de-seven

Hello?
Hello?
Hello?

I pressed it off and got back to the business in the International Office. The administrator said it was difficult to get cellphone signals in their office. I smiled and did not accept this lousy excuse for the caller ID 777-777-7777.

More than a year ago, I wrote about this digit 7. I still do not believe in lucky numbers. For the sake of argument, you can say that my disbelief is because 7 has not brought luck to me at all despite its frequent appearance in my life. It just does not feel random from a random person's point of view.
I do not particularly want 7 in my life. It simply happens very often.
I do not want 777-777-7777 in my life ever. Whoever you are, speak or don't call me the third time.

I have no evidence who made those calls, but my first intuition has caused some trouble already. I made Superstar mad at me. I fail to turn my mind totally off a person I had been in love with, no matter he had always been my sun or had consistently hurt me right into the core of my heart.
I realize that love has a special imprinting effect. Love imprints the person a special position into my heart. His position may be promoted or hidden, but it's always there becoming a part of me.

Love is at work again.
For me, Superstar is the happening luck without a number attached.

loud

She was very loud without a word.
She was extremely loud without a movement.
She was extremely loud without overdoing the role.
After seeing numerous movies about women losing their children, this was the first time that I was moved and felt for the mother.
Angelina Jolie was excellent in Changeling.



I am not a huge fan of the director Clint Eastwood probably because the stories he told in previous movies are not the stories that normally attract me. However, I do like the way he tells stories. Like Ang Lee, Eastwood delivers human warmth from the interactions between characters, from the sound track, from the color or tone used, and from a dimension that fancy digital effects cannot bring to the audience. Eastwood and Lee are among the greatest contemporary artists.

Changeling is a true story. True stories are usually more amazing than fictions. When true stories are very dramatic, people believe they are too dramatic to be true. It turns out that nothing is too dramatic to be true. Things do happen, no matter whether they happen under a writer's fingers or under the sun.
Over the years of human history, the society evolves in a direction promoting respects to all human beings. Every time when a milestone was set, it was set with a dramatic incident, often brought or initiated by certain individual(s) who were brave enough to speak out loud and to act outright.

I was doing people watching by a window by the outskirt of the Grand Park in Chicago. It was very cold, but too dry to snow. My eyes were open but my mind was sleeping. Coffee in the early morning did not last its effect after 13 hours. Suddenly a rainbow flag crossed by my window, and my smile woke me up. Protesters against California's Proposition 8 were walking by.
Go for it!
No more discrimination against same-sex couples!
Separate State and Church!
Love is all we need!
I didn't shout but smile widely. I was too tired to do more than giving a thumb up.
And I thought about the keynote speaker Daniel Kahneman's presentation: married people reported less happiness than singles. So if you really dislike homosexuals, let them get married! What do you lose if they can marry each other? The earth is still not flat. The sun is still not revolving around the earth. You still pretend that only heterosexual couples understand the true meaning of togetherness.

As mentioned, I feel the society is improving its attitude toward minority and any other underrepresented populations. Although it's not perfect yet: people (especially straight men) express much more approval about lesbians than about gays, I believe one day homosexuals will earn their respect. Women took thousands of years to be able to have the current not-inferior-to-men status. Lefties took probably similar amount of time to convince the majority that they are as weird as right handers. Homosexuals should not take as long to reach the as-normal-as-heterosexual status. Minorities may keep their unpleasant labels, but soon labels will become joking nicknames which do not represent anything more than a linguistic symbol for a historic fact.

Don't tell women how we should behave.
Don't judge gays or lesbians' love.
Don't allow anyone to justify their biases. So let me say something, just for the record that I try my best not to bias.
White American men can learn how to appreciate non-Americanized Chinese food.
I will not determine the level of my fondness of you if you wear pink.
Queer as Folk is not the homosexual version of Sex and the City. Both are awesome and fabulous in their own ways.

Friday short pieces

Isn't he cute?
He called his mama Col-ber-t. Not Col-bear :)



Hey, Mama, one day if I am as famous and as successful as Stephen Colbert, I will sing you a song on TV too.

*****

I met Yardena's "good friend". Muhammad came to the hospital for seeing "this lovely young lady".
Why? Because Yardena had to go home before sunset and does not come out until the sunrise of Sunday. She is very orthodox. She follows everything in the Jewish religion and backs up everything beneficial (even just superficially beneficial) to Israel.... indicating she voted to .....
Despite the differences we have in religion and politics, I like her. She is a wonderful co-worker. She is funny. She doesn't mind people questioning her faith or daily routines. She is very likable and has a deep sexy sandy voice. She is super patient with patients. She cares.
She works two jobs, both related to the medical business: here in my lab working with stroke patients, and she drives ambulance every other night. She also volunteers for something related to charity.
The volunteering work made it happen. It being her meeting Muhammad. As his name suggests, he is a Muslim.
Muhammad is a handsome hot young guy. I would've stared at him if Yardena was not at the table. However, Muhammad's eyes were full of Yardena. Soooo obviously in love with her. Yardena is obviously very fond of him as well. They held hands sometimes. They made fun of each other. They were arranging a horse-riding lab field trip for us.
I wish I could stay here this weekend. They were almost to decide to go this weekend, but they decided not to because of my absence. They were just so cute.
It will feel heartbreaking if they can't be together because of their religious conflict. Why? You are in a religiously free country (well..... actually not as free as I had expected). Those rules are ancient and distant and remote and unnecessary to your current lives. I wish you at least kissed each other if not further.
"Oh, dance is not your people's thing." Muhammad said to Yardena, and she said something to fight back but kept her hand in his hand. Oh~

It is hard to be the second generation of immegrants from an extremely conservative country. Parents are still bathed in the previous thoughts and traditional values, and forget to integrate with the spirits of being American, or do not allow their children to differ.
Oh, well, what can I say? I am glad that I am so selfish, and no one is qualified to determine who I should be with.

