written the day after the VT shooting

In the morning I was shocked to tears when I heard about the incident at Virginia tech over bbc broadcasting. It seems at least once a week I am inclined to cry over something in the news. And I don’t even listen to the news all that consistently. A few weeks ago it was the child laborers in Southeast Asia. I don’t want it to be bad news, but if bad news were happening I would like to be informed of the truth, and the truth is all too often upsetting nowadays. I don’t believe the past were any more golden then now, but still… it is unspeakably hurtful.
Then this afternoon the teacher mentioned the incident, but didn’t elaborate, so the students listened to it stoically, for our classes were on schedule and we were a few classes behind. I was not so emotional now, for I felt what has happened has happened. Grieving over it won’t help anything now. The only thing to be done is to think of what to do to prevent a tragedy like this to ever occur again.
And then in the evening a radio program asked a professor on international relations to explain this incident to the public in Taiwan. The professor said that guns have been a problem in the States for a long time. Before, it was needed because people generally did not trust the government to protect them and had to rely on themselves, so they had guns. But the government in America has come a long way since the pioneering times and that calls for a different set of rules on gun regulation. However, gun regulation has not been following the times, because there have been private organizations centered around rifle shooting and such that are against any changes that will inhibit ownership of guns. They would get together and make sure that no congress member who supports regulation on artillery can survive a reelection. The professor claims that such groups have great influence. Besides, for a lot of people in rural areas of America, owning guns is a right.
I must say I do not find the argument of owning guns to protect one’s home and family convincing considering the times. If you buy a gun there is always the potential of using it, and if that potential doesn’t arrive in the figure of a deer or a hostile intruder, then in arrives in the figure of your careless or hotheaded youngster, yourself in a moment of irrational rage…etc. Though owning a gun is not as dangerous to your very young children as owning a swimming pool, its risk still outweighs its worth. The professor also said that if guns were allowed for sale in Taiwan, it would profit the bad guys far more than it would profit the good guys.
But then, I’m prejudiced. For I’ve always thought one could employ one’s time far more profitably than in hunting.
Then in the evening there came the news that the killer was Asian, and then a report that all the Taiwanese students in Virginia Tech were safe and sound. My mother said “The killer wasn’t Taiwanese, was he?” She seemed so sure that the killer was male, not female. And then I realized that I had believed the killer was male too, and I didn’t remember if it was ever mentioned what the killer’s gender was. And the notion that the killer was Asian was worrying, for though I believe that most Americans are perfectly rational people, I look at 911 and do not completely trust that racial hatred will not spring up because of this incident. And if the killer were Taiwanese it would hurt Taiwan’s image horribly. Considering how precarious our country’s position is when being faced with little acknowledgement of sovereignty due to pressure from mainland China, it really cannot afford further alienation from America.
Rummings on this subject suddenly brought to mind a conversation I had with my brother a few days ago. He said that suppose one day Taiwan’s military up and decided to revolt against central government. I said no, that’s impossible, because Taiwan military mostly consists of those serving for a little more than a year in their life in order to fulfill the government’s edict about every Taiwanese male past the age of 18 needing to serve in the military for 20 months. Most of them never wanted to be in the army, and since they have to what they mostly dream of during the time is to get this over quickly so they can get on with their lives – continue education, try to earn a cushy desk job, dating, playing computer games… etc. They can’t possibly want to join a revolt since life out there is so tantalizing and life in the army is simply a temporary derail. This may be revealing our military weakness to China, but I’m sure since they have so many cunning people they must have worked out the Taiwan situation themselves and have an attack plan all laid out now so it shouldn’t matter what I say of what I know. I don’t doubt that eventually Taiwan will become a part of China, though I little savor the idea. It is simply a matter of when, and by what means. It is a frightening thought. For in that when, will China allow us the freedom that we enjoy today? There has been so many tales of oppression, corruption and neglect in China that I can not be optimistic if such a thing came to pass.
Then I heard the killer was Korean. It did little to ameliorate my feelings.

