darkness....
it is painful to watch you change on that train.....
it is painful to watch you hanging onto it in the darkness

The train is too fast
I am too slow....
and I am tired..................

Baby, please let it go....
I only ask this is because...
the beautiful things should have eternity...

Let it go............
Give it eternity...before it die in the darkness..................

Slum Dog Millionaire

SlumDog Millionaire


Two weeks ago a movie review caught my attention. It discussed a British movie: SlumDog Millionaire. The review said this movie depicted two brothers lived in an Indian slum. I immediately decided to watch this movie, since I am insanely missing a novel: Shantaram. Shantaram is written by an Australia novelist, who lived in Bombay for a short period of time. Shantaram tells the experiences of the novelist in Bombay. I love that novel very much. However, I left it in Australia, so I can have more incentives to return to Australia. I missed that novel like crazy, and I am miserable without that novel. I almost had the urge to purchase that book again from Amozon. So How can I miss a movie which also talks about Indian?

After I watched this movie, I felt myself turned into water. I run out tissues to wipe tears.

Living in the modern world means only one thing: You no longer see people, I mean "real people".

We are much polished. We only say right things, and do right things. Our actions have to be effective and politically correct. You need to be polite, thoughtful, and tactical. Your thinking is trained and "refined". You don't make choices anymore, and the right choices are always so obvious. For example, no fastfood, more friends, and more connections. Millions of tips are available on the internet to tell you when you should move forward and when you should give up.

In modern world, your only enemy is yourself, since you are the only person who stops you from doing the right things. We are no longer people. We are running robots, and scripts have been written to smarten us. We are still unique, since most of our scripts are not the same. Small variations though.

The slumdog millionaire is a movie about people. Actually, three of them. Two brothers and one girl. One brother, Jamal, is emotional and has a soft heart. Another, Salim, is cruel and determined.

The world is beatified by person like Jamal. He is a great provider, and he is dedicated to things he loved. He is gentle and friendly. He values nothing except every relationship in life.

The world is often changed by person like Salim. He is determined and brave enough to remove everything on his way. The things he valued are rather dynamic. His only desire is to stay alive which sustains this world, and also changes the destiny of other people.

The girl is what a girl out to be. She is the perfect blind of suppleness and toughness. She is so supple and she never fight for anything. If there is rain, she will be soaked with water. If there is fire, she will be burned. Her character resembles so much of water. She must also have been very tough, since there are many sad things happened to her, and none of them changed her a bit. She wants to stay with Jamal. Although she never fought for it, when opportunities to join Jamal come, she had the courage to walk through fire to get them.

...............The thing really made me cry is the beauty in their characters. Their hearts are beautiful, since they are pure. They are not polluted by the scripts of modern society. I secretly envy them. I knew if I were them, I may have made millions of compromises to find a short cut to escape.........

But after all these years being on the way to escape, I have found that there is no escaping in this world. You just escape from one misery to join another. The only way to walk away from a misery is to embrace it and walk toward the lights.

Maybe, one day, you will really join the world of happiness. Maybe, that is the moment that you can kiss goodbye to a million dollar check and say: Yes, I want to play.

火车

总想着
有那么一天
我坐在一个火车上

车身轻轻地摇摆
我们穿过绿油油的草地
绿的像丝带
我们穿过深蓝的海洋
蓝的想宝石
我们穿过金色的沙漠
金的都刺眼

车上有不知谁家的孩子
欢声笑语
跑来跑去

每到一站
都有人下去
也有人上来
大家都行色匆匆
没有人向我看去

我面无表情
也没有人抗议
我默不作声
也没有人搭讪
他们微笑都是发自内心的

我看着他们
可是他们也不回望

我就算不食人间烟火
他们也不觉得异样


因为

我只是一个过客
对于一个过客
你又要怎样呢？
不要怎样吧

所以
总有一天
我要乘上那个列车
那个列车驶向全世界的每一个终点站
却没有一个是
我的

纯粹

向往纯粹
完完全全的纯粹

黑要象没有繁星的夜
红要象无霜的玫瑰
蓝要象无浪的海
透明要象地球最深处的水晶

为了要黑，将繁星抹去天际
为了要红，饮尽秋雾寒霜
为了要蓝，展翅拦风
为了要透明，把心放到烈焰之中灼烧升华

给了你黑，你招来了月
给了你红，你撒落沃土之上
给了你蓝，你骋风破浪
给了你透明，你轻轻把它敲碎

才知道，你原来不喜欢纯粹

也才知道，原来纯粹的
都是脆弱的

轻轻地道别

才知道，无心的人，胸还痛

Pause for a little while

This is a story that I will definitely complete. But I am not in the right mood to write it. 

In the last december, there was nothing I wanted to do except absorbing this story from the air. 

Now, there are millions of things that I wanted to do. All of these millions things are career related. It is not that I am a workholic. I am just controlled by my mood. 

Despite of my committement to the work, the characters in my story still flush in my memory. This give me some chance to observe them and to be detached from them......It is such a good thing...................

