wanderer

Chinese guy Xiaoling managed to strike a conversation with secretary Debbie, 'So how long have you been divorced?' 

'8 years.'

'How many children do you have?'

'Three. Two girls and one son.'

'Wo... Do they all live with you?'

'Uh-huh.'

'That's a big burden.'

'My ex husband and I share the custody, so it's not that bad. I love them, they are the world to me.'

'Does he share the mortgage of your house?'

'Of course not. he doesn't live in my house.'

'Wo...why don't split the thing with your ex-husband, say, you take care of two children, he take care of one? Or something like that, then you don't have too much burden on the kids.'

'No. they are not 'the thing', they are MY kids.'

'Maybe you can find a new husband to help you.'

'Yeah, sure, I am dating.'

'You do? Who is he...? I mean, what does he do?'

'Err, he works at a construction company.'

'A manager?'

'No, he's an engineer.'

'How old is he?'

'He's 2 years younger than me.....I'm 45...He's a great guy.'

'Are you going to get married soon?'

'Nah, we are not at that point yet.'

'Why not? if you guys get married, you kids could have a father, a step-father, I mean, to love them, and then you can live in the same house, or even buy a bigger one, and you don't have to take the financial burden alone.  I suppose he can make 70k a year, at least, plus you have 30k salary, you guys can have 100k income a year, that's pretty decent, isn't it? What's more, you and him can make turns to pick up your kids, take them to sunday class, like my wife and I are doing. It's very tiring to look after the kids, you know....."

'I have to place the order by Frank before 4:30, Xiaoling,' Debbie cut in, 'Would you excuse me to make the phone call, please?'  Debbie picked up the phone with a pompous smile toward Xiaoling. The sticking ears all over the office were resumed to normal condition.  

Some non-scientific survey states that 60% of millionaires in southern China have education no more than high school, so education seems not a factor of success, if we take money, the universal yardstick, as a measure for success. You may spurn the idea, simply argue that money is not equal to happiness, taste, dignity, etc. That is probably true. Back a few year ago, net lore has it that the software company Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison gave a commencement speech at Yale University. He urged the freshmen and sophomores to drop out and start up their own business, while junior and senior kids are too late not to avoid be horde of losers. Here is the excerpt,

"Graduates of Yale University, I apologize if you have endured this type of prologue before, but I want you to do something for me. Please, take a good look around you. Look at the classmate on your left. Look at the classmate on your right. Now, consider this: five years from now, 10 years from now, even 30 thirty years from now, odds are the person on your left is going to be a loser. The person on your right, meanwhile, will also be a loser. And you, in the middle? What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser Cum Laude.

"In fact, as I look out before me today, I don't see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. I don't see a thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. I see a thousand losers.

"You're upset. That's understandable. After all, how can I, Lawrence 'Larry' Ellison, college dropout, have the audacity to spout such heresy to the graduating class of one of the nation's most prestigious institutions? I'll tell you why. Because I, Lawrence "Larry" Ellison, second richest man on the planet, am a college dropout, and you are not.

"Because Bill Gates, richest man on the planet -- for now, anyway -- is a college dropout, and you are not.

"Because Paul Allen, the third richest man on the planet, dropped out of college, and you did not.

"And for good measure, because Michael Dell, No. 9 on the list and moving up fast, is a college dropout, and you, yet again, are not...."

Well, the story is not true, fortunately and unfortunately. Ellison didn't give the speech, it's an online satire aimed  not only at him. Arguably, college education isn't the step stone to success, as ABC news covers this topic a while ago. More than one person interviewed made their testimony that their college lives left them nothing but a degree and thick chunk of tuition loan. A Swiss guy I met before told me that he was surprised that everybody seemed go to college in America. The education end up losing the edge. The phenomenon is not single. In China, million of college graduates are struggling in landing a job. As part of the effort to ease the tension, the government has to setup programs to send portion of the freshly minted bachelors to remote villages to assist the local officials, opposite their primary wish to be an engineer or professionals of a sort.

If Ellison did make the speech, he could actually add more names of dropout to the list. Steve Jobs out of Reed college for Apple; Larry Page and Sergey Brin dropped out of Stanford (grad school, to be fair) for Google; Mark Zuckerberg away from Harvard for Facebook (those sickening computer geek upstarts). There's more if we move to other fields. Dean Kamen is a great inventor and entrepreneur. He didn't go to college, his Segway is a sensational invention, whether it reshapes the auto industry or not needs more time to tell. Speaking of inventor, Woody Norris came to spotlight, his directional focus of sound, insipired by collimation of light, i.e., laser, was exceedingly amazing. He talks about his invention and his no-more-than high school education. It makes perfect sense. I saw a rough face, a fluid thinking flow,  a confident and articulate guy. I relish the sense of humor and I feel the happiness of working ethos. I am hopelessly jealous. To a concentrated mind like Norris, life itself is a campus without bound, Norris doesn't really need to step into college to waste his time.

