一切是那么的熟悉了...

那 天突然间觉得我已经开始非常适应身边的一切事物了。从厨房的窗望到对面法拉利的车行，从我房间的窗望到初春发芽中的大树，从宿舍一路到市中心的街景，一切 都已经没有陌生的感觉，这一切已经变得十分熟悉和自然了。到超市买日有品时也没有当初的茫然，脑子里想买的东西都是这里超市里能找到的，而且我已经能直接 到哪个架上拿我要的东西，不再整个超市找一轮，我已经融入了这里的生活方式。那种感觉又来了，就是那种身边的一切显然不应该是属于我的，但却有很熟悉的感 觉。看来又是时候改为生活寻求改变了！虽让接下来五个月内，我应该没有办法有什么大改变，只能期待五个月后的改变。五个月后当我离开之后，我会在想念这里 吗？应该会吧！但我还是保持我的想法：当你已经融入一个环境里，比生活得非常舒适时，那就是警惕我们生活又是时候有所改变了，不然的话，人生就呆滞不前 了！！！希望我的人生一直前进和改变，不要让我活得太舒适。舒适的生活，等我六十岁以后吧！！！

English Christmas

Applied for the HOST program at the beginning of semester, which British family hosting international student for a weekend or during festival season. I got the confirmation of my host early of November. My host is a middle age man staying alone. I was a bit disappointed when I got the host confirmation, because I was expecting my host to be a family or a couple instead of a man staying alone. Anyway, I just went ahead. Nothing could be worse than spending xmas alone at hostel or having xmas dinner with my coursemates who I can always see in Manchester.

At xmas eve, I took the bus from Manchester going to Belpher where my host will pick me up there and go to his house at Amber Valley. The bus service name is “Transpeak”. The reason it got the name is because it travels through the peak district, a beautiful country side with farm lands and of course the hills. My host, Denis met me at the bus station and took me back to his house. It was still too early for dinner and I was treated with tea and toast, typical English afternoon tea. Only then Denis told me that we were going to his brother’s house for xmas dinner with his brother’s family. Oh my god, I only prepared one xmas present for Denis, I didn’t prepare presents for his brother’s family. It would be very embarrassing going to someone’s house for xmas dinner with empty hands. Denis had thought about that already, he had prepared some chocolate for me as presents for his brother’s family. Chocolate is always the best and the worst present. Nobody doesn’t like chocolate, but it means you never putting in effort to get someone present too. Anyway, I was going to have xmas dinner at with a British family with number of members. Wuah, it was wonderful. His brother’s house is at Nottingham, not far from Amber Valley. I was warned by Denis of the presence of dogs in his brother’s house. Well, I still could tolerate it, and I tried to tolerate it. With UK cold weather, it is generally quite ok, everything just doesn’t have very strong smell. However, three dogs wandering around the small living room with people, emm… I could tolerate for one night. There were Denis’s brother Eddy, his wife Karen, Denis’s parents and Eddy’s daughters and their partners. When Denis first talked about Hanna and Holly, he said their partners instead of hushands. I knew they might have special relationships. The truth is, Hanna has married to his hushand Richard and they have a son at age of two. Then Holly and his partner Andy, they are not married, but they have a son at age of three. They live together, raise the child together but they are not registered married couple. Never mind, anything could happen in so called developed country. The xmas dinner started with breaking of a card board candy. The breaking came with a little firecracker when we pulled it at each of the end with the person sitting beside us. There was a paper crown, a key chain and a piece of paper with trivial joke. Everybody wore the paper crown in the dinner. It came the appetiser, a very small cup filled with cooked prawns immersed in lemon juice and vodka. Then the first course was soup. It was very delicious, Karen is really good in cooking. Then it came with the main course. This family doesn’t like turkey, instead Karen cooked beef for the main course. The side dishes were put in big bowls and passed around the table for each one of us to take it into our plates. Very typical western dining style. Two slides of roasted beef, mashed potato, fried potato, vege and a piece of something like toast, didn’t really know what was it. A plateful main course made me very full already. Forgot about the wine. British family treats guest by champagne when the guest first arrives to the house while waiting for the dinner to be served. When the soup and the main course served, red wine and white wine are served as well. By the end of the main course, the family had already taken 1 bottle of champagne and 3 bottles of red and white wine. After the main course, dessert was served. It was tiramisu. The base of the tiramisu was made of sponge cake which fully immersed in pure brandy. Taking that piece of tiramisu was equal to taking one full glass of red wine. I was going to be drunken. While eating dessert, they took the hard liquor glasses out and started drinking brandy. By the end of dessert serving, the table was full of champagne glasses, wine glasses and hard liquor glasses. It was not the ending of dinner yet. A cup of tea or coffee was served. Anyway, it was better than any more alcohol.

By the end of dinner, it was close to 11pm already. Denis had to go to church to play church organ for the xmas eve service. He is not a devoted Christian, he just likes to play organ. I got the chance being to the organ loft where normally people won’t be allowed to go in except the organist. It was the first time I saw the Christian having mass. In my point of view, it is more or less same like the chanting in Buddhist temple. When we got back to Denis’s house, it was 2am already. Before going to bed, we had tea and chatted for a while. British do like tea very much. Denis could drink more than 5 cups of tea everyday. In fact, I didn’t see him drinking plain water other than tea, champagne, wine and brandy.

