wanderer

What would you do when the doctor tells you you only have a few months to live? Death is such an ulimate destroying enemy that you have no way to win the battle. All your wealth, your power, your fame, your vanity and so on will be wiped out completely. It even leave you no time to feel fear and desperation. Yet for some amazing individual, you get the greatest humanity ray and the sense of humor.

Here comes Randy Pausch.

The Carnegie Mellon Univeristy comupter science professor was diagnosed  pancreatic cancer and had 3-4 months to live. He gave his last lecture on childhood's dreams before 'spending his last time' with his family. He talked about life, how to raise kids and the strong will, He joked about how he accepted the compliments and encouragement from faculties and students, he even showed how strong he was at that moment by doing the push-ups by the podium. He simply moves millions of people. 

It is absolutely not a favorite topic to anyone talking about the demise of a person's  life, unfortuntely we all have to face it. Last summer, I have been spending nearly a month in the hospital with my ill mother who's in her last moment due to metastasis of lung cancer. The experience was more than overwhelming.  There is a custom in my hometown, when the beloved one passes away, people set off firecrackers as farewell. During those suffocating summer evenings, for several times my mother and I were knocked out of the sleep by the sudden cluster of noises. I had to spend lots of effort to distract my mother from it, since we covered her situation and she beleived she would be out of hospital some day at the family's love and the doctors' great care.

My mother is not a hero, my mother is a mother. Pausch is the hero. At the stark prediction of the end of his life journey, he still showed how one tiny individual could stand tall, and gave his advice to all the healthy, or unhealthy, people who are facing the challenges, 'Brick walls exist for a reason. they just want you to show how BADLY you want things.' He reiterated. I am deeply moved by the way he spoke these words, he was not yelling, he was not fisting, he just quietly told you with his soft-spoken tone that this should be the way we are working through the difficulties to achieve our goal.

Life is short, long live humanity.

First a saucy joke. A guy talks into a deal with a hooker in a brothel. Instead of dragging him downstairs into some room, she leads him out of the building to her place. He asks why, 'Because there'll be no fucking overhead.'

Yet we barely can avoid overhead. I went to an outlet for a jacket, I got a deal, yet I have to pay the gas to and fro. And soon I was thirsty and hungry, had to buy me something, in the end it added up 30% for more price I paid for the jacket; I studied an article, this guy's beginning was so boring, I went through anyway, yet had to go back again to read it one more, when I felt 'oh, I got it.', 50% more time was paid on;  A computer system has to maitain a backup system, which is not in use most of the time, yet this is an absolute necessity against malfunction; A funding agent has to support more applicants than one, since it is tough call that who would generate something useful, the future is uncertain; And one more example, 70% (not sure, though) of the weight a space shuttle carries are fuels, that is just a hefty price to pay in some high endeavors.

So the overhead measures the efficiency how a project runs, or how sweet a deal is. Basically we can break it down into two ways to lower the overhead. First, the decision to choose the most efficient way to achieve it. Like I buy a jacket online, rather than going to the mall or outlet; Secondly, it is a technical problem, be an efficient expert whenever you are taking on a project. For me, it is focusing on my study, for the funding agent, it is to study comprehensively and consult extensively to make more insightful judgement.  The rule applies to the general cases. If we want a better outcome out of something, we have to make a good selection, and then technically improve the efficiency. But on top of it, there must be a sense of overhead in our mind.

Given above consideration, so much fuss is easy to sort out. A big issue is global warming, they say we should drive hybrid cars, we should use less electricity and water, blah, blah. Is that a solution for reducing the greenhouse gas? Come on, don't people notice that how many more cars are manufactured and how many more houses are built every day to counter that tiny drop of savings? It makes no technical sense at all, nor is it politically correct. Now a tiny about oneself, ever explain that you are too busy to finish a writeup or a code? Well, the first thing to do is to choose the way you work, turn off the IM, mute your phone and don't even think about leaving a web browser open, see if you can finish something more efficiently.

Unless you are the rocket scientist, desperate for the lower workload of the space shuttle, overhead is not that hard to reduce. What's most important, though, is that first of all, we have to keep overhead in mind.

