I’m reading the simple version of “The Chamber” which written by John Grisham. I like the paragraphs in which mention about Eddie:

“Eddie was different.”
“You mean, he didn’t hate?”
Sam continued. “Eddie was a tender child. He was like his mother. There was a black family on our place. The Lincolns. Joe Lincoln had worked for us for many years. One of the boys, Quince, was the same age as Eddie, and they were best of friends. When Eddie started school, he got real upset because he rode one bus and his African friend rode another. He was always asking questions about why the African in Ford Country was so poor, and lived in bad houses, and didn’t have nice clothes, and had so many children. He suffered over them, and that made him different. I tried to explain things to him.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the need to keep the races separate. There’s nothing wrong with keeping Africans in their place. Eddie left home when he was eighteen.”
“Did you miss him?”
“Not at first, I guess. We were fighting a lot. He knew I was in the Klan by then, and he said he hated the sight of me.”
“You thought more of the Klan than of your own son?”
Sam stared at the floor. “He was a sweet kid,” he said quietly. “We had an old boat and used to fish, that was our big thing together. Then he grew up and didn’t like me. He was ashamed of me, and of course it hurt.” He looked up at Adam. “What kind of father was he?”
“I don’t know. That’s a hard question, Sam.”
“Why?”
“Because of the way he died. I was mad at him for a long time after his death, and I didn’t understand how he could leave us, how he could decide we didn’t need him anymore. And after I learned the truth, I was mad at him for lying to me all those years, for changing my name and running away. It was terribly confusing for a young kid. Still is.”
“Are you still angry?”
“Not really. I try to remember the good things about Eddie. I guess he was a good man, a good father who just had this dark, strange side to him.”
“Tell me about his death. How did it happen?”
Adam waited a long time before answering. “He was going through a bad time. He’d been in his room for three weeks, hiding from the world. Mother kept telling us that he was getting better, soon he’d come out. We believed her. He picked a day when she was at work and Carmen was at a friend’s house, a day when he knew I’d be the first one home. I found him lying on the floor of my bedroom, still holding the gun. One shot in his forehead. There was a neat circle of blood, and a typed not beside him. The not was addressed Dear Adam. It said he loved me, that he was sorry, that he wanted me to take care of the girls, and that maybe one day I would understand. He asked me to clean up the mess and call the police. Don’t touch the gun, he said. And hurry, before the girls get home.” Adam cleared his throat and looked at the floor.
“And so I did what he said, and I waited for the police. We were alone for fifteen minutes, just the two of us. He was lying on the floor, and I was lying on my bed looking down at him. I started crying and crying, asking him why. There was my dad, the only day I would ever have. I heard voices, and suddenly the room was filled with police.”
Sam was leaning on his elbows, one hand over his eyes. There were just a couple more things Adam wanted to say.
“Lee stayed with us after the funeral and told me everything. I couldn’t stop thinking about you and the Kramer bombing. It took about a year for me to figure out why Eddie killed himself when he did. He’d been hiding in his room during your trial, and he killed himself when it ended.”
Sam removed his hand and stared at Adam with wet eyes. “So you blame me for his death, right, Adam? That’s what you really want to say?”
“No, I don’t blame you entirely.”
“Then how much? Eighty percent? Ninety percent? How much of it’s my fault?”
“I don’t know, Sam. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Just add my son’s name to the list, is that what you want? The Kramer twinc, their father, then Eddie. That’s four I’ve killed, right? Anyone else you want to add?”
“Dead bodies?”
“Yes. Dead bodies. I’ve heard the rumors.”
Sam jumped to this feet and walked to the end of the room. “I’m tired of this conversation!” he shouted. “And I’m tired of you! Here I am twenty-three days away from the chamber, and all you want to do is talk about dead people. Just get out of here!”

On 13th May, James Blunt will perfomance at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. The first song I heard from him might be the famous one was the “You’re Beautiful“. And this “Cry” I just started listening this morning is fantastic.