February 12, two hundred years ago, two important people, among many nobodies, were born in England and America, respectively. One is Charles Darwin, one is Abraham Lincoln. To risk the redundant repetition, Darwin first developed evolution theory of nature selection based on his 5 years of voyage travel around the globe. The theory is so big that completely changed the perception of people toward the nature and human being (remember the first time you were told you shared the same ancestor  with ugly monkeys?); at the same time in America, Lincoln self-taught himself into a lawyer after out of poverty,  then became a congressman after failed twice, then president,  liberated the slaves, rescued the union and led America out of separation crisis, then been assassinated at the beginning of his second term, that shocked the whole nation. In fact, Americans are still fascinated by Lincoln nowadays, there are more than 65,000 books devoted to study Lincoln's life, family, personality, etc., the third most next only to Jesus and Shakespeare. There are at least eight cities named after him, at least one car make, and the museums, so on and on. Needless to say, Americans are busy to celebrate Lincoln's 200 anniversary, the onset of the memorial actually started two months ago, when news analysis magazine Time ran a long article comparing the influence and achievement of Lincoln and Darwin, the two giants in 19th century, and guess the conclusion who is greater in Americans' eyes?

Evolution is an amazing theory. It is not hard to imagine how a house is built out of bricks, steel bars, plywood and tiles, man has the blueprint; Or how a complicated computer operating system is developed throughout the pace. But with a few biological building blocks, some twenty amino acids, protein molecules are formed, then there are nucleotides, single cell organism, the complexity of life evolves step by step until modern day situation, and it goes on to some direction no one is sure. Life on earth is made of simple units by countless self-assembly trials, the solution suiting best the environment (or the best solutions, I guess) was kept for the next step, while the rest were dumped. This is an event about an infinitesimal probability multiplied by near infinite repeats, the result is always a marvel. Darwin didn't make the evolution claim out of whim, with a pipe in hand, then became famous. He collected thousands of samples and specimen and did careful categorization and analysis, ruminated and held on his idea for over 20 years until he realized Alfred Wallace, another naturalist, came to the similar conclusion, he was pushed to publish the work. It is a marble solid monumental work. It leaves not only biologists, but many laymen as well, wonder the beauty of the theory, the consequence of the long but determined evolution process, it offers a whole new respect to look at the history, the world and life (As a side note, Richard Dawkins, the Cambridge professor and atheism advocate, pushed the theory further into molecular biology level. His famous book in 1974, selfish gene, describes the drive of evolution comes from DNA, the genes. Gene's motive is nothing but magnify its existence, hence selfish---isn't that fascinating?)

Lincoln's heritage lies more in his individual will and wisdom throughout his lifelong effort, if we dare to put aside his great achievement to lead America in hard time. Lincoln's perception to the world led him pursue more than a farmer's life. His self-study motivation and ability was excellent, but probably not so prominent if compared with millions of migrant workers working hard for a better living, an inappropriate and proriate analogy. What makes Lincoln Lincoln is his perseverance facing failure after failure. He learned from mistakes and gave himself another chance and finally he prevailed. His candor and openness to embrace his political enemies makes him only splendid in every human facet, noble and wiser (check out, some president was copying him). His tragic death might be a factor that Americans are loving him so much, but it is the role model he impersonated that lasts him forever. For any nitwit soul, he can see his dignity and hope from Lincoln; For every high life dweller, he could find himself humility and reserve from Lincoln. Lincoln is a tome that amounts 65,000 different copies, for general people, it is no less beneficial to have an abridged version. On the other hand, Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species' is a difficult Bible without fables for many generations to come, people seldom read it, but people practice the theory in their ephemeral life, trial and error, year in and year out.