*****

I was very productive today. Unbelievably finished something I thought I would not have done until the end of my trip back from Chicago.
This week has been great. Two grants out of my desk. Blue rules the States. One manuscript and one new idea. Liu talked me to sleep. No snow. The whole frontyard covered with golden leaves. The whole backyard covered with bright red leaves. Flu virus failed staying in my throat.
I ... am cautious. Things can't go so well. There must be something horrible about to occur.
"Do you often worry about the future?" This is one of the depression questionaire. Sometimes I do worry because I am a person who often twists my ankle walking on a perfect flat ground. Anything can happen to me. Anything did happen to me.
Chicago is going to snow tomorrow according to the weather forecast. My plane may be delayed. I may be stuck in the airport. Well... if it happens, it is something ordinary in the States anyway, so I don't worry about it. I am quite experienced with delayed air flights.
So I turned up the music and dance to it. So I am dancing and not worrying.

*****

Dance
hajksldurfwqbjc Dance
asdbflwbsldbDanscfdce
asdbfjaskldbfjksadueibfDance
asdbfalsDance

asdbfhaljsbehl, ebwlbffdbfues Dance
sdfdhsjfd. Dance

Black eyed peas
Madonna
Aquilera
Timberlake
Outkast

All right all right I'm gonna pack.
I don't wanna pack.
Packing always lasts for too long.
Arrrh...

O

I just watched Obama's acceptance speech.
Great speech.
Could be one in an English textbook.
What he said may be the reason why I stay in the States.

He was a great speaker too. He knew what he was saying and he meant it.

At the end of his speech, Joe Biden came out. And their wives. And their families. They hug and kiss and hug and smile and hide their fatigue and smile.
How nice. Makes me smile. Makes audience scream and cry as if they were rock stars. In this country, family means a lot in a person's life. It's a real thing, not just something taught in school. (In Taiwan, you hear people say "Friends always come first."; in the States, people prioritize their family all the time.)
I believe the new President and Vice President and their families will be great models of the people in this country. I hope they will do at least half of what they said during the campaign. I hope they don't disappoint people too much.... like the former President of Taiwan.

Tonight was a great show if anything like the O show in Vegas. Unlike the O show, the end of the campaign is the beginning of the show actually. Obama said this election is not the change but the chance to change. Yes, you can.

Yes, you can. Please do it. And do it right.

tell him

I Love My Wife!!!
He wrote this message in the writing test. I gave him the full score, which I should have not done because in a regular English sentence capital letters are not used after the first word. I gave him the full score because he is German and because he loves his wife so much that I believe his writing rightfully expressed his feeling.
Mr. AR is going home today. Oh, I miss my wife. He had been in the hospital for only a week after his stroke, which is the shortest inpatient stay I have ever seen among my patients.

A week ago, I worked with Mr. HN who loves carving small pieces of wood into woman figures with a Swiss knife. He showed me his art work at the end of the study. He insisted I see them. His wife brought a bag of probably 15 pieces of figures for him. Because of his stroke, he couldn't carve wood for weeks but he missed his art.
He had shown the wood figures to all the hospital staffs he liked. I was a bit flattered and then felt a bit awkward as seeing his women in the bag. Not because all of them were naked. It was because they were all in a posture of showing their private or of raising their arms for being bound together.
I like to give my art to women. They can hang it at the doorway or in the car for reminding their men of not cheating.
I don't quite get it, but for the sake of being polite and continuing the conversation, I asked about his encounter with his wife. He had told me that he traveled to many European countries when he was young. I had learned that his wife is Italian.
Oh, I met her across street. Just right outside my apartment. Yes, in the States. In New Jersey! I spotted her and asked her out and later asked her to marry me.

Two weeks ago, Mr. JC finished a two-week study as the first pilot for that particular study. He was, like the two gentlemen mentioned above, very talkative. Being talkative might be induced by my self-introduction as a neuropsychologist, and patients thought I was the psychologist commonly protraited on TV. All I do is listen. I don't analyze because I am not that kind of psychologist.
Anyway, Mr. JC frequently told me how wonderful his wife was and how grateful he was for having his wife with him and how much he loves his wife. Sometimes, he got so emotional that tears came to his eyes and he apologized.
He had not wanted to go to hospital right after his stroke because he didn't believe he had anything wrong. Several hours later, his wife insisted and called the ambulance. Mr. JC was mad at his wife. I told you I am fine! I don't need to see a doctor. Now he felt he was blessed that his wife had forced him to be treated.

So far I have not met a female patient enthusiastically telling me how much she loves her husband. She usually told me how great the god was. She usually mentioned about her children. Why is the husband or the male life partner so not loveable?
At such advanced ages as most stroke survivors are, women express less affection toward their partners than men. Why is that? Because I am a stranger, and women prefer not to openly express their love in front of me? Because men were usually not the care giver in the house, and women seldomly felt being taken care of by their husband?

Kerline met a male patient who wanted to recover as soon as possible because he wanted to go home to take care of his wife. He is 92. His wife is 91.

Being a care giver, men seem to express their love more explicitly than women. Well... I know I should not come to this conclusion from a single case. But if I were a social psychologist, it might have been appropriate to make this argument.

Oh, women, tell your man that you love him. It is not a bad romantic movie if it happens in real life. It is just very touching and sometime life-changing.

I love my superstar.