Links

From YUSUF ARAKKAL



(com) Preface
(com) Preface (conti)..........
(com) Chapter 1 - Hero
(com) Chapter 2 - 10 years
(com) Chapter 3 - The Gang of Four
(com) Chapter 4 - Respected and not respected
(com) Chapter 5 - Poison and medicine
(com) Chapter 6 - To be needed
(com) Chapter 7 - woman is half of the sky
(com) Chapter 8 - Become certified
Chapter 9 - Admired and pited
Chapter 10 - Stay or leave
Chapter 11 - Change or to be changed
Chapter 12 - Mapple forest
Chapter 13 - Give and take
Chapter 14 - All parties have an end..
Chapter 15 - Attack and to be attacked..
Chapter 16 - Don't declare war with me
Chapter 17 - Betray and betrayed
Chapter 18 - This is how game is played
Chapter 19 - advantage and disadvantage
Chapter 20 - He who laughs last laughs best
Chapter 21 - Live under other people's skin
Chapter 22 - I knew you own me one
Chapter 23 - Educate and educated...
Chapter 24 - Who cares
Chapter 25 - When things are out of control, peopl...
Chapter 26 - We are all yellow
Ending

(com) Preface (conti)..........

.

Li shixiong was my boss. He was the vice-chief of the emergency management department of Sichuan province. The head of our division was removed from his position last week for releasing "sensitive information to the public". Shixiong had to oversee our information management division until a new head is appointed.

When I walked out of my department, the sun directly shined into my eyes. It was too bright. I had to half close my eyes. I followed Shixiong to his car. Shixiong drove a black Beijing jeep. His car is alway clean and flowless, just like him. As soon as I got on this car, I asked him: how bad it is?

"We were told it is a magenitude 7.8 earth quake. It happened in sichuan. We still don't know about the exact location of the center, most likely wenchuan. It could be only 100 km away from here. The anticipated death could range frong 10,000 to 200,000 (Don't panic. You can get real death number here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake). It happened three hours ago. We don't have a lot of information. I am counting on you to get some data."

My heart stopped beating for several seconds: 200,000 people. That many people? All the disaster scenes of Tangshan earthquake quickly flushed back to my brian. The pain was growing in my stomach: this isn't happening.

I tried to breath, and started to make a work plan in my head: What do we need? What do we have? The first thing is to login to the earthquake data center, and find the exact location of the center of the quake. We also need maps showing population density, schools, transportation, waters....What else? The geological profiles and the elevation contour maps. What else? Think quickly....remote sensing image..Calm down...What else? Cities, townships....

I have two analysts. Qingqing is specialized in handling environmental information. She will need to put all the environmental information together. Huajiang will collect demographic data. Are they at the office? They must be absent. If they are, it would have been them picking me up.

I asked shixiong to confirm my guess: are qingqing and huajiang in the office? Shixiong said: yes.

..why are you here?

.. I am here is because you don't have a cellphone and a TV. No body at your age will spend their vocation sleeping. Nobody will sleep in the afternoon. Everybody felt that quake, except you. You know you could have been dead.

.. If you are ever conscious about the amount of works you assigned to us, you should know why I need more sleep. But my question is why you? You can send anybody.

.. This is not the first time I came here to pick you up.

.. But shouldn't you be in the office? This is a major disaster.

.. I have sent three teams to go the field collect information. I knew troops will come to rescue people. The nearest troop is in Dazhou. I have sent a team to find out the possible path for the rescue team. I also send a team to try to get into wenchuan. I also send a team to go to Mianyang through meishang valley.

..Meishang valley? There is a large aquifer in Meishang mountain, which may provide lubrication to cause landslide. You didn't just send a team over there.

Silence.

..Who did you send there?

.. The best people we have. Dongming, Changfeng, Songjia, Honglei, and...............Xinyun.....

... No...not Xinyun.....Not him...............

All my blood flushed into my brain. I cannot think, and cannot breath.

....You have to call them back. Any aftershock can cause landslide. They will all die over there.

.... Too late, I have sent them over there for about two hours. They probably already arrived the valley. I believe some cellphone signal towers were damaged. We have been unable to reach them after they left for about an hour.

...You should now drive over there now. We need to stop them.

Those words just jumped out of my mouth. I knew it is impossible to find them.

Xinyun and I, we are two hours away.....Two hours away....



I was a cartographic engineer. I had to deal with "distance" all the time. This word has become incredibly profound to me. Chendou is 2,000 km away from Beijing. I visited Beijing twice a year to attend meetings. My parents lived about 1km away from my apartment. But I visited them only once a year at the spring festival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year). At that moment, Xinyun was only 2 hours away from me. But that may be the distance between death and live......I was only 0.5 m away from Shixiong. But we always lived in different worlds.......

My tears were running out of my eyes... I heard Shixiong's words: Calm down, I knew you always do the right thing.

I tried to hold back my tears. The pain was full of my chest.