The world is becoming so subdivisionized that we find ourselves lost more frequent than before in the technical-oriented description or jargon-ladden specific conversation. We have learned more, yet we are becoming laymen.

Take a daily gadget. take the cell phone. How much do you know the difference between GSM and CDMA. You don't care, maybe you will if you are to travel, to call internationally, GSM shows compatibility edge over CDMA in other countries. How about your daily deal? What the heck is the difference between a regular banana and an organic one? Why can you not digest the milk that is not lactose-free? How do you know the sanwich's cholesteral content is good or bad? Then coffee shop is convincing you that their specifically selelected coffee beans, seasonings, and uniquely steaming process would generate the black liquid  that would reach the ultimate satisfaction of any tasting bud in your tongue, leave you smug joyfully in the chair. I haven't talked about the work, yet. Whatever you do, ever noticed that you are exposed tons of new stuff in your own field? In a word, just too much information and too many choices we have to face. Even I choose to have a simple life, I am still coerced to be more informed, to make more decisions, big or small, since we know it is a smarter way to get as much information as possible.

But we are not sponges, absorbing everything. Life is relentlessly diversified, our skills on something are like iPod product lines, obsolete fast. Fortunately this is not a sink-or-swim problem while we are drifting in the information sea. Diverseness means there are always some small corners and nooks we can cave in for a small-ego dwelling. In the larger picture, Natural slection applies: that who fits best pervails. Only the technique for survival has a new version, it is not being stronger, tougher, faster, as in the animal kingdom, it is now being in the know, the more, the better.

What do I talk to you, my cute girl? Haven’t had any words down for quite a while, obviously the world is brutal in my eyes since I am in a limbo state, waiting to exhale, aspiring to turn the tables. Albany is the past, just leave that behind. Even I do have some despise for some figures, my silence helps me say it all, I guess.  Then there are those folks I label as friends. True, I care about them since they do to me too. That is how you are a man among a small gang, we exchange the beers, exchange some trash talks, and, some respect explicitly. Soccer is the amazing glue that can stick together people from different walks.  You can’t imagine how these people could play cordially together, far from their daily roles as a dexterous manager, an adept engineer, a professor, a salesman, a greedy broker, an aspiring student, a depressed postdoc, and a jobless organizer!  But we got along, having a touchy story spread behind you. It is hasty to say these are the merits from 18 months of life in that northern city, I just chose something fond to remember. Life goes on, with or without a thing. Then you have a sweetheart in mind, by your side, during this down-in-the-dumps period of time, the prop is nothing but immense. When one is alone for so long, wandering from one place to another, he tends not to have the urge to land himself onto some fixture. The perspective of hometown become vague, he is ready to make any place that makes him happy a home. He’s evaluating carefully what is the most important thing in one’s life. He better changes himself from the past negative experience, which sounds self-sympathizing but pragmatically, he has to. It’s nothing wrong to be meek; it’s even a good virtue to be low-key, reserved and quiet, but put those into a novel’s character, not a mundane person who struggles to survive in the real world. People want you to be into a role that requires brassiness, tenacity and greed. Be ready for that. You don’t’ have to change anything to your beloved one.  You are yourself when you’re with her. It’s a situation that is so much more inviting than soccer guys’ party. So change it, separate the roles. The world is sophisticated, so are we. Just show your true color to your family, to the one you care and love. Oh, love, haven’t we mentioned that word for so long, have we? Do we not believe it, or we think that is something so cheesy, so much so that only a knockoff movie would exhibit it?  No. love was there and still is, only it becomes fragile at a certain time. We just cover it for now. It’ll grow, like a seed in the cliff of rocks. We’ve tasted so much hardship of life, things couldn’t be worse. And it’s our turn to be better off. We have work to do, need use some wisdom, believe in pray or not, crying for help from God or otherwise, we have to adjust ourselves to pursue the happiness. Am I like a preacher? Yes, yes, I am. As long as it makes sense, believe me. This is nick of time, live happy or die bitter. Adjust oneself, get ready for the coming challenge. You can have almost nothing to start all over again, but you can have one thing that can boost you elbow through the bruise and cuts. And that is love.