children's sense of time and a lesson learnt

Life seems to flow much more quickly than when I was a child. It is as though I can remember yesterday as the year 2003, and cannot ascertain the time that passed between as something of prominence as clearly as time seemed to pass so slowly in my childhood and it seemed I could recall moments of never believing that I would be in time to grow up, and wield responsibility, and learn all the grownup things that seemed beyond my reach at the time. But I was optimistic, I did not fret. And it came, growing up, until suddenly one realizes that it is difficult to stop the flow of time, and as my years build so does the sand seem to trickle out faster. I wonder why there is such a disparity between a child’s notion of time and a young adult’s.
One of the effects that children display of this sensation is the inability to stay still. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. Perhaps it is because children have less on their minds then us, and less to do, so they can observe the feel things in acute reality. And that is partly why it is a great evil to treat a child with cruelty (like child abuse and child labor) because children are at their most sensitive. And any harsh punishment or dire circumstance can be felt more keenly by children then if subjected to adults, who are often more used to and insensate of the pain. I recall that horror movies would terrify me for a whole month after viewing them when I was a child. But now the sensation of horror movies are more easy to shake off. Because of this, I definitely support rating movies. Often we as grownups are not able to realize the impact certain movies can have on children. It is better to be safe than sorry. There are a lot of perfectly good movies and cartoons I’m sure children can benefit from. In fact, I believe that it is best not to let children watch television that much. Reading, drawing, writing, some sports and learning some instrument should be adequate for a young child past time.
I was walking home today and I thought of how I had consciously commanded myself to stop storing memories as particularly fond. I wonder at myself. Though I can now spare myself the pain of seeking something that never was – the places and instances that appear perfect in nostalgia, nor am I allowed to build new memories of fonder moments. Is it because I have commanded myself not to love moments, is it because I haven’t come across anything particularly memorable, or is it because I have stopped bearing the perception of a child, and it is the child’s memories that gives one the most acute senses of pleasure and nostalgia?
The past few days I have been at camp. It has been an exhausting experience. But besides that it was fun. It was something worth storing in one’s room of memories. It was memorable. But I do not want to relive it – yet. Maybe someday when I’m low and feeling my age in my bones I’ll start wishing for the time when I could hike for the whole day under the sun with my (also young) classmates playing activities and singing away our voices at night.
There is one particular game I want to share. We had to cross an imaginary river (in this case it was the gravel walk in the camp) on limited scraps of newspaper. The other class (there are two classes in a ‘camp’) is suppose to do anything to prevent your class from being successful: By whisking away unattended newspaper, by blocking the path…etc. Our classmates decided to carry each other across on our backs. Brave, but stupid, because on hindsight we did have enough paper to cross without resorting to carrying each other. Anyway, the camp before us had competed furiously, sprinkling water on the paper so it would stick to the path and tear easily, forming a human wall…etc. It even came to blows, bites and arguments. In our camp my class went first. At first the opposing class whisked away unattended paper with grins, but later into the game some of them started vocally saying “Let’s not take away their paper anymore. They have a difficult enough time as it is. This is no fun.” Perhaps we looked hurt and unhappy and some of us looked angry. When it came to be their turn to play none of our classmates made a move to aggrieve them. None of us wanted to take away their paper or impede them in any way. We had learnt the lesson. Instead, it was up to the camp counselor to take away their unattended paper.
This game has taught me something. If someone is going through a difficult time, it would only aggravate the situation if you attempt to goad the person into doing better by making it more difficult. What we should do is help each other. And that’s that.