On the xmas day, both of us woke up by noon time, taken English breakfast as lunch. The typical English breakfast which got sausage, bacon, stir fried mushroom, egg, tomato, toast and of course a cup of tea. We didn’t go out on xmas day, just chatted till evening and went to Holly’s house for dinner. Her house is much smaller than Eddy’s house, but she still got a dog in her house. It was really too crowded to have the dog with so many people in her house. Her dinner was buffet style. Apparently all of the foods were pre-prepared frozen food which she just needed to put them into oven to heat them up and the dinner was ready. Of course it was the only cooking she could do. There were fried chicken nugget, bun with smoked salmon, cheese and tuna toppings. The dinner served together with champagne and wine, as usual. Even Karen admitted that British have been drinking too much. We went back to Denis’s house by 11pm, again had tea and chatted for a while before going to bed.

We woke up earlier on Boxing day. After having breakfast, we went out to some local tourism spots. We went to the Derbyshire henge to see few piece of large limestone put into circle by Bronze Age people. It is at the middle of farm, surrounded by grass field with sheep and cows. Then we went to see the Solomon temple. Small tower built by unknown people very long time ago. It was damn freezing at the top of the tower because of wind blowing. We couldn’t stay long and left very soon. Then we went to Danis’s friend’s house at Nottingham for dinner. Alan treated us with simple dinner of water boiled potato and drilled salmon. Luckily he is not a wine lover, so we didn’t get served by wine. After the dinner we went to theater to see pantomime. It is a theater play but it is not as serious as play like Shakespeare’s script. The title of the pantomime was Cinderella. The script followed the original Cinderella story basic, but it got many humourous scenarios. Luckily I have been watching UK tv for some time. So I could understand the humour which linked to UK current issues and some famous tv programs like strictly come dancing and little Britain. The whole play was so funny and hilarious. The play was slightly more than 2 hours with an interval break in between so that audiences could go to washroom or buy ice-cream. The most delighting thing was the classical theater design with three layers of seats. The design of the theater is just like the theater we see in the movie “Phantom of the Opera”. I have never thought that I would see the theater like this in my life and I was in the theater watching a pantomime. It was a wonderful night.

On the next morning, I and Denis woke up very early because I needed to catch the bus to come back to Manchester. Denis sent me to the bus station and he said to me: Your life will be back to normal again! Yup, my life will be back to normal again once I get back to Manchester. Back to the room I have got very familiar with where I eat, study, watch tv, watch movie, surf internet and chat on msn everyday. The scenery out of the bus travelling back to Manchester was just very nice. Green grass field farm land with sheep and cows. The sheep just looked like a very small white spot from far. As the bus travelling closer to Manchester, the green scenery was gone, I was back to city. It was the most special xmas I ever had which I would remember forever.

相对论...

多年前曾读过stephen hawkin写关于相对论的书，堪称有史以来最浅白易懂的相对论书籍，可是我还是看不懂。前些时候，无聊得很时，在youtube看 了关于爱因斯坦的相对论。也许看影片比较容易明白吧，一次终于看懂了相对论再说什么。大致上是说，在爱因斯坦写相对论之前，他已经证明了光的速度是永恒不 变的。速度这一回事，是由两件事决定的。一是某件东西从一个地方移动到另一个地方的距离。二是这件东西从一个地方移动到另一个地方的用了多少时间。在相对 论里，他说站着不动的人看到的两道闪电光同一时间击向地面，而在移动中的人所看到的两道闪电光不会同一时间同时击中地面。所以，光的速度对两个人来说是不 同的。可是光的速度是永恒不变的，两道闪电的距离也是固定的。唯一一个改变的因素就是时间。也就是说时间这样东西不是绝对的。对不同状况的人来说，时间是 相对的。简单来说就是，我站在我的房间里过了一秒钟的时候，你站在你的房间里，你不一定也和我一样过了一秒钟。现在我终于明白为什么当年当他发表相对论 时，没有人能够接受。因为没有人能够接受时间这样东西是能够改变的。直到五十年后，才有人用实验的方法证明了相对论。也就是因为相对论解释了时间是能够被 改变的，后世人也就写出了无数关于穿梭时空的科幻故事。写故事的人和看故事的人应该都意识到穿梭时空是没什么可能会成真。爱因斯坦发表相对论八十年后的今 天，真的有人正在实现着世人对穿梭时空的幻想。好多年前stephen hawkin就 已经知道如何去实现穿梭时空，大概是把空间扭曲之类的方法。可是问题时，如何扭曲空间。看是可行的方法又把问题到回到了原点。今时今日，一位美国的教授想 到了用镭射来扭曲空间。归功于近年来镭射科技的进步，人类中最接近实现穿梭时空的愿望。这位教授已经开始制造这台时光机了。多一两年时间就应该会完成了。 可是这台真实世界里的时光机不能把你带回过去，它只能把“现在”连接上未来。照相对论的理论来说，这台时光机能够把物质或讯息在它启动的那一刻和未来的任 何时间之间转移。也就是说，他这台时光机完成后和启动后，我们将可以收到从未来时空中传过来的东西或讯息。没有人知道我们会收到什么东西。也许我们会收到 未来世界传来第三次世界大战的警告，像电影terminator的剧情，告诉我们去阻止挑起战争者的崛起。然而，当这一切变得非常真实和可实现后，改变历史的哲学命题就也变得真实且值得去思考。可是我万万没想到，有人还真的想好了这个问题，还是很科学的方法。牛津的一位教授，他的数学模式证明了无数的时空的存在。也就是说，像电影dejavu的 剧情，如果我们这个时空里的历史被改变了，“未来”时空里的历史是不会被影响的。阻止我们这个时空的挑起战争者并不能阻止“未来”的另一个时空里的第三次 世界大战。对我来说，最不可思议的是尽然有人真的用科学的方法去研究这件事情，还得出了结论。不管怎样，不可思议的事就要成真了！！！