Battle of the Ancients and Moderns

I have always been torn between the options of keeping things stagnant, preserving the livelihood of a culture and that of boldly adopting advancements in civilisation that bring about modern comforts and ideologies.

I deliberately choose not to use the word conservation and progress because I have been told repeatedly by many people that conservation may sometime well be progress (e.g. preserving traditions that provides stronger ties within a community) and personally, I have not figured out what big words such as 'conservation', 'revitalisation' and 'progress' means to our (yet another big word) 'civilisation'.

Hopefully by the time I finish this essay, I will have more answers or more unanswered question.

God, I love the feeling of self research, you slack off all day, start your boring reading and suddenly come across materials from the seventeenth century that addresses historical issues that is relevant to our contemporary world.

Here's the essay title:

6. Explain what you understand by the 'Battle of the Ancients and Moderns' and its significance for architecture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

How does it relate to our contemporary world? I don't know about the architectural side yet, but the Battle of the Ancients and the Moderns started as a philosophical and literary debate and gradually branched off to other areas.

Do we hold the traditional study of classical antiquity with high esteem or do we disregard the past and embrace a new age of scientific enquiry?

'What debate? How does it relate to our times?' You may ask.

First thing that came to my mind was Dolly, the first cloned sheep. Do we champion age old morals of not trying to play 'God' and or do we acknowledge the wondrous scientific progress brought to mankind?

I'm still torn between the two, but in a good puzzled way.

Jamie Cullum has a blog!

As it turns out, my favourite live jazz artist of all times, Jamie Cullum (I don't know a lot and I narrowly missed his live concert when he was in Hong Kong) has a blog!

Not only does he write witty love songs, mixing elements of pop, rock, hip hop, electronic, blues and reborns it as jazz, he recently went for a bike ride in the city.

"...As it turned out, our mayor Boris Johnson had closed down a huge part of central London to enable 50,000 cyclists to take to the streets without a car in sight. The route ran from Buckingham Palace, along the Victoria Embankment to St Pauls, to the Tower of London and back again...

...Dressed in all it's finery, with no Range Rovers to negotiate, the city revealed itself as a beautiful old friend. I was a tourist again in my own city."

After two thefts, it's about time I get my new bike and bring it up to the third floor every day, I love the feeling of being a tourist in one's own city. People running in the morning Meadows, the winds howling, rain drops on hoddies, grey skies and a corridor that smells like piss.

I'm back in Edinburgh.

《惘然記》

看了幾篇張愛玲的小故事，有些是在茫茫人海中相遇，相愛，但不能愛的無奈；有些是相遇，相愛，後來不愛的無奈。

愛不到的愛往往蓋著恨的面紗，只能在寂靜無人的偶然情況下，小心的把它拿開，然後悄沒聲的把它放回，每一次都希望下一次再拿起的時候它會自己碎掉，落到臉上也不會再痛。

我，當然只是在寫閱後感啦。

A few words before leaving

I'm about to return to Edinburgh, and no I am not going to say goodbye to anything or anyone in particular, because they know who they are and I'm not good at saying goodbyes to people who I have just made a brief encounter with and am absolutely lost for words when it comes to people who mean a lot to me.

So goodbye to whoever feels my goodbye.

Hong Kong summer was for me, an overseas student in Edinburgh, a wee bit too hot. So one of the favourite spots for me became the swimming pool downstairs. I had a thought the other day when I was trying to feel the feeling of my hands in the water, not trying to use my hand to grab hold on to anything in particular, but trying to stay still and feel the loss of sensation on my hands because there was no differentiation between one object to another under water.

This is what I was thinking:

I thought of public swimming pools (or fountains or simply a pool of water without any 'No Swimming' signs) on either sides of the Victoria Harbour front. After entering the Tsim Shai Tsui public swimming pool and jumping into the pool, you find yourself on lane 5 with the end of the "T" shape directly pointing towards the Bank of China building. After a few laps of the Bank of China lane, you rest on the ledge of the pool, let your body rise and fall with the ripples of somebody else diving from a board with the Cultural Centre as his background while you gaze over the poolside to absorb the harbour view. Ships negotiating their way through the busy water traffic, the sound of Star Ferry making her brief stop in the distance, glittering sparkles of sunlight dancing on the sea while water drips off the tip of your hair and you wonder, 'when will I ever get to swim across the Victoria Harbour again just like our grandfathers once did.'

Here's a picture of people using the benches in the new Central Star Ferry.

The bench and the glass windows send four messages:

1. Yay! I'm at the famous Central Star Ferry and I can see the harbour view.

2. Where's the natural wind?

3. If I want to sit, I can't see it anymore!

4. If I want to get a closer view of the sea, I have to make my way around people sitting on the benches.

重拾舊愛

小學時候，總會和媽媽比賽看書，看誰先看完。

到了中學，常常在備考的時候躲進洗手間看金庸，一坐不知日夜更替。

大學不在香港的家住，房間依然書一堆，都只是為寫論文，但卻鮮有把她們認真讀完。

生命中有很少的東西可以讓我感動到全身一震，彷彿整個身體都被打開了，沒有一點反抗的餘地。

從天而降的《野火集》讓我在彩虹帶來的暴雨中找到原來一直在深處未忘的感覺。

A Cute Devil

This little angel had a tough afternoon dodging the fangs of a dog set loose by the neighbours, being a stray cat all her life, with half of her right ear bitten off, she's quite used to big bullies and perfected the skill of fooling dumb dogs by hooping back and forth one tiny hole while the dog had to run up, down and around the slope to get to the other side of the hole.

Nonetheless, she was quite breathless when the dog owner finally got a hold of that piece of hyperactive saliva dripper. After the ordeal was over, I quietly stretched my legs beside her under a tree and gave her gentle strokes in order to calm her down. Without a warning, the little devil leaped onto my hand and gave me a few scratches.

The claws didn't go deep, so it wasn't very painful, but as I look at the scratch marks on my hand, I can't help but think that even if I knew what was coming, I would still gladly let her sink her claws onto my hand. How can you say no to dangerously beautiful things afterall?