James Blunt - Cry

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I like this book very very much which written by Mark Haddon (personal website). I like Christopher’s acting and his thinking eventhough he is not a normal guy. I like the imagination. I like the way Mark wrote in this book.

Chapter 181
I see everything.

That is why I don’t like new places. If I am in a place I know, like home, or school, or the bus, or the shop, or the street, I have seen almost everything in it beforehand and all I have to do is to look at the things that have changed or moved. . . .

But most people are lazy. They never look at everything. They do what is called glancing which is the same word for bumping off something and carrying on in almost the same direction, e.g. when a snooker ball glances off another snooker ball. And the information in their head is really simple. For example, if they are in the countryside, it might be

1. I am standing in a field that is full of grass.
2. There are some cows in the fields.
3. It is sunny with a few clouds.
4. There are some flowers in the grass.
5. There is a village off in the distance.
6. There is a fence at the edge of the field and it has a gate in it.

And then they would stop noticing anything because they would be thinking something else like, “Oh it is very beautiful here, or “I’m worried that I might have left the gas cooker on,” or “I wonder if Julie has given birth yet.”

But if I am standing in a field in the countryside I notice everything. For example, I remember stnding in a field on Wednesday, 15 June 1994, because Father and Mother and I were driving to Dover to get a ferry to France and we did what Father called Taking the Scenic Route, which means going by little roads and stopping for lunch in a pub garden, and I had to stop to go for a wee and I went into a field with cows in it and after I’d had a wee I stopped and looked at the field and I noticed these things

1. There are 19 cows in the field, 15 of which are black and white and 4 of which are brown and white.
2. There is a village in the distance which has 31 visible houses and a church with a square tower and not a spire.
3. There are ridges in the field, which means that in medieval times it was called a ridge and furrow field and people who lived in the village would have a ridge each to do farming on.
4. There is an old plastic bag from ASDA in the hedge, and a squashed Coca-Cola can with a snail on it, and a long piece of orange string.
5. The northeast corner of the field is the highest and the southwest corner is lowest (I had a compass because we were going on holiday and I wanted to know where Swindon was when we were in France) and the field is folded downward slightly along the line between these two corners so that the northwest and southeast corners are slightly lower than they would be if the field was an inclined plane.
6. I can see three different types of grass and two colors of flowers in the grass.
7. The cows are mostly facing uphill.

And there were 31 more things in this list of things I noticed but Siobhan said I didn’t need to write them all down. And it means that it is very tiring if I am in a new place because I see all these things, and if someone asked me afterwards what the cows looked like, I could ask which one, and I could do a drawing of them at home and say that a particular cow had patterns on it like this

(the photo is absent here)

And I realise that I told a lie in Chapter 13 because I said, ‘I cannot tell jokes’, because I do know 3 jokes that I can tell and I understand and one of them is about a cow, and Siobhan and I didn’t have to go back and change what I wrote in Chapter 13 because it doesn’t matter because it is not a lie, just a clarification.

And this is the joke.

There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logican and one of them is a mathematician. And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don’t know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).

And the economist says, ‘Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.’

And the logician says, ‘No. There is at least one com in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.’

And the mathematician says, ‘No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.’

And it is funny because economists are not real scientists, and because logicians think more clearly, but mathemticians are best.

And when I am in a new place, because I see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many things at the same time and the central processor unit is blocked up and there isn’t any space left to think about other things. And when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is even harder because people are not like cows and flowers and grass and then can talk to you and do things that you don’t expect, so you have to notice everything that is in the place, and also you have to notice things that might happen as well. And sometimes, when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is like a computer crashing and I have to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and groan, which is like pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and shutting down programs and turning the computer off and rebooting so that I can remember what I am doing and where I am meant to be doing.

And that is why I am good at chess and maths and logic, because most people are almost blind and they don’t see most things and there is lots of spare capacity in their heads and it is filled with things which aren’t connected and are silly, like, ‘I’m worried that I might have left the gas cooker on.’