..You sent them to die. You knew it. Is this about me? About me with Xinyun? You cannot do this. You came to pick me up, and let me know this...What kind of human being are you?...

..I think I need to make this clear to you. This country needs you. So calm down. After we finish our jobs, we discuss who you should be friend with.

My heart was full of pain. I felt it had been broke into pieces, and I knew I can never repair it....

When we arrived the office building. I run to the mapping room. Qingqing and huajiang were seated in front of TV. Their eyes were watering. I dared not to look at the screen. The reports spoke very very fast. I tried not to listen to it.

I said: Qingqing turn off the TV. We need to start work. Do we still have internet?

Qingqing replied: Please, let me watch. My brother lives in Miangyang. Please.

I then said: Huajiang turn off the TV. I gave you two some important assignments. Qingqing, if you care about your brother, you want our rescue troops arrive there as early as possible. I need to collect all the environmental data available there. This quake affects a lot of area. You need to rescale the data, so we can retrieve information at a large scale. Huajiang, you need to collect the cities, townships boundaries. You need to find maps on the transportation systems. I need to you do some quick statistics.

After giving them assignments, I quickly turned on my messenger, and email. Thank god. Huaqing is online. She run a small business in Beijing. We were one of her customers. She was also my best friend. As soon as I log on, Huaqiang sent me a message: are you alright? I typed quickly: yes. I need your help. I need you to write a script to collect information on the earthquake from the major science website related to earthquake. I am sending you a list of websites, and password to their data. I need you to send me the information back in a real time fashion.

I quickly composed an email to wenyan. Wenyan was also my best friend. She was a college professor in the United States, with a specialty in remote sensing. I needed her to find remote sensing data for me. It was 6am her time. Wenyan, I beg you, please wake up and check your email......Only after a minute, Wenyan replied: I am on it.....Take care...

On May 12th 2008, Huaqing, wenyan, and me, worked together...After Wenyan said goodbye to us nine years ago in the Shanghai airport, we were all stayed in different corners of the earth. But at this moment, we were all together..like in the same room..There were tears in our eyes, and our hearts were beating in the same rhythms. Just like 19 years ago, 1989....


.

(com) Preface

..........................................
(cannot believe that I started to write this.....)

05/12/08

I love dreams.....I mean real dreams, not day dreams or dreams that need to be fulfilled. I always feel that we, human being, don't belong to the earth. I am so convinced that the earth is not designed to support us. We are disasters to the earth, and so is the earth to us. We are all desperately lonely on this crowded planet. The closer we connect to each other the more lonely we have become.

But dreams connect me with an unknown world where I feel I belong. I always know dreams are my bridges to a place where I came from back to a billion years ago.

I like vivid dreams. They can keep me in that world longer. My favorite dream was the one that I walked in a secret forest full of maple trees. It must have been autumn, since all the leaves were red. I stepped on the leaves and enjoyed the cracking sounds of my footsteps. I was not in a hurry to go anywhere. I knew no matter which direction I was heading, I could not walk out of that forest. At that moment, the only place I wanted to be was in that forest. Sometimes, I also enjoyed some sad dreams. I was once drowning in a pool. I yelled for help. Faceless people were watching. But nobody helped me. Everything that can happen in real life, happens in my dreams: death, joy, sorrow, sex, dream, desperation..you name it.

I also like the sensation of waking up. It is almost like the aftertaste of a piece of creamy chocolate. Sometimes, I wake up with tears in my eye, and sometimes, my heart still hurts...I always try to remember these feelings, since when I have completely awoken I came back to the earth, this meaningless world where we have no other purpose but to live.

I started liking dreams after I was introduced to a flower, Valerian. A friend of mine, Ye, once told me about this flower when I was complaining about my sleep problems. The first day I took Valerian, I walked on a beach in my dream. I had so much fun playing with the water. The sea was as blue as the sky. I grew up in a inland city. I had never been to a beach. I was overwhelmed with the joy, and then I realized that there is another world. From that moment, all my questions about life have been answered....

People who truly knows about me will never disturb my dreams...Of course, there is only one person who knows about me: me. I hate dream interrupting phone calls...After I picked up the phone, my experiences in another world cannot be remembered...I have learned all kinds of tricks to ignore phones. Eventually I get ride of all my phones.....That still didn't stop people from interrupting my dreams..................




Knock..Knock........Someone was knocking on my door aggressively.... Whoever that person was, he had to have a real good reason. I got up, put on my pajamas, and walked to the door. I looked through the door eye....It was him. He shouldn't be here.....At least not now.....I stood there, and didn't know what to do. Then I heard him saying: Qingna, I knew you are at the door. You need awake and come with me....We just had a deadly earthquake. You are the mapping director. You need to come to the office, and the central government needs us to monitor the earthquake activities....Quick...You need to get a cellphone. I am your boss. I cannot always come here to pick you up whenever I have an assignment for you.

I was then completely awake. EARTHQAKE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake)?! As said, the earth is not for us...We were left here..........