Dutch soldiers stress respect in Afghanistan By C.J. Chivers Friday, April 6, 2007 The International Herald TribuneQala-e-Surkh, Afghanistan: The Dutch infantrymen stood on a ridge near the Baluchi Valley, an area in south-central Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban and tribes opposed to the central government.Whenever they push farther, the soldiers said, they swiftly come under fire from rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. "The whole valley is pretty much hostile," said one, a machine gunner.But rather than advancing for reconnaissance or to attack, the Dutch soldiers pulled back to a safer village. "We're not here to fight the Taliban," said the Dutch commander, Colonel Hans van Griensven, at a recent staff meeting. "We're here to make the Taliban irrelevant."Thousands of fresh Western troops have flowed into Afghanistan since last year, seeking to counter the resurgent Taliban before an expected spring offensive. Many U.S. units have been conducting sweeps and raids.But here in Uruzgan Province, where the Taliban operate openly, a Dutch-led task force has mostly shunned combat. Its counterinsurgency tactics emphasize efforts to improve Afghan living conditions and self-governance, rather than hunting the Taliban's fighters. Bloodshed is out. Reconstruction, mentoring and diplomacy are in.U.S. military officials have expressed unease about the Dutch method, warning that if the Taliban are not kept under military pressure in Uruzgan, they will use the province as a haven and project their insurgency into neighboring provinces.The Dutch counter that construction projects and consistent political and social support will lure the population from the Taliban, allowing the central and provincial governments to expand their authority over the long term.Insurgency and counterinsurgency tactics have long been subjects of intensive tinkering and debate, as military and police forces from different nations, and even different units within nations, have chosen conflicting approaches.The Dutch-led force of about 2,000 soldiers has adopted what counterinsurgency theorists call the "oil spot" approach. Under this tactic, it concentrates efforts in less hostile areas, especially a basin around Tarin Kowt, the provincial capital, which overlaps an economic development zone designated by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.The central idea is that if foreign military forces show restraint and respect, and help the local government to govern, then these areas will expand, slowly but persistently, like an oil stain across a shirt. As they grow, the theory says, the Taliban's standing will decline.To date, the Dutch, aided by U.S. soldiers and contractors who train Afghan police and soldiers, have helped Afghan units to coordinate security and build police posts. Simultaneously, they have sent teams of specialists and Australian engineers to choose development projects and plan them with village leaders.They have built or repaired schools, mosques, police garrisons, courtrooms and a hospital inside the more secure areas. A bridge and a police training center are under construction or in design. They also have opened a trade school that teaches Afghan laborers basic job skills, including carpentry and generator repair.To encourage expansion of the government's influence, the Dutch infantry conducts patrols around the secure zones, and reconstruction teams try to identify future projects and allies who can extend the ring of influence."Inside the inner ring, we try to do a lot of long-lasting development projects," said Lieutenant Colonel Gert-Jan Kooij, the operations officer of the task force. "It's not like it is 100 percent safe there. It never is. But it's permissive at least. And by showing that we have projects in the permissive areas, we hope the people in other areas will see that it gets better when they work with their government."Such counterinsurgency tactics are not new; they are only back in vogue, with a new generation of officers drawing lessons from past military operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Borneo, Vietnam and elsewhere.Similar tactics have reappeared in U.S. units in Iraq, as both the Army and the Marine Corps have been rewriting doctrine along the same lines.But the Dutch have embraced the theory more fully than most, to the point that most Dutch units now take extraordinary steps to avoid military escalation and risks of damage to property or harm to civilians. (When armored vehicles damaged a grove of mulberry trees, a captain came by the next day to negotiate a compensation payment for the farmers.)When Dutch units patrol, they usually avoid known hostile zones, which include expansive patches of Uruzgan Province. When a Dutch unit is attacked, it typically withdraws from enemy range. In areas where the Taliban are less prevalent, soldiers do not wear helmets, which the Dutch say makes them more approachable.Dutch commanders say they also draw from their army's experiences in southern Iraq from 2003 through 2005, where similar tactics were used. They say their units had better relations with Iraqis, and faced less fighting, than did U.S. units. Civilian deaths and property damage caused by U.S. tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan, they said, have hardened villagers' attitudes, which helps the insurgents with recruiting, intelligence and protection.Dutch officers say the approach has yielded promising results here.Sometimes villagers have warned them of ambushes or roadside bombs, and in several villages the Dutch are rarely attacked. Since the task force began operations last August, it has not suffered a combat fatality. Van Griensven also said the task force had developed underground contacts in Taliban-controlled regions."If you look at what we have done in eight months, I am optimistic," he said. "We have a good start with the basics."He added that he could deploy his units on sweeps, searches and raids, and chase the Taliban away. But each time after his infantry left an area, he said, the Taliban would simply move back in.Not everyone is convinced, and some participants openly worry that the formula is out of balance, undermined by too great a reluctance to use force. Large areas of Uruzgan remain Taliban havens. The local government, plagued by corruption, remains so weak that it does not yet have a significant program against soaring poppy production for the opium trade, which helps underwrite the insurgency.One Afghan translator who works with the Dutch said their approach is passive. "The Dutch, if the fight starts, they run inside their vehicles every time," said the translator, who asked that his name be withheld because he risked losing his job. "They say, 'We came for peace, not to fight.' And I say, 'If you don't fight, you cannot have peace in Afghanistan." 'A suicide car bomber hit a police checkpoint in Kabul on Friday, killing four people, including a police officer who tried to stop him, The Associated Press reported from Kabul, citing the police and witnesses.At least four other people were wounded in the attack in the western area of the Afghan capital, said the police chief, Esmatullah Daulatzai."It was a suicide attack. The attacker exploded his car when a policeman tried to stop his vehicle," Daulatzai said. There were no foreigners near the area at the time of the blast, he said.Samiullah Ahmad Rahim, a witness, said that he heard a big explosion and saw a large fireball shortly after the blast.The pieces of the vehicle were strewn around the road leading toward Afghanistan's Parliament building. Windows of the nearby buildings and shops were shattered and the blast gouged a small crater on the road.

