It has been a while...

I felt stupid and in the past few months I realized that lots of my time back in grad school was completely wasted. There is such wild wild west out here...

I felt depressed for realizing my ignorance... and my inefficiency and my lack of understanding of the people ard me...

I grasp thing very slowly. For whatever reason, my brains juz shut down when ppl start talking to me... This is so strange and I felt intimidated when i talk to ppl.

But I seem to be able to understand to lectures and talks... why?

Is there sth wrong with me? Why do I always feel overwhelmed with ppl talk to me?

I completely

happy and sad

Happy and sad?

A surprise invitation from my friend to catch a new movie. I was delighted and accepted her kind offer. Never thought that she would ask me to go out with her anyway.

I always wonder why she always look so cheerful and happy and so I can't resist the chance to ask her. She was surprised by my question coz many her colleagues told her that she looks a bit scary when she is at work. (I do agree with her colleagues to a certain extent though...)

I laughed. I envied her.

And so we turned the discussion to the happiness of our life. Chilling out with friends perhaps brought most of the happiness to our life.

I don't remember when was I was truly happy. The memory was so fuzzy....

Now I remember. It was seeing her beautiful and cheerful smile that brings peace and happiness to my heart...

I want to tell her how wonderful she is but...

Thinking of her beautiful smile makes me feel awfully guilty... Reading my entries in this blog make me realize that my girlfriend and I have drifted apart largely of my own fault... Love has somehow evaporated into a distant memory... I feel sad, angry and guilty of failing to keeping my promise to her that I will love her dearly...

In my own pursuit of happiness....

Oh girl....

You have one of the warmest, most beautiful and cheerful smile I have seen. I always wonder why you are so happy and your life just makes me envy. Envy. Perhaps that's the source of my unhappiness. Can you tell me why?

My uncle once told me that it is easy to find someone you love but it's hard to find someone who will stick with you and share your joy, pain and sadness throughout your life. Words from the wise man.

I feel that she is the person whom we can share our life together. The thought of breaking up pains me. I don't think I can ever find someone like her again.

I regret that we met at the wrong time and at the wrong place.

But still I have no courage to say the word breakup to her...

I am a coward.

And so we have a talk last night...

Our conclusion was 3 years is too far from now and everything can change at the last moment.

Maybe I can go to her home town and start a new life over there to look for a job and get settle down. But I very much doubt that will happen. Not that I don't love her but I found it difficult to live in a place where my previous experience told me that I don't like it too much and there's not much I can accomplish in that place. I understand that that's the place where my love one can thrive on her career and she can take care of her aging mum. Not that I have much ambition. I just want to do something useful in my life that can contribute no matter how small to the mankind but her country is not a place that offer something that aligns with my interest. Not a place that I think can change in 3 years time.

I am sad.

I don't want her to sacrifice her now fledging career and leave her family behind so that we can live together. I don't like to be forced and I never like to force someone to do thing that I want. A rational decision is perhaps that we should not continue this relationship. I don't want 3 years down the road then we decide to make the same hard choice. Everyone's time is precious. We are no longer young. I would rather she finds a better man she deserves so much.

Love is not rational, or is it?

Low in spirit. Feeling depressed today.

Found it dreadful to live in a "new" country in 3 yrs time. Everything seems to be planned and I have no control over it. One person have to sacrificed for the another. A typical two-body problem.

I don't know why I should follow this path. I cherish my time over here. I do feel lonely and miss home sometimes. But where's home? I live half of my life overseas, away from my family and my friends, moving from one place to another and seeing no end to it. I do worry about my parents whose health has not been in great shape but on the other hand, I really feel that I don't fit into the my old place any more. I have seen new places and meet with new people and my perception of life has changed. Yet, I feel uncomfortable to call the current place I live home. No, I can't. It's a culture that I partly understand and mostly misunderstood.

I feel bad for my love one. We have separated for so long, meeting only twice a year. It has been four years that we have lived our life apart. Yet we hang onto it. And we both make sacrifices along the way. But I just find it very hard to live in a place where I spent 5 yrs of my youth before and found the place boring. On many occasion, I do want to say let's quit. I have enough staying alone and living like a monk. I find it hard and perhaps unnecessary.

But here I am again. Not knowing what I truly want.

Teaching?

Recently, I keep thinking of teaching science in high school or junior college. The idea of getting young teenagers excited about nature is of course an exciting and perhaps a very fulfilling experience on it own. Yet thinking back of my journey... college... grad school... I become very hestitated in propagating the egalitarian myth about science. I wondered why none of my teachers/ professors have never told me there's so much b.s., hypocrisy, politics in science.... Every now and then when I pick up a paper from reputable journals, I wondered why they even got accepted in the first place. Gross grammatical errors were often sighted and in some serious cases, some fundamental technical details were not strictly adhered. Certainly, the authors have done something that people have not attempted before.... But the idea was not novel most of the time. There's no paradigm shift in their thinking. Some people might argue that it is part of the process and as scientists, each small step is important to the foundation of the holy temple of science. I disagreed. Small steps does not always merit publication and in many case I think it is just a complete waste of taxpayers money to publish...

So back to the idea if I should take up a career path in education... I still think so. I remember how happy I was when I discussed science with my fellow nerdy friends back in high school thanks to my teacher who always encouraged us to question and seek answers on our own... I love to hang out with the young people and push them to think.... I guess I will do something a little different though if I were a teacher. I would tell my students that science sucks and it sucks 95% of the time.