American's best known sport export to the world is National Basketball Association, or NBA, but NBA is generally ranked No. 3 for the influence or economical impact. Baseball is deemed as American's national pastime, the professional equivalent, Major League Baseball, or MLB, has two months of spring training and six months game span with millions of die-hard followers. The best player in MLB, Alex Rodriguez, earns 25 million dollars a year on average for 10 years under his current contract. But all pales when compared with National Football League, or NFL. It is a common sunday today for people in the other part of the world, but for Americans, this is called super sunday. Almost over 90 million people in America would watch today's championship game, Super Bowl, that translates roughly one out of four people would sit in front of TV. The pre-game show starts six hours before the game actually begins, the president of United States made statement which team he is rooting for, the governors of Pennsylvania and Arizona (the immediate ex governor, to be exact), home of the two teams, Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals, are openly, and cordially, betting for the outcome of the game on TV. Actually Super Bowl is so big that three TV networks bid in turn to get the airing rights for it. To stack up the excitement, a star singer would sing out loud to kick off the broadcasting, then game announcers give a big picture intro; after another singer sings the national anthem, in his/her own particular way, patriotically , sentimentally, hysterically, whiningly or electrically-shockedly (one of the best parts of American culture, they don't contain the singer into the solemn style), accompanied by the top air force fighters flying over the stadium, the game finally began. Apart from the game, there is half-time show, usually performed by renowned Rock-n'-Roll band or star, and post-game show and Trophy award ceremony. Many TV commercials are trying to be super bowl related, actually the ads during the game are pegged at about 3 million dollars for a 30 seconds slot, and the so-called super bowl TV ads are ranked next day by local and national newspapers, millions of online users and TV programs, and very likely, seriously, reviewed and studied by MBA students. It is amazing a sport in one country, even a big one like America, would have such a scale of extravaganza.

This year National Broadcast Corp bid the right. It formed a total of 9 guys to analyze the game and report the storyline from different aspects. The dazzling beautiful and towering Faith Hill performed the first song, the lyrics was like telling a worrior movie story how the Arizona Cardinals, the underdog team fought all the way to the ultimate duel, and how the Pittsburgh Steelers, the most winning team in NFL, waded their way further into the prominence. The game announcers, Al Michaels and John Madden, are regarded as the best voice in the business. Jennifer Hudson would sing the national anthem, Bruce Springsteen would ignite the audience in halftime break.  The game itself lived up to high stake, my heroic Cardinals fought a good fight from the first minute against the mighty Steelers. They trailed by 20-7 to enter the fourth quarter. Then one offensive drive moved the line into  enemy's territory and generated a touch-down, 20-14; Steelers' error gave Cardinals another 2 points, 20-16; The game had only 5 minutes left; After some play, the brilliant quarterback Kurt Warner found the equally brilliant wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, who sprinted like a thunder bolt into the end zone for a touch-down, 23-20, Arizona was on the lead! At that moment, my buddy Chris in Scottsdale, Arizona, called me, he was screaming on the phone, 'Yeeeeeah! Cardinals is %$#@$ awesome, @#$@% #$^&# @^&%^# @$@ #$@% %$&* #$@, last time I was watching them playing the Eagles in a bar, they were losing by half time, I was so pissed off. Hey, when I got back home, Cards scored the TD. Yeah, @#$@!!#$%#$^....' He was screaming the profanity from deep of his lung to convey his ecstasy. I was no nicer, 'This is expletive cool, I was the only one here yelling in this building, damn awesome, man! I know Cards would flip it. blip, blip, blip....Yeah! Calm down, 2:53 minutes left, Let's see how Cardinals kill a giant.' Then we hung up the phone.

Guys like sports because men look at the games as live high drama. Playing the game helps, but mainly it's because of the story behind the teams.  The game could be the theme of revenge, highly riveting as contemporary version of the Count of Monte Cristo, or like a rag-to-rich underdog story, after long humiliating history, finally made its day, a perfect movie plot; it could be a redemption one, with so much misconcerption towards one of the heroes, the gem that's buried in the mud finally shines; It could also be a war in peace time, the game output could deduce pride, dignity and national or regional cohesion. Now if one goes a little further to know more about the key players and their coaches, it is a pure life drama. How people suffer, how they make mistakes, how they misjudge, how they become arrogant and then obnoxious, how they learned from the failure, how they made a fortune and flush it in overnight, what's hardship behind the elusive glory... it's all there. The exciting game is like a terrific movie or novel, other than it is real. No wonder the sports fans find themselves in all walks of life, it is a retreat to many professional workers.  Super Bowl exhibits the microcosmos of the athleticism-crazy American life.

Chris and I were laughing too early. The once resilient defense of Cardinals couldn't hold off the desperate and tenacious offense by Steelers. The rally was nail-biting, breath-taking, heart-punching. It went from 2:53 minutes to 43 seconds left, till Steelers' quarterback Ben Roethlisberger threw to Santonio Holmes for an improbable touch-down that literally ended the game. This time Chris sent me a short message that read, 'Like being shot...', I replied him with a line, 'Ate a dead fly.' Our 3-quarters stressed frustration was let out into high-octave jubilation for a minute or two, then we were thrown back to deep hurt and boundless voidness. We were experiencing a thriller that the best writers are vying to plot. This is what happened on superbowl sunday, without all the propping and buzzing,  the game is still a darn good, and damping, story.