April

reading evolves: Jostein Gaarder
When I first read "Sophie's World" I was not so impressed. To me at the time, it was basically a failed attempt at putting a long philosophy lecture into story book setting. I was particularly eager to discredit it after having heard such raving accolades on that work.
But lately I have reread a little bit of 'Sophie's World' and though I have gleaned some insights in past readings, the books seens richer as I read it now. Have I grown enough to appreciate something that means to tell us something very serious under the guise of a story/ And indeed, often nowadays it seems that simple tales/novels can no longer satisfy. They must have depth, beauty, truth... some form of acknowledgement of love as a necessary part of life, for me to enjoy it.
The Solitaire Mystery, in the beginning, was vastly dull. Perhaps because I expected a story like any other, and it was going about at an extremely slow pace. Later, the pace quickened, and I was enthralled by a tales within tales. Like Sophie's World, the last part came as a great rushing Mardi Gras, with all the cards falling into place and fate playing the role of seductress and death's head. I find that I felt quite satisfied when I had finally finished the book, without quite sure of why. But I know it was not the attractions of inevitable fate that filled me, but the tidbits, here and there. The suggestions, the lovely lightbulbs that lit several times in the seam of mundanity, and the love that the author showed. The story plot, in fact, became a sort of distraction from what the writer was really trying to say. And thus beauty, failure, and adoration wove something utterly unique and mundane. A piece of driftwood from a brilliant mind. And it was love at last sight.

musings on a bus: a clear fact
I recall this piece of news a few years back about a college student who, on a dare, ran the track butt naked. He was given a strong warning by the school, almost considered for expulsion, and a wide coverage by the media.
What interested me was how upset the school - and the general public - became at this behavior. Didn't the ancient Greeks compete in athletes nude? Didn't the Egyptian children wear nothing, and the Egyptian women and early Elizabethan women go about their business bearing their breasts? Why do we make such a big deal about those places? The penis and the nipples. Perhaps the only thing it suggests to us is sexuality, and because we have gotten used to having those parts covered the idea that it may become uncovered is appalling. For the penis, we have these myths: that each person has different sizes, for example, and that size makes a difference, and the sight of the organ will inspire passion and other such inappropriate behavior in people. It would be very dismal if we were to judge our mates by their size, and also we must avoid embarrassing 'accidents'. Parts of our body have become pieces of shame rather than normal body parts. Because it is constantly covered it becomes a taboo, something only to be whispered, because it suggests 'you-know-what'. Really, it is our minds that generally wander to that area of thought. And some girls might even think the male organ grotesque and obscene because they have never seen such an organ under normal circumstances. I have, I must admit, found it extremely disgusting to be a part of a male. I have since attempted to view every piece of our bodies as something natural, for it really isn't fair to blame the plainer sex for something they can't help having.
And what are breasts but chests padded with fat? Really, these issues have become a weapon with which we can threaten others with. Our own bodies have betrayed us in that respect! Nude pictures of our ex-lovers are weapons of blackmail...
Though I am far from saying that nudity is something we should all attempt in public, I believe that there is something unnatural in a society that is so terrorized by the image of our own bodies. Things that are natural can be made evil by condemnation, and in the case of nudity this fact shines clearly.
the progress (or antiprogress) of language
It is amazing how far language has come, or receded, rather. The circumstances of the chinese language is very similar to that of the English, though varies in deatil of change. Basically we can say that for both languages in the past when education was not compulsory and literacy was low, the upper classes(excluding the women for the chinese) could play with language with prime complexity and depth. For the chinese the capability was characterized by using as little words as possible to express the most possible, which required an intimate knowledge of the various nuances of meaning and thorough understanding of past works of literature. For the English a vast repertoire of vocabulary was necessary. Both valued the beauty of structure and melody.
The first blow to this system was the compulsorization of education, which, in order to let the general public use language with ease and proficiency, generally lowered the standards until today the teachings mostly consist of what is necessary for everyday use. (for the chinese, the olde system of the language was even entirely abandoned and made way for the more colloquial system of writing which we use today, though the old system is still studied as our heritage).
The second blow was the revolution of entertainment and communication. The radio, movies, television, and telephone (not in that exact order). In some cases the devices took up most of the time that people generally spent in conversation and reading. In the case of communication systems like the telephone it allowed people instant comunication and thus less need to write - or the leisure and patience to compose a message well.
All in all, language has evolved, perhaps favorably for a conition of social and global equality. However, it comes at the lamentable price of less patience with consideration to feelings and knowledge of communication (for we get so little practice), and that is what we must strive to correct in ourselves in this age of disconnection and oblivion.