刚看完一本名叫The songs of distant earth的科幻小说，作者是Arthur C. Clarke (亚瑟·克拉克, 16 December 1917–19 March 2008)。这本书属于牛津书虫系列，所以很缩简和简略。在这个版本里面有五个短篇小说：

１. The Nice Billion Names of God
We know what the lamas are trying to do. But we didn’t know why. It’s the craziest thing but old Sam’s just told me the reason. He’s getting a bit excited now that we’re getting close to the end of the list. You see, they believe that when they have listed all His names - and they think that there are nine billion of them - God’s purpose in making the world will be finished. There will be nothing more for human beings to do, and indeed, no further reason for humans to go on living. When the list’s completed, God steps in and simply closes everything down … bang!

喇嘛借助电脑在短短的三个月内将上帝的九十亿个可能的名字列出来后，人类也就失去了存在的意义，一切又回归混沌。

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周六跟Ricky去SMU和国家图书馆转了一下，在两个地方各呆了３个小时。可惜没有SMU的学生证，只好在李嘉诚图书馆下的foodcourt那里呆着。至于国家图书馆，只到Central Reading Library转了一会，座位并不是很多，所以很多人都在就地坐着。首先看到的就是在下面转抄了一些由美国人Bill Porter（他的笔名是Red Pine）翻译的唐诗英译本。书名为“Poems of the Masters 千家诗”，里面提到“詩”是由“誌”演变而来的，言和志合在一起的意思就是”the language of the heart”。

Singapore National Library

之后大家跟Yingjia，Chloe和Kavin去看Yingjia选中的Vantage Point（刺杀据点）。这是在新的电影院看到的最精彩的电影，分成6个部分，在各个部分用不同的视觉对同样一件事情进行描述，到最后会发现在短短几十分钟内的事情都交代清楚。老张拍的英雄分成的3部分在这个面前就像小孩子一样。Lost里面Jack的扮演者在里面演的是一个背叛的特工，戏份少得可怜。里面也有美国电影里面常有的汽车追逐环节，对那辆蓝色的普通车辆特有兴趣，因为碰撞了那么多次都能开得那么快，问题是碰撞得那么严重安全气囊完全没有打开，是好车还是坏车呀？最后关头让一个小女孩在路中央一站拯救了美国总统拯救了全世界，是因为恐怖分子头头无意识的让开她，也从一个侧面证明孟子性本善学说。对了，你相信美国总统都有个替身么？

Poems of the Masters 千家诗
China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse
translated by Red Pine (Bill Porter)

春晓 Spring Dawn
孟浩然 Meng Hao-Jan
春眠不觉晓 Sleeping in spring oblivious of dawn
处处闻啼鸟 everywhere I hear birds
夜来风雨声 after te wind and rain last night
花落知多少 I wonder how many petals fell

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Naw Rúz，新年的意思，根据巴哈伊历法，每年的3月21日是新年的第一天，也就是从冬天转到春天的第一天，这一天也是The Bahá’í Fast（March 2 to 20）的最后一天。今年新加坡的Bahai New Year dinner是在Meritus Mandarin Hotel举行，偷偷的说一句，根据环境判断，这个dinner是俺有生以来参加过的“最高级别”的一个dinner。我是作为Melic和Lalitha的客人坐在第10号餐桌，这个位置几乎是最好的了，就在舞台前侧边，总共有48桌。据说有许多人要票都没有，估计明年会扩大规模，每张票大概65新币左右吧，我的是Melic请客。印象比较深刻的是其中由Roger Jenkins说的三个故事，第一个是在森林中几个动物的故事，引申出巴哈伊教的一个关于one humanity的教义；第二个是从一张纸两面涂有不同颜色引发出要尝试着从他人的角度看问题，而不是一开始就争吵；第三个故事是从“渔夫与金鱼”框架中换成现代的场景，一个人的开心与否是内心决定而不